“We are aground!” cry the sailors; and the captain, the great one, tells them to take soundings.  Seventy fathoms by the bow it was, and seventy fathoms by the stern.

“We are not aground,” says the captain, “unless there is a rock sticking up like a needle in the middle of the Caspian Sea!”

“There is magic in this,” say the sailors.

“Hoist more sail,” says the captain; and up go the white sails, swelling out in the wind, while the masts bend and creak.  But still the ship lay shivering and did not move, out there in the middle of the sea.

“Hoist more sail yet,” says the captain; and up go the white sails, swelling and tugging, while the masts creak and groan.  But still the ship lay there shivering and did not move.

“There is an unlucky one aboard,” says an old sailor.  “We must draw lots and find him, and throw him overboard into the sea.”

The other sailors agreed to this.  And still Sadko sat, and played his dulcimer and sang.

The sailors cut pieces of string, all of a length, as many as there were souls in the ship, and one of those strings they cut in half.  Then they made them into a bundle, and each man plucked one string.  And Sadko stopped his playing for a moment to pluck a string, and his was the string that had been cut in half.

“Magician, sorcerer, unclean one!” shouted the sailors.

“Not so,” said Sadko.  “I remember now an old promise I made, and I keep it willingly.”

He took his dulcimer in his hand, and leapt from the ship into the blue Caspian Sea.  The waves had scarcely closed over his head before the ship shot forward again, and flew over the waves like a swan’s feather, and came in the end safely to her harbour.

“And what happened to Sadko?” asked Maroosia.

“You shall hear, little pigeon,” said old Peter, and he took a pinch of snuff.  Then he went on.

Sadko dropped into the waves, and the waves closed over him.  Down he sank, like a pebble thrown into a pool, down and down.  First the water was blue, then green, and strange fish with goggle eyes and golden fins swam round him as he sank.  He came at last to the bottom of the sea.

And there, on the bottom of the sea, was a palace built of green wood.  Yes, all the timbers of all the ships that have been wrecked in all the seas of the world are in that palace, and they are all green, and cunningly fitted together, so that the palace is worth a ten days’ journey only to see it.  And in front of the palace Sadko saw two big kobbly sturgeons, each a hundred and fifty feet long, lashing their tails and guarding the gates.  Now, sturgeons are the oldest of all fish, and these were the oldest of all sturgeons.

Sadko walked between the sturgeons and through the gates of the palace.  Inside there was a great hall, and the Tzar of the Sea lay resting in the hall, with his gold crown on his head and his blue hair floating round him in the water, and his great body covered with scales lying along the hall.  The Tzar of the Sea filled the hall—­and there is room in that hall for a village.  And there were fish swimming this way and that in and out of the windows.