Part 5

When I reached the village at the foot of the mountain, my first thought was of the child whom my horse had injured earlier in the day. I dismounted, and after a few moments’ inquiry found where he lived. I was admitted to the house by his mother, who led me to an inner room, where I beheld on a chair by a window an unusually charming little fellow, with his left arm in a splint. I sat down before him and took him on my lap and held him carefully in my arms. He took to me at once; and I was pleased to feel, as his warm little body pressed close to me, a decided warmth creep slowly and gently into my own heart. I forced the mother, who was poor, to accept from me the only amends I could make: a purse of gold from my belt, bestowed with a warm shake of the hand. As I said good-by, I glanced at the mirror which hung upon the wall. I went up to it, and looked more intently. The black hair which had been on the left side of my head was gone.

I pressed on the same night, and arrived in due time at the town of Ventamere, on the shore of the Great Sea. I bought a boat, not too large to be handled by a single man, and rigged with a single sail of a charming orange color, somewhat patched with blue.

Like all the islanders, I knew well how to manage a boat, and I could see that my little bark was entirely sea-worthy. I provisioned her for a long voyage, being mindful, of course, of the return. With a light and favorable wind above and an ebbing tide, I set sail.

_He Sails Across the Great Sea_

As I cleared the bay and encountered the long, smooth roll of the Great Sea, I thought, sitting with my hand on the tiller, of the dear Princess whom I had left behind me. I remembered that I had charged her with selfishness, and I began to doubt whether I had been altogether just. For the first time within my memory, I felt a little uneasy on the subject of my own conduct. However, this shadow lasted only a moment. I sang as I sailed.

The weather was superb, and the sea, under moderate winds, never rose above a long and quiet swell. During the entire voyage there was nothing more exciting than an occasional gull on easy wing circling about the peak of my mast, and the flying fish now and then skimming low across the surface of the sea.

As I neared the far shore of the Great Sea, the green of the water became a deep indigo, and I could not but rejoice in the lovely effect amidst that expanse of rich color of the orange of my sail. I had held the course prescribed by the sorcerer, and I knew that I should pick up the Three-Spire Rock on sighting land.

It came to pass as I expected. My faithful boat slipped, early of a luminous evening, into the placid waters of a little bay. On either hand a promontory of noble height jutted out into the sea, and from the shallow water near the shore, against the inmost curve of the beach, rose in three pinnacles a great, black rock, washed by a gentle and surfless tide, and towering above as tall as the masts of a ship: the Three-Spire Rock, beyond a doubt.

I ran my boat almost up to the beach, the tide being at flood, and anchored there. I put on my fine white leather suit, as being suitable for the visit I had now to make, and waded ashore with a line which for further security I made fast to a log partly imbedded in the sand. I then climbed upon the shoreward side of the Three-Spire Rock, and began my search for the Laughing Nymph.

I examined every inch of that side of the rock as far as I could climb, without finding any sign of an opening. I made my way slowly around the rock to the seaward side, examining it carefully as I went, still without success. I reached the outer side of the rock in despair.

The light of day was fast waning, and I would soon be forced to give up my search for the night. The water, which swelled and receded noiselessly about the rock, became black and unfriendly. It was very lonesome. Not a gull nor curlew nor sandpiper could be seen anywhere. The place was too silent altogether. I pressed along the seaward face of the rock.

Before me, at a little distance, the tide had filled to the brim a sort of bowl in the rock, open toward the bay, in which the water stood some five or six feet deep. I came to this bowl and paused to select the best way for clambering round it. I looked down into the still water which filled it, and saw there a sight which almost made my heart stop beating.

_He Finds a Child in a Pool of the Rock_

Floating there was the body of a drowned child. I gave a cry of pity and stooped down to look at him. It was a naked boy of some two years, exceedingly beautiful. I stooped lower and gazed into his upturned face. It was the face of my own child.

