Chapter 4

So, while his brothers went to sleep in the shade, he ran along up its banks, looking at this thing and that and wondering at them all.

The stream became narrower and narrower until at last it was not broader than his hand. And when he came to the very beginning of it, what do you think he found?

He found a walnut shell out of which the water was spouting as from a fountain.

"Good-morning, Mr Spring," said Jack. "Are you not tired staying here all alone in this little nook where nobody comes to see you?"

"Ah, my master," answered the spring in the walnut shell, "I have been waiting a long time for you."

"Well, here I am," said Jack; and he took the walnut shell and put it into his cap.

His brothers were just waking up when he rejoined them.

"Well, Mr Why-and-How," said Peter, "did you find where the brook comes from?"

"Indeed, I did," answered Jack. "It spouts up from a spring."

"You are too clever for this world," growled Paul.

"Clever or not clever," said Jack, "I have seen what I wished to see, and I have learned what I wished to learn."

_Jack's Victory at the Palace_

At last the three boys came to the King's palace. They saw the great oak that darkened the windows, and on the gateposts they saw a big poster printed in red and black letters.

"See there, Jack," said Paul. "Read that, and tell us what it says."

"Yes, I wonder what it says," said Jack, laughing. And this is what he read:

NOTICE

Know all men by these presents: If anyone will cut down this oak-tree and carry it away, the King will give him three bags full of gold. If anyone will dig a well in the courtyard so as to supply the palace with water, he may wed the King's daughter and the King will give him half of everything.

The King has said it and it shall be done.

"Better and better," said Peter. "There are three tasks instead of one, and the prize is more than double."

"But it will take someone smarter than you to win it," said Paul; and he stroked his head gently.

"It will take someone stronger than you," answered Peter; and he rolled up his shirt-sleeves and swung his big arms around till their muscles stood out like whipcords.

The boys went into the courtyard. There they saw another placard posted over the door of the great hallway.

"Read that, Jack," said Paul. "Read it and tell us what it says."

"Yes," said Jack, "I wonder what it says."

SECOND NOTICE

Know all men by these presents: If anyone shall try to cut down the oak and shall not succeed, he shall have both his ears cut off. If anyone shall try to dig the well and shall not succeed, he shall have his nose cut off. The King in his goodness has so commanded, and it shall be done.

"Worse and worse," said Peter. "But hand me an axe, and I will show you what I can do."

The sharpest axe in the country was given him. He felt its edge; he swung it over his shoulder. Then he began to chop on the oak with all his might; but as soon as a bough was cut off, two bigger and stronger ones grew in its place.

"I give it up," said Peter. "It cannot be done."

And the King's guards seized him and led him away to prison.

"To-morrow his ears shall come off," said the King.

"It was all because he was so awkward," said Paul. "Now, see what a skilful man can do."

He took the axe and walked carefully round the tree. He saw a root that was partly out of the ground, and chopped it off. All at once two other roots much bigger and stronger grew in its place.

He chopped at these, but the axe was dulled, and with all his skill he could not cut them off.

"Enough!" cried the King; and the guards hurried him also to jail.

Then little Jack came forward.

"What does that wee bit of a fellow want?" asked the King. "Drive him away, and if he doesn't wish to go, cut off his ears at once."

But Jack was not one whit afraid. He bowed to the King and said, "Please let me try. It will be time enough to cut off my ears when I have failed."

"Well, yes, it will, I suppose," said the King. "So go to work quickly and be done with it."

Jack took the bright steel axe from his pocket. He set it up by the tree and said, "Chop, Mr Axe! Chop!"

You should have seen the chips fly.

The little axe chopped and cut and split, this way and that, right and left, up and down. It moved so fast that nobody could keep track of it, and there was no time for new twigs to grow.

In fifteen seconds the great oak-tree was cut in pieces and piled up in the King's courtyard, ready for firewood in the winter.

"What do you think of that?" asked Jack, as he bowed again to the King.

"You have done wonders, my little man," said the King. "But the well must be dug or I shall take off your ears."

