Top of the World Stories for Boys and Girls Part 4

This was the most terrible contest of all. The air echoed the dreadful roaring of the angry beasts, the sand was thrown up by their paws and colored red with their blood.

They fell over each other, they separated, they rushed against each other again. All the spectators trembled, entranced. Long was the strife undecided, but the tiger Ahriman finally succ.u.mbed and Ormuz was led from the arena in triumph.

And now the performances were about to close with a grand strife en ma.s.se, every wild animal taking part. But the heat of the sun being intense, there was a cessation in the sports, so that the spectators might refresh themselves with cooling drinks. Many then went down upon the arena to look at the dead animals which had been left there.

Even the Princess Lindagull became curious to view the animals at a nearer point. She, who until now had seen only blossoms and singing birds, had no idea of the aspect of these dead creatures. So down she went, followed by her ladies and the guard, into the arena; and slaves spread gold-embroidered mats before her feet, so that her dainty sandals should not be soiled by the blood-stained sands.

What could she fear? All the living animals were shut up in safe cages.

The most dangerous of all, the great tiger Ahriman, lay dead upon the arena. The princess went toward him, admiring his beauty and marveling at his splendid striped skin which she determined to ask her father for, that she might use it as a rug in the marble castle.

Suddenly the tiger rose up, gave a leap, sprang upon the princess, seized her in his terrible jaws, and rushed away! Shrieks of horror flew from tier to tier among the spectators, but no one had the courage to try to s.n.a.t.c.h his booty from the tiger.

No one? Ah, one there was! The valiant Prince Abderraman dashed with the speed of the wind into the tiger's path, grasped the monster's gory breast and struggled with him for his precious booty.

Alas, unhappy prince! His right arm was in an instant bitten almost off by the tiger, and he was thrown bleeding and helpless upon the sand; and before any one could come to the aid of the vanquished hero, the tiger had leaped over the high iron railing and escaped with the Princess Lindagull in his mighty jaws!

The anguish of poor old Shah Nadir was great; and great was the grief of all Ispahan,--indeed, of all Persia. The king's guard and the fifty thousand knights with gold saddles rode immediately away to seek the princess. They searched through every bush and cleft in Turan where a tiger's lair might be. Hundreds of tigers and other wild beasts fell before their spears, but fruitlessly. After looking through all Turan and half of Asia, the guard returned sorrowing. No trace of the Princess or her strange captor was to be found.

Shah Nadir tore his gray hair and cursed his sixtieth birthday. He had lost what he held dearest on earth,--his Lindagull. He ordered his people to array themselves in mourning as if a sultana had died. He also commanded that prayers should be offered in all the mosques for the Princess Lindagull's return. And the proclamation was made that whoever restored his daughter to him, living, should receive the hand of the princess and inherit the Persian crown; whoever brought her back dead should receive as a reward sixty a.s.ses laden with gold and costly treasure. The hope of so rich a reward led many princes and n.o.blemen to undertake the search for the lost daughter of the king. But sooner or later all came back without having found her. All except one; and that was Prince Abderraman. He had made a solemn vow to seek for the princess fifteen years; to find and rescue her, or die.

If the princess had been carried away by a real tiger, our tale would have ended with that; because nothing is sacred to a royal tiger, not even the n.o.blest princess in the world. But this was not the case. The wizard, Hirmu, had availed himself of the exhibition of wild beasts in order that, transformed into a tiger, he might carry out his master's commands for his own advantage. He had exchanged hearts with the tiger; and so long as the heart was not destroyed or eaten up, Hirmu could not be killed. But such a treasure as a princess he preferred to keep for himself; so, instead of taking his captive to old King Bom Bali in Turan, he carried her away, with flying leaps, to his own far-away home in Lapland.

CHAPTER III

THE CAPTIVITY

It was now autumn, and dark in Lapland.

The Lapp woman, Pimpedora, sat and cooked porridge over a blazing fire in the tent, while her son Pimpepanturi sat waiting for the porridge and looking idly at his reindeer shoes. Pimpepanturi was a good-natured boy; but he was stupid, and not a little lazy besides. His father, Hirmu, had wished very much to bring him up as a wizard, but it was of no use.

Pimpepanturi thought more about eating and drinking than of learning anything,--whether sorcery or what not.

The Lapp woman turned toward the boy, and said, "Don't you hear something?"

"I hear the fire crackle and the porridge bubble in the pot," answered Pimpepanturi with a long yawn.

"Don't you hear something like a roar out in the autumn night?" asked the Lapp woman again.

"Yes," said Pimpepanturi; "that is a wolf taking some of our reindeer."

"No," said the Lapp woman; "that is Father coming back. He has now been away four winters, but I hear him growling like a wild animal. He must have hurried to have reached home so soon again!"

At that moment Hirmu entered in the semblance of a tiger with the Princess Lindagull hanging from his mouth. Placing her on a heap of moss in the corner of the tent, he quickly regained his own body (replacing his own heart in it now), at the same time calling out, "Mother, what food have you? I have run a long way."

The tiger fell dead upon the moss in the tent. The Lapp woman had nearly fallen into the porridge-pot from fright; but she recognized her husband and promised him a good supper, if he would tell her where he had been these four winters, and what kind of a grand doll he had brought home with him.

"That is too long a story to tell," grumbled the husband. "Take care of our grand doll and give her warm reindeer milk to restore her to life.

She is a fine young lady from Persia. She will bring us good fortune."

Princess Lindagull was not dead,--not even wounded. She had only fainted from fright. When she awoke she lay (in her rich clothing of pearls and silver tissue) on a reindeer skin spread over moss, in the Lapp tent. It was dark and cold. The firelight shone on the close walls of the tent and on the Lapp woman, who gave her reindeer milk to drink. Lindagull believed herself to be in death's domain under the earth; and cried because she, so young, should be s.n.a.t.c.hed away from Persia's sun and Ispahan's lovely rose gardens.