It could not be; I had myself seen him, with my own eyes, far from here, in his mother’s arms, many months ago,--and yet, the longer I gazed upon him, the more certainly I knew that it was my own child. I could not be deceived. I leaned down closer and put my arms under him and drew him up and folded him to my breast. He was cold and wet, but beautiful beyond anything I had ever dreamed of him. I stood up, and held his cheek against my own. It seemed to me I had never known until this moment how dear he had been to me. I leaned, almost fainting, against the face of the rock, and rested his fair round body in my arm for a moment against a smooth shelf in the wall. His little shoulder lightly touched the rock; and where it touched, a slight depression seemed to appear, as if the rock had been a cushion. As I looked, the depression grew deeper and wider; it deepened and widened until it became a hollow vault, in which I could see nothing but darkness.

Holding the fair boy close to my breast, I stepped into the dark vault, and walked carefully forward toward the interior of the rock. In a moment the passage made a turn to the right, and I found myself in a brightly lighted room with a peaked ceiling, very lofty, whose floor and walls were all of mother-of-pearl. In sconces on the walls were hundreds of burning candles, and divans and chairs covered with the richest silks were ranged beneath them. A door in the opposite wall stood open, and I entered through this another room of the same kind, with peaked ceiling, candles, mother-of-pearl, and all. As I stood in this room I heard the tinkling of a musical instrument and the singing of a voice. A door stood open opposite me as before, and through this I entered a third room, precisely like the others, and stopped in amazement. There, on a divan against the wall, under a blaze of candles, sat my wife.

_The Laughing Nymph in the Three-Spired Rock_

She was singing gayly and accompanying her song upon a lute. When she saw me she laughed merrily and bade me sit down beside her. I remained standing where I was, doubting whether I had lost my senses, and hugging the beautiful child to my breast. There was no mistake. It was my wife indeed. I forgot for the moment the strangeness of the encounter, and went to her and held out the child.

“See!” I cried. “Have done with laughing! Your child! He is drowned! I have brought him to you! See!”

She looked at me with such merriment in her face as I had never seen there before. She laughed again and again. I thought she would never have done laughing. I was petrified with horror.

“Stop!” I cried. “I must make you understand me! It is your child! Do you understand? Can you look at him and laugh? For shame, for shame!”

She calmed her laughter somewhat.

“Why, what is there in that,” she said, “to make me weep? If you only knew how ridiculous you look! Oh, dear!” And she went off into a peal of laughter gayer than before.

“Take him!” I said. “Look down at that little face, and smile again if you dare!” And I laid him in her lap.

She took him up carelessly and placed him out of her way on the divan.

“Really,” she said, “you mustn’t expect to disturb me with these things. I was singing a lovely new song when you came in. Listen!” And she took the lute in her hands and began to sing a stave of her song.

I felt a wave of anger rise within me. I rushed upon her blindly and tore the lute from her hands and dashed it on the floor. I seized her shoulders and shook her violently; and the more violently I shook her the more she laughed. I bethought me of the pin which lay in my pocket, and at the same time there flashed into my mind what the sorcerer had said about the Laughing Nymph; I had quite forgotten them both. I snatched the pin forth from my pocket with my left hand, and closing my eyes plunged it deep into the left arm of the Laughing Nymph.

She did not scream with pain, but her laughter instantly ceased. She looked at me with surprise, as if she were now seeing me for the first time. An expression of reproachful sorrow came over her face; tears started into her eyes and rolled down her cheeks; and suddenly she buried her face in her hands and wept bitterly. She arose, and threw herself on her knees beside the child and called to him wildly, sobbing as if her heart would break.

I looked on for a moment with my brain in a whirl. A strong impulse of love and pity moved me to put my arm around her and comfort her; but I restrained myself, and in that moment I saw what it all meant; I left the Laughing Nymph still weeping beside the child, and fled.

_The Second Black Hair Is Gone_

Outside, on the beach, under the stars, I collected my disordered wits. I went to the little cabin in my boat, and gazed at myself in the mirror which hung upon its wall. My eyes were unnaturally large and hollow; my cheeks were pale; and the black hair which had been on the right side of my head was gone.

I gathered together such provisions as I could carry, and seeing that the boat was well secured, I departed upon my third and last adventure.