"Kindly tell me where you would like to have the well," said Jack, bowing again.

A place in the courtyard was pointed out. The King sat in his great chair on a balcony above, and by him sat his beautiful daughter, the Princess. They wanted to see the little fellow dig.

Jack took the pickaxe from his other pocket. He set it down on the spot that had been pointed out.

"Now, Mr Pickaxe, dig! dig!" he cried.

You should have seen how the rocks flew.

In fifteen minutes a well a hundred feet deep was dug.

"What do you think of that?" asked Jack.

"It is a fine well," said the King, "but it has no water in it."

Jack felt in his cap for his walnut shell. He took it out and dropped it softly to the bottom of the well. As he did so he shouted, "Now, Mr Spring, spout! spout!"

The water spouted out of the walnut shell in a great stream. It filled the well. It ran over into the King's garden.

All the people shouted, and the Princess clapped her hands.

With his cap in his hands Jack went and kneeled down before the King. "Sire," he said, "do you think that I have won the prize?"

"Most certainly I do," answered the King; and he bade his servants bring the three bags of gold and pour the coins out at Jack's feet.

"But, father," said the Princess, "have you forgotten the other part of the prize?" and she blushed very red.

"Oh no," said the King; "but you both are very young. When you are a few years older, we shall have a pretty wedding in the palace. Are you willing to wait, young man?"

"I am willing to obey you in everything," answered Jack; "but I wonder if I might not ask you for one other little favour?"

"Say on; and be careful not to ask too much," answered the King.

"May it please you, then," said Jack, "to pardon my two brothers?"

The King nodded, and in a short time Peter and Paul were brought around into the courtyard.

"Well, brothers," said Jack kindly, "I wonder if I was very foolish when I wanted to know all about things."

"You have certainly been lucky," said Paul; "and I am glad of it."

"You have saved our ears," said Peter, "and we are all lucky."

_The Feast of Lanterns_[10]

_Wang Chih watches a Game of Chess_

Wang Chih was only a poor man, but he had a wife and children to love, and they made him so happy that he would not have changed places with the Emperor himself.

[Footnote 10: The story of a Chinese Rip Van Winkle. From Stead's _Books for the Bairns_, No. 52, _Fairy Tales from China_. By permission.]

He worked in the fields all day, and at night his wife always had a bowl of rice ready for his supper. And sometimes, for a treat, she made him some bean soup, or gave him a little dish of fried pork.

But they could not afford pork very often; he generally had to be content with rice.

One morning, as he was setting off to his work, his wife sent Han Chung, his son, running after him to ask him to bring home some firewood.

"I shall have to go up into the mountain for it at noon," he said. "Go and bring me my axe, Han Chung."

Han Chung ran for his father's axe, and Ho-Seen-Ko, his little sister, came out of the cottage with him.

"Remember it is the Feast of Lanterns to-night, father," she said. "Don't fall asleep up on the mountain; we want you to come back and light them for us."

She had a lantern in the shape of a fish, painted red and black and yellow, and Han Chung had got a big round one, all bright crimson, to carry in the procession; and, besides that, there were two large lanterns to be hung outside the cottage door as soon as it grew dark.

Wang Chih was not likely to forget the Feast of Lanterns, for the children had talked of nothing else for a month, and he promised to come home as early as he could.

At noontide, when his fellow-labourers gave up working, and sat down to rest and eat, Wang Chih took his axe and went up the mountain slope to find a small tree that he might cut down for fuel.

He walked a long way, and at last saw one growing at the mouth of a cave.

"This will be just the thing," he said to himself. But, before striking the first blow, he peeped into the cave to see if it were empty.

To his surprise, two old men, with long, white beards, were sitting inside playing chess, as quietly as mice, with their eyes fixed on the chessboard.

Wang Chih knew something of chess, and he stepped in and watched them for a few minutes.

"As soon as they look up, I can ask them if I may chop down a tree," he said to himself. But they did not look up, and by-and-by Wang Chih got so interested in the game that he put down his axe and sat on the floor to watch it better.