[Ill.u.s.tration: IN THE LAPP TENT.--_Page 60_.]

The wizard, in the meantime, hit upon a happy plan for winning Persian treasure, and said to Lindagull:

"Weep not, beautiful princess. Thou art not dead. Thou hast only been stolen away by a horrid tiger and my son, the brave Knight Morus Pandorus von Pikkuluk'ulikuck'ulu, has saved thee at the greatest risk of his own precious life. We will be thy slaves and serve thee with the utmost zeal until it becomes possible to conduct thee back to Persia."

"What lie is that, old man?" said the honest Lapp woman in her own language to the wizard.

The wizard continued: "My wife says that if thou wilt take our son, the surpa.s.singly beautiful and brave knight, Morus Pandorus von Pikkuluk'ulikuck'ulu, for thy bridegroom, we will immediately conduct thee back to Persia."

Pimpepanturi did not understand Persian; so he made great eyes when his father pushed him forward toward the princess and pressed his stiff back down with both hands that it might appear as if Pimpepanturi were bowing.

Lindagull would not have been a princess and the daughter of proud Shah Nadir if she had not felt herself insulted by such an indignity. She gazed scornfully at the wizard, and at his clumsy lout of a son,--with such eyes! Nay! it was not a gaze; for her eyes flashed lightning!

(And Persian eyes can flash lightning!) Father and son both flushed dark red.

"No, that won't do," said the wizard. "She must first be tamed."

Then the wizard made a part.i.tion in the tent, three yards long and two yards wide. There he imprisoned Lindagull, and gave her half a reindeer cheese and a dipper of melted snow-water every day for food.

Thus day and night pa.s.sed by in darkness, for winter came quickly; and the Northern Lights shone in through the cracks of the tent.

Poor, innocent little Lindagull! Her eyes had flashed lightning once; but as in thunder-storms it is not long between lightning gleams and showers of rain, so the tears of Princess Lindagull soon began to fall.

Yes, she cried as one only can cry when one is twelve years old and has been a princess in Persia and lived in rose-gardens and marble castles, guarded by the friendliest attendants, and then suddenly finds herself hungry and freezing, alone, in a dark Lapland winter. Yes, she wept as one weeps over lost youth, health and beauty;--over a lost life; as the dew weeps over a beautiful extinguished day in Ispahan's pleasure garden.

When she had done weeping she slept. But lo! while she slept, there stood by her side the friendly old fellow whom the Finns call Nukku Matti, whom the Swedes call Jon Blund, and whom the Danes and Norwegians call Ole Lukoje,[4]--(I don't know what they call him in Persia;) and he took her in his arms, bore her to Feather Islands and laid her on a bed of fragrant roses in a lovely grotto. There all was peaceful and good. The soft moon shone over date-palms and myrtle forests, just as in Persia's fairest springtime. Small airy Dreams danced forth to her with silken shoes over velvet rugs, and led her back to her home; to her father the old Shah Nadir, to her friendly attendants and to all the places dear to her from birth. And so pa.s.sed the long winter nights.

And so pa.s.sed weeks and months in the Kingdom of Dreams; because it was now night altogether. But Lindagull was patient and wept no more. The Dreams had said to her, "Wait; thy deliverer will come----"

Who would deliver her? Who should discover a path where no path lay, far away in the snow?

The Lapp woman would willingly have set her free, but dared not on account of her husband. And Pimpepanturi also had thoughts of it, but was too lazy.

At length the winter was ended. The sun dared to shine, the snow melted and the gnats danced about. Then the wizard thought, "Now she is tamed!"

Whereupon he went to Lindagull and asked if she wished to travel back to Persia. If so, she need only to accept the grandly courageous and highly admired knight, Morus Pandorus von Pikkuluk'ulikuck'ulu for her bridegroom, and the reindeer would immediately stand harnessed at the door ready to travel southward.

Lindagull did not shoot glances of lightning this time. But she thought of the young Prince Abderraman who had once bled for her on Ispahan's sand; and remembering his face she could not possibly accept Pimpepanturi. She answered nothing.

At this the wizard became very angry. He shut the Princess Lindagull in a deep, dark grotto on a mountainside, and said to her (dropping the grandiloquent style he had heretofore used): "Soon the cloudberries will be ripe. You shall keep account of the days as they pa.s.s, in this way.

The first day you shall have thirty cloudberries to eat and thirty dewdrops to drink; the next day twenty-nine cloudberries to eat and twenty-nine dewdrops to drink; and so on, for each day one berry and one drop less. On the last day you shall tell me what you have decided."

So Lindagull stayed there confined in the grotto. The time of year had now come when barren Lapland shone with light both day and night; but the grotto was dark. The cloudberries and dewdrops steadily lessened in number, but Lindagull's cheeks became no paler and her quiet patience continued the same as before. What she had to forego by day Nukku Matti and the Dreams made up to her every night. They lifted off the rocky roof by their magic power so that she could see the glowing midnight sun and hear the roar of the waterfall as it hurled itself over the edge of the rock. Drippings from this waterfall fell into the grotto in the form of a delicious honey-dew, which served the starving one as refreshing meat and drink.

The thoughts of Princess Lindagull dwelt often upon Prince Abderraman.

She sang ballads of the Eastern lands, and it pleased her to hear a hundred clear-voiced echoes answer back from the mountain walls. On the thirtieth day, the wizard brought her the last berry and the last dewdrop laid upon a leaf of Lapland dwarf-birch.