Many days I traveled. The sorcerer had given me my course with much particularity, and there was no question of losing my way. My thoughts were sad company, and yet I felt a kind of elation. I began to look back on myself with horror, and to remember the sweetness of my Princess with admiration and love.

One morning I ascended a long wooded hill and stood upon its top. Below me, at no great distance, lay a river, curved at this point outward like a crescent. On its farther side stretched a field some two miles deep, grown high with grass and flowers, and bounded at its rear by a high cliff whose walls at either end met the river, enclosing the field so that its shape, between them and the river, was roughly that of a half-moon. It was, without a doubt, the pasture of Korbi, beside the river Tarn. The time for my last adventure had arrived.

I descended rapidly to the river, first leaving my pack in a safe place, and waded across the stream; it came to my shoulders, but I had no difficulty in reaching the other side. I pressed forward through the tall grass to the foot of the cliff. I walked along its base until I found above me on its face, somewhat higher than my reach, a circle of white stones; and by this I knew that it was at this point that I must climb.

The ascent was excessively difficult. I mounted, with great pain, to a point so high that I no longer dared look below; I fixed my eyes on each crevice and cranny as they appeared above me, and tried to think of nothing but my next step upward. I was nearing the top. I looked up, and saw directly overhead a great bowlder which projected from the face of the cliff, evidently at its very summit. This was the bowlder of which the sorcerer had spoken as the abode of the Great Horned Owl. A dozen more painful steps brought me to the under side of the bowlder. I clung to the cliff with both hands, and without a sound crept along its face until I was out from under the bowlder on its left side, and then climbed noiselessly upward until I stood beside the bowlder so as to look across its top. There I saw, at my right, the object of my search.

_The Great Horned Owl Stands Ready for the Loop of Thread_

The Great Horned Owl was standing motionless, his wide eyes staring across the valley of the Tarn. I was thankful that in that bright light of the sun he was blind. He did not turn his head in my direction, and he was evidently unaware of my presence. His feathers, as I could see, were flakes or scales of some shining metal. He looked harmless enough, and I felt myself full of confidence.

The hand which was nearest him was my right. Holding on to the cliff with my left, I took from my pocket, with my right, the thread which the sorcerer had given me, and cleared the loop so that I could drop it over the creature’s head without tangling. I leaned across the bowlder toward him, keeping very quiet, and brought my right hand with the loop so close to him that I could have touched him. With that hand I held the loop above his head and began to lower it. It came down closer and closer; it reached the top of his head; I held my breath; my eyes were fixed on his; I lowered the loop another inch or two, until it came to his curved beak, without touching him; and I was about to drop it over his neck,--when suddenly he flapped his wings and fluttered his feathers all together; and all the little metal plates on his body striking one another gave off a rattling discharge of sharp reports, so violent that I thought the cliff was being blown to pieces. I jumped with fright, and scarcely refrained from uttering a cry; but I held my tongue, and dropped the loop around his neck.

Instantly the metal feathers were still and the noise ceased, and the owl turned his head slowly toward me and stared straight into my face; and as he gazed at me, all at once it came to me that I had dropped the noose with my right hand instead of my left. I was aghast at my mistake. I tugged at the thread frantically, but the owl did not budge. I began to grow dizzy. My arm tingled and grew numb. Everything turned black before my eyes. I could not remember where I was. I swayed and lost my balance; I felt myself falling; I clutched wildly for support, but touched nothing; I felt myself falling through space, falling, falling, as a person falls in a dream, for hours as it seemed, sick and dizzy. Only once did I touch anything, and then I felt in my knee a sharp pain, and was conscious that I was bleeding from a cut; and then I knew no more.

When I came to myself, I was standing at the foot of the cliff, where I had commenced my ascent. I looked upward, and wondered that I was alive after such a fall. As my eye traveled downward and rested on the circle of white stones above me I noticed in their center a little splotch of blood, evidently from my knee where it had been cut in my fall; and as I continued to look, the splotch grew into a blood-red flower, waving on a long stem. I felt a strange desire to take the flower in my teeth and tear it.

