“I shall have plenty of time to get back,” thinks he, and down he sits under a windmill and goes off to sleep.

The royal dinner was coming to an end, and there wasn’t a sign of him.  There were no songs and no jokes in the flying ship.  Everybody was watching for the Swift-goer, and thinking he would not be in time.

The Listener jumped out and laid his right ear to the damp ground, listened a moment, and said, “What a fellow!  He has gone to sleep under the windmill.  I can hear him snoring.  And there is a fly buzzing with its wings, perched on the windmill close above his head.”

“This is my affair,” says the Far-shooter, and he picked up his gun from between his knees, aimed at the fly on the windmill, and woke the Swift-goer with the thud of the bullet on the wood of the mill close by his head.  The Swift-goer leapt up and ran, and in less than a second had brought the magic water of life and given it to the Fool.  The Fool gave it to the servant, who took it to the Tzar.  The Tzar had not yet left the table, so that his command had been fulfilled as exactly as ever could be.

“What fellows these peasants are,” thought the Tzar.  “There is nothing for it but to set them another task.”  So the Tzar said to his servant, “Go to the captain of the flying ship and give him this message:  ’If you are such a cunning fellow, you must have a good appetite.  Let you and your companions eat at a single meal twelve oxen roasted whole, and as much bread as can be baked in forty ovens!’”

The Listener heard the message, and told the Fool what was coming.  The Fool was terrified, and said, “I can’t get through even a single loaf at a sitting.”

“Don’t worry about that,” said the Eater.  “It won’t be more than a mouthful for me, and I shall be glad to have a little snack in place of my dinner.”

The servant came, and announced the Tzar’s command.

“Good,” says the Fool.  “Send the food along, and we’ll know what to do with it.”

So they brought twelve oxen roasted whole, and as much bread as could be baked in forty ovens, and the companions had scarcely sat down to the meal before the Eater had finished the lot.

“Why,” said the Eater, “what a little!  They might have given us a decent meal while they were about it.”

The Tzar told his servant to tell the Fool that he and his companions were to drink forty barrels of wine, with forty bucketfuls in every barrel.

The Listener told the Fool what message was coming.

“Why,” says the Fool, “I never in my life drank more than one bucket at a time.”

“Don’t worry,” says the Drinker.  “You forget that I am thirsty.  It’ll be nothing of a drink for me.”

They brought the forty barrels of wine, and tapped them, and the Drinker tossed them down one after another, one gulp for each barrel.  “Little enough,” says he, “Why, I am thirsty still.”

“Very good,” says the Tzar to his servant, when he heard that they had eaten all the food and drunk all the wine.  “Tell the fellow to get ready for the wedding, and let him go and bathe himself in the bath-house.  But let the bath-house be made so hot that the man will stifle and frizzle as soon as he sets foot inside.  It is an iron bath-house.  Let it be made red hot.”