Twilight Land, Howard Pyle [easy books to read .TXT] 📗

thence a little crystal ball, about as big as a pigeon’s egg, in which was something that glistened like a spark of fire. The magician took the crystal ball and thrust it into his bosom; but what it was the fisherman could not guess, and if you do not know I shall not tell you.

Then for the first time the beautiful lady seemed to notice the fisherman. She beckoned him, and when he stood beside her two men came carrying a chest. The chief treasurer opened it, and it was full of bags of gold money. “How will you have it?” said the beautiful lady.

“Have what?” said the fisherman.

“Have the pay for your labor?” said the beautiful lady.

“I will,” said the fisherman, promptly, “take it in my hat.”

“So be it,” said the beautiful lady. She waved her hand, and the chief treasurer took a bag from the chest, untied it, and emptied a cataract of gold into the fur cap. The fisherman had never seen so much wealth in all his life before, and he stood like a man turned to stone.

“Is this all mine?” said the fisherman.

“It is,” said the beautiful lady.

“Then God bless your pretty eyes,” said the fisherman.

Then the magician kissed the beautiful lady, and, beckoning to the fisherman, left the throne-room the same way that they had come. The noblemen, in silks and satins and velvets, marched ahead, and back they went through the other apartments, until at last they came to the door.

Out they stepped, and then what do you suppose happened?

If the wonderful palace had grown like a bubble, like a bubble it vanished. There the two stood on the sea-shore, with nothing to be seen but rocks and sand and water, and the starry sky overhead.

The fisherman shook his cap of gold, and it jingled and tinkled, and was as heavy as lead. If it was not all a dream, he was rich for life. “But anyhow,” said he, “they might have given a body a bite to eat.”

The magician put on his red clothes and his face again, making himself as hoary and as old as before. He took out his flint and steel, and his sticks of spice-wood and his gray powder, and made a great fire and smoke just as he had done before. Then again he tied his handkerchief over the fisherman’s eyes. “Remember,” said he, “what I told you when we started upon our journey. Keep your mouth tight shut, for if you utter so much as a single word you are a lost man. Now throw your leg over what you feel and hold fast.”

The fisherman had his net over one arm and his cap of gold in the other hand; nevertheless, there he felt the same hairy thing he had felt before. He flung his leg over it, and away he was gone through the air like a sky-rocket.

Now, he had grown somewhat used to strange things by this time, so he began to think that he would like to see what sort of a creature it was upon which he was riding thus through the sky. So he contrived, in spite of his net and cap, to push up the handkerchief from over one eye. Out he peeped, and then he saw as clear as day what the strange steed was.

He was riding upon a he-goat as black as night, and in front of him was the magician riding upon just such another, his great red robe fluttering out behind him in the moonlight like huge red wings.

“Great herring and little fishes!” roared the fisherman; “it is a billy-goat!”

Instantly goats, old man, and all were gone like a flash. Down fell the fisherman through the empty sky, whirling over and over and around and around like a frog. He held tightly to his net, but away flew his fur cap, the golden money falling in a shower like sparks of yellow light. Down he fell and down he fell, until his head spun like a top.

By good-luck his house was just below, with its thatch of soft rushes. Into the very middle of it he tumbled, and right through the thatch—bump!—into the room below.

The good wife was in bed, snoring away for dear life; but such a noise as the fisherman made coming into the house was enough to wake the dead. Up she jumped, and there she sat, staring and winking with sleep, and with her brains as addled as a duck’s egg in a thunder-storm.

“There!” said the fisherman, as he gathered himself up and rubbed his shoulder, “that is what comes of following a woman’s advice!”

All the good folk clapped their hands, not so much because of the story itself, but because it was a woman who told it.

“Aye, aye,” said the brave little Tailor, “there is truth in what you tell, fair lady, and I like very well the way in which you have told it.”

“Whose turn is it next?” said Doctor Faustus, lighting a fresh pipe of tobacco.

“Tis the turn of yonder old gentleman,” said the Soldier who cheated the Devil, and he pointed with the stem of his pipe to the Fisherman who unbottled the Genie that King Solomon had corked up and thrown into the sea. “Every one else hath told a story, and now it is his turn.”

“I will not deny, my friend, that what you say is true, and that it is my turn,” said the Fisherman. “Nor will I deny that I have already a story in my mind. It is,” said he, “about a certain prince, and of how he went through many and one adventures, and at last discovered that which is—”