_Alb Sees in the River the Reflection of a Unicorn_

I wondered whether anything had happened to the hair in the middle of my head. I went to the river, and looked down at myself in a clear pool near the bank. I was surprised to see there the reflection of a small white horse’s head. I turned round, to see the animal which must have been looking over my shoulder. No animal was there. I could not understand it. I looked again at the surface of the water; the same head met my gaze; a small white horse’s head, and in the center of it a sharp, white horn. I looked behind me again, and again into the river. I stood in the water, and saw there the full image of the little white horse. It was myself.

Thus (said the young man, sitting in the half-moon pasture of Korbi, by the river Tarn), you know my story. I have kept count of the days since my enchantment, and they now amount to two years; the age of my little son when he was drowned. You have taken from me the third black hair, and I shall now fly back to my beloved Princess, cured of the curse of perpetual happiness, to spend with her the remainder of my days in blessed light and shadow, peace and storm, laughter and tears.

* * * * *

_“I wonder,” said Bojohn thoughtfully, after a moment’s silence, “who the old man was who gave him the curse in the first place.”_

_“Did Alb tell you,” said Bodkin, “who the old man was?”_

_“No,” said Solario; “I don’t believe he ever knew. But I happen to know, myself, because it was revealed to me in the course of the story which was told me by--”_

_“Tell us! Tell us!” cried the two boys._

_“No,” said Solario, “it is much too late, and I must now, if you will permit me, bid you good night.”_

THE THIRD NIGHT

THE SON OF THE TAILOR OF OOGH

_The King was engaged with the Master of the Wardrobe in a game of chess in the throne room, and the Princess Dorobel (the King’s daughter) and her husband Prince Bilbo were looking on._

_In the next room the Queen was at dominoes with the Second Lady in Waiting, and Prince Bojohn (her grandson) and his friend Bodkin came and stood behind their chairs._

_“Grandmother,” said Bojohn, “wouldn’t you like to hear a story?”_

_“Not now, my dear,” said the Queen, and she put down a double five, smiling at the Lady in Waiting._

_“Come along, then,” said Bojohn to Bodkin. They went into the throne room, and stood behind the King’s chair._

_“Grandfather,” said Bojohn, “wouldn’t you like to hear a story?”_

_“You made a fatal mistake in moving your knight,” said The King. “I will now move my bishop and put you in check. So!”_

_“Grandfather!” said Bojohn. “Wouldn’t you like to--”_

_“Take your time, take your time,” said the King. “If you move out of check, I’ll have you in three moves. See if I don’t!”_

_“Grandfather!” said Bojohn._

_“Ah!” said the King. “That’s different. Hum. Ha. I didn’t think you’d do that. Plague take it, now I’ve got to think up something else.”_

_The Princess Dorobel placed her arm around the shoulder of Bojohn her son. She was radiant in a white evening gown, and she wore pearls in her hair._

_“Never mind, my dear,” said she,_ “I’d _like to hear a story.”_

_“And father too!” said Bojohn. “Come along, both of you!”_

_The Princess Dorobel put her arm in her husband’s, and hurried him away after the two boys, who were already going out at the door._

_They followed the boys through dark halls and up a staircase into the northeast tower, and stopped, all four, before the door of Solario’s room. Prince Bojohn knocked, and a voice from within bade them enter._

_Mortimer the Executioner, seven feet tall and vast as a hogshead around the middle, was standing in his shirt sleeves beside the table, and before him stood Solario on a chair, measuring him with a tape. On the table lay a pile of cloth, with shears, chalk, needles, thread, and wax._

_Solario jumped down from his chair and bowed. He was plainly in high good humor._

_“Be seated, be seated, I pray you,” he cried, bringing up chairs in a hurry. “This is a great honor; a very great honor indeed. You see me in the midst of my-- Pray be seated. Will you excuse me while I note down the shoulder measurement?” He bent over the table, and jotted down some figures in a book. “Mortimer,” said he, “you may go now. We will continue our labors in the morning.”_

_Mortimer, in confusion, hastily put on his coat, which caused a couple of white mice to jump from his pockets and run up his sleeves._