The two old men sat cross-legged on the ground, and the chessboard rested on a slab, like a stone table, between them.

On one corner of the slab lay a heap of small, brown objects which Wang Chih took at first to be date stones; but after a time the chess-players ate one each, and put one in Wang Chih's mouth; and he found it was not a date stone at all.

It was a delicious kind of sweetmeat, the like of which he had never tasted before; and the strangest thing about it was that it took his hunger and thirst away.

He had been both hungry and thirsty when he came into the cave, as he had not waited to have his midday meal with the other field workers; but now he felt quite comforted and refreshed.

He sat there some time longer, and noticed, as the old men frowned over the chessboard, their beards grew longer and longer, until they swept the floor of the cave, and even found their way out of the door.

"I hope my beard will never grow as quickly," said Wang Chih, as he rose and took up his axe again.

Then one of the old men spoke, for the first time. "Our beards have not grown quickly, young man. How long is it since you came here?"

"About half-an-hour, I daresay," replied Wang Chih. But as he spoke, the axe crumbled to dust beneath his fingers, and the second chess-player laughed, and pointed to the little brown sweetmeats on the table.

"Half-an-hour, or half-a-century--ay, half a thousand years--are alike to him who tastes of these. Go down into your village and see what has happened since you left it."

_The Sad Consequences_

So Wang Chih went down as quickly as he could from the mountain, and found the fields where he had worked covered with houses, and a busy town where his own little village had been. In vain he looked for his house, his wife, and his children.

There were strange faces everywhere; and although when evening came the Feast of Lanterns was being held once more, there was no Ho-Seen-Ko carrying her red and yellow fish, or Han Chung with his flaming red ball.

At last he found a woman, a very, very old woman, who told him that when she was a tiny girl she remembered her grandmother saying how, when _she_ was a tiny girl, a poor young man had been spirited away by the Genii of the mountains, on the day of the Feast of Lanterns, leaving his wife and little children with only a few handfuls of rice in the house.

"Moreover, if you wait while the procession passes, you will see two children dressed to represent Han Chung and Ho-Seen-Ko, and their mother, carrying the empty rice bowl, between them; for this is done every year to remind people to take care of the widow and fatherless," she said.

So Wang Chih waited in the street; and in a little while the procession came to an end; and the last three figures in it were a boy and girl, dressed like his own two children, walking on either side of a young woman carrying a rice bowl. But she was not like his wife in anything but her dress, and the children were not at all like Han Chung and Ho-Seen-Ko; and poor Wang Chih's heart was very heavy as he walked away out of the town.

He slept out on the mountain, and early in the morning found his way back to the cave where the two old men were playing chess.

At first they said they could do nothing for him, and told him to go away and not disturb them; but Wang Chih would not go, and they soon found the only way to get rid of him was to give him some really good advice.

"You must go to the White Hare of the Moon, and ask him for a bottle of the elixir of life. If you drink that you will live for ever," said one of them.

"But I don't want to live for ever," objected Wang Chih; "I wish to go back and live in the days when my wife and children were here."

"Ah, well! For that you must mix the elixir of life with some water out of the Sky-Dragon's mouth."

"And where is the Sky-Dragon to be found?" inquired Wang Chih.

"In the sky, of course. You really ask very stupid questions. He lives in a cloud-cave. And when he comes out of it he breathes fire, and sometimes water. If he is breathing fire, you will be burnt up, but if it is only water, you will easily be able to catch some in a bottle. What else do you want?"

For Wang Chih still lingered at the mouth of the cave.

"I want a pair of wings to fly with, and a bottle to catch the water in," he replied boldly.

So they gave him a little bottle; and before he had time to say, "Thank you!" a White Crane came sailing past, and lighted on the ground close to the cave.

"The Crane will take you wherever you like," said the old men. "Go now, and leave us in peace."

_Wang Chih visits the Fire Dragon_

Wang Chih sat on the White Crane's back, and was taken up, and up, and up through the sky to the cloud-cave where the Sky-Dragon lived. And the Dragon had the head of a camel, the horns of a deer, the eyes of a rabbit, the ears of a cow, and the claws of a hawk.