_“Don’t go,” said the Princess Dorobel. “We are about to ask our good friend Solario for a story, and I am sure you would like to hear it.”_

_“Yes,” said Prince Bilbo, “we have come to hear another story, if you will be good enough to--”_

_“The story of Montesango’s Cave!” cried both boys, together._

_“Or the Roving Griffin!” cried Bojohn._

_“Or the Blind Giant!” cried Bodkin._

_“If you will pardon me,” said Solario, “I think that it would please Prince Bilbo and the Princess better, perhaps, to hear the story told me by the Black Prince on the memorable night when--”_

_“Don’t forget,” said Bodkin, “we want to hear about the old man with the shaggy eyebrows, who got the golden chain away from the goldsmith’s son.”_

_“I will tell you,” said Solario, “about the old man and about the Black Prince at the same time.”_

_“We know nothing,” said Prince Bilbo, “about any old man with shaggy eyebrows.”_

_“I’ll tell you, father!” said Bojohn; and he told what he knew. “Now then!” he said to Solario. “Please go on!”_

_Solario the tailor seated himself cross-legged on his table, and the others drew up their chairs before him in a row._

_“Has the old man with the shaggy eyebrows,” said Prince Bilbo, “something to do with the Black Prince?”_

_“Precisely, sir,” said Solario. “If you are ready, I will relate to you the story which the Black Prince told me on the memorable night when-- However. Are you ready?”_

_“Dear me!” said the Princess Dorobel. “This is very cozy, indeed.”_

_“Go on!” cried Bojohn; and Solario, picking up his shears and gazing at them thoughtfully for a moment, began, in the following words,_

THE STORY OF THE BLACK PRINCE

You must know, most excellent Solario (said the Black Prince) that my father, the King of Wen, called me to him one morning, and taking me into his private cabinet, spoke to me as follows.

“My son,” said he, “you are aware what anxiety I have suffered, throughout my reign, regarding my city of Oogh, by reason of its remoteness from my castle. I have, as you know, been unable to visit it since my early youth. It is now some four years since I sent to that city, to govern it in my stead, our friend Urban, so well-beloved among us for his unfailing courtesy.”

* * * * *

_“Oh!” said Bojohn. “That must be the Courteous Stranger.” Solario said, “Precisely.”_

“For many months,” continued my father, the King of Wen, “I have had no word from him, and I fear that some misfortune has befallen him. I design therefore, my son, to send you to the city of Oogh, to find out what is wrong, and if necessary to lend him aid. It will be best for you to enter the city without making yourself known. Your mission may be dangerous, and I accordingly wish you to wear this doublet, which will protect you against all harm so long as it remains intact. I know of no power which can remove it from your person, or detach from it even a single button; but I warn you to be careful, for any injury to it will deprive it of all virtue, and the consequences to you in that case might be serious. Take the doublet from me with your left hand, and I will tell you how I came into possession of it.”

Thereupon my father with his left hand placed the doublet in my left hand, and commenced

THE STORY OF THE MAGIC DOUBLET

“When I was a young man,” said my father,--

_“Please excuse me, Solario,” said Prince Bilbo; “don’t you think it might be better to go on with the main story, without stopping to--”_

_“Really, I think it would,” said the Princess Dorobel._

_“Oh, mother!” said Bojohn._

_“If it is your pleasure,” said Solario, “I will omit the story of the magic doublet for the present.”_

_“I really think it would be better,” said the Princess Dorobel._

_“Oh, shucks,” said Bojohn to Bodkin, in a whisper._

“This is the doublet,” said my father when he had finished his story, “which, as I have told you, was made by the One-Armed Sorcerer with his left hand. Prepare now for your journey, my son, and good fortune attend you.”

All that day I spent in preparation, and early on the next morning I set forth for the city of Oogh. My daughter, the Princess Amadore, implored me to take her with me. She was ever of an ardent and adventurous spirit, and she would not listen to my objections on the score of danger. She usually had her way with me, and I knew from the first that there was no use in resisting her entreaties; and the upshot of it was that I yielded, though much against my judgment.

_The Prince and His Daughter Set Forth for Oogh_