Besides this, he had whiskers and a beard, and in his beard was a bright pearl.

All these things show that he was a real, genuine dragon, and if you ever meet a dragon who is not exactly like this, you will know he is only a make-believe one.

Wang Chih felt rather frightened when he perceived the cave in the distance, and if it had not been for the thought of seeing his wife again, and his little boy and girl, he would have been glad to turn back.

While he was far away, the cloud-cave looked like a dark hole in the midst of a soft, white, woolly mass, such as one sees in the sky on an April day; but as he came nearer he found the cloud was as hard as a rock, and covered with a kind of dry, white grass.

When he got there, he sat down on a tuft of grass near the cave, and considered what he should do next.

The first thing was, of course, to bring the Dragon out, and the next to make him breathe water instead of fire.

"I have it!" cried Wang Chih at last; and he nodded his head so many times that the White Crane expected to see it fall off.

He struck a light, and set the grass on fire, and it was so dry that the flames spread all around the entrance to the cave, and made such a smoke and crackling that the Sky-Dragon put his head out to see what was the matter.

"Ho! ho!" cried the Dragon, when he saw what Wang Chih had done, "I can soon put this to rights." And he breathed once, and the water came from his nose and mouth in three streams.

But this was not enough to put the fire out. Then he breathed twice, and the water came out in three mighty rivers, and Wang Chih, who had taken care to fill his bottle when the first stream began to flow, sailed away on the White Crane's back as fast as he could, to escape being drowned.

The rivers poured over the cloud-rock, until there was not a spark left alight, and rushed down through the sky into the sea below.

Fortunately, the sea lay right underneath the Dragon's cave, or he would have done great mischief. As it was, the people on the coast looked out across the water toward Japan, and saw three inky-black clouds stretching from the sky into the sea.

"My word! There is a fine rain-storm out at sea!" they said to each other.

But of course it was nothing of the kind; it was only the Sky-Dragon putting out the fire Wang Chih had kindled.

_Wang Chih visits the White Hare of the Moon_

Meanwhile, Wang Chih was on his way to the Moon, and when he got there he went straight to the hut where the Hare of the Moon lived, and knocked at the door.

The Hare was busy pounding the drugs which make up the elixir of life; but he left his work, and opened the door, and invited Wang Chih to come in.

He was not ugly, like the Dragon; his fur was quite white and soft and glossy, and he had lovely, gentle brown eyes.

The Hare of the Moon lives a thousand years, as you know, and when he is five hundred years old he changes his colour, from brown to white, and becomes, if possible, better tempered and nicer than he was before.

As soon as he heard what Wang Chih wanted, he opened two windows at the back of the hut, and told him to look through each of them in turn.

"Tell me what you see," said the Hare, going back to the table where he was pounding the drugs.

"I can see a great many houses and people," said Wang Chih, "and streets--why, this is the town I was in yesterday, the one which has taken the place of my old village."

Wang Chih stared, and grew more and more puzzled. Here he was up in the Moon, and yet he could have thrown a stone into the busy street of the Chinese town below his window.

"How does it come here?" he stammered, at last.

"Oh, that is my secret," replied the wise old Hare. "I know how to do a great many things which would surprise you. But the question is, do you want to go back there?"

Wang Chih shook his head.

"Then close the window. It is the window of the Present. And look through the other, which is the window of the Past."

Wang Chih obeyed, and through this window he saw his own dear little village, and his wife, and Han Chung and Ho-Seen-Ko jumping about her as she hung up the coloured lanterns outside the door.

"Father won't be in time to light them for us, after all," Han Chung was saying.

Wang Chih turned, and looked eagerly at the White Hare.

"Let me go to them," he said. "I have got a bottle of water from the Sky-Dragon's mouth, and----"

"That's all right," said the White Hare. "Give it to me."

He opened the bottle, and mixed the contents carefully with a few drops of the elixir of life, which was clear as crystal, and of which each drop shone like a diamond as he poured it in.

"Now, drink this," he said to Wang Chih, "and it will give you the power of living once more in the Past, as you desire."

Wang Chih held out his hand, and drank every drop.

The moment he had done so, the window grew larger, and he saw some steps leading from it down into the village street.

Thanking the Hare, he rushed through it, and ran toward his own house, arriving in time to take from his wife's hand the taper with which she was about to light the red and yellow lanterns which swung over the door.

"What has kept you so long, father? Where have you been?" asked Han Chung, while little Ho-Seen-Ko wondered why he kissed and embraced them all so eagerly.

But Wang Chih did not tell them his adventures just then; only when darkness fell, and the Feast of Lanterns began, he took part in it with a merry heart.

_Prince Harweda and the Magic Prison_

By ELIZABETH HARRISON

(_Adapted_)

Little Harweda was born a prince. His father was king over all the land, and his mother was the most beautiful queen the world had ever seen, and Prince Harweda was their only child. From the day of his birth, everything that love or money could do for him had been done. The pillow on which his head rested was made out of the down from humming-birds' breasts. The water in which his hands and face were washed was always steeped in rose leaves before being brought to the nursery. Everything that could be done was done, and nothing which could add to his ease or comfort was left undone.

But his parents, although they were king and queen, were not very wise, for they never thought of making the young prince think of anyone but himself. Never in all his life had he given up one of his comforts that someone else might have a pleasure. So, of course, he grew to be selfish and peevish, and by the time he was five years old he was so disagreeable that nobody loved him. "Dear! dear! what shall we do?" said the poor queen, and the king only sighed and answered, "Ah, what indeed!" They were both very much grieved, for they well knew that little Harweda would never grow up to be really a great king unless he could make his people love him.

At last they determined to send for his fairy godmother to see if she could cure Prince Harweda of always thinking about himself. "Well, well, well!" exclaimed his godmother when they laid the case before her, "this is a pretty state of affairs! And I his godmother, too! Why wasn't I called in sooner?" She told them she would have to think a day and a night and a day again before she could offer them any help. "But," added she, "if I take the child in charge, you must let me have my way for a whole year." The king and queen gladly promised that they would not even speak to or see their son for the year if the fairy godmother would only cure him of his selfishness. "We'll see about that," said the godmother. "Humph, expecting to be a king some day and not caring for anybody but himself--a fine king he'll make!" With that she flew off, and the king and queen saw nothing more of her for a day and a night and another day. Then back she came in a great hurry.

"Give me the prince," said she, "I have a house all ready for him. One month from to-day I'll bring him back to you. Perhaps he'll be cured and perhaps he won't. If he is not cured then, we shall try two months next time. We'll see, we'll see." Without any more ado she picked up the astonished young prince and flew away with him as lightly as if he were nothing but a feather or a straw. In vain the poor queen wept and begged for a last kiss. Before she had wiped her eyes, the fairy godmother and Prince Harweda were out of sight.

They flew a long distance, until they reached a great forest. When they had come to the middle of it, down flew the fairy, and in a minute more the young prince was standing on the green grass beside a beautiful pink marble palace that looked something like a good-sized summer-house.

"This is your home," said the godmother. "In it you will find everything you need, and you can do just as you choose with your time." Little Harweda was delighted at this, for there was nothing in the world he liked better than to do as he pleased. He tossed his cap up into the air and ran into the lovely little house without so much as saying "Thank you" to his godmother. "Humph," said she, as he disappeared, "you'll have enough of it before you have finished, my fine prince." With that, off she flew. Prince Harweda had no sooner set his foot inside the small rose-coloured palace than the iron door shut with a bang and locked itself. This was because it was an enchanted house, as of course all houses are that are built by fairies.

Prince Harweda did not mind being locked in, as he cared very little for the great beautiful outside world. The new home was very fine, and he was eager to examine it. Then, too, he thought that when he was tired of it, all he would have to do would be to kick on the door and a servant from somewhere would come and open it--he had always had a servant to obey his slightest command.