This had its effect, and the Northwind told them where he came from, and where he had been for the last month.

‘I come from the Arctic seas,’ he said.  ’I have been on Behring Island with the Russian walrus-hunters.  I sat at the helm and slept when they sailed from the north cape, and when I woke now and then the stormy petrels were flying about my legs.  They are queer birds; they give a brisk flap with their wings and then keep them stretched out and motionless, and even then they have speed enough.’

‘Pray don’t be too long-winded,’ said the mother of the winds.  ’So at last you got to Behring Island!’

’It’s perfectly splendid!  There you have a floor to dance upon, as flat as a pancake, half-thawed snow, with moss.  There were bones of whales and Polar bears lying about; they looked like the legs and arms of giants covered with green mould.  One would think that the sun had never shone on them.  I gave a little puff to the fog so that one could see the shed.  It was a house built of wreckage and covered with the skins of whales; the flesh side was turned outwards; it was all red and green; a living Polar bear sat on the roof growling.  I went to the shore and looked at the birds’ nests, looked at the unfledged young ones screaming and gaping; then I blew down thousands of their throats and they learnt to shut their mouths.  Lower down the walruses were rolling about like monster maggots with pigs’ heads and teeth a yard long!’

‘You’re a good story-teller, my boy!’ said his mother.  ’It makes my mouth water to hear you!’

‘Then there was a hunt!  The harpoons were plunged into the walruses’ breasts, and the steaming blood spurted out of them like fountains over the ice.  Then I remembered my part of the game!  I blew up and made my ships, the mountain-high icebergs, nip the boats; whew! how they whistled and how they screamed, but I whistled louder.  They were obliged to throw the dead walruses, chests and ropes out upon the ice!  I shook the snow-flakes over them and let them drift southwards to taste the salt water.  They will never come back to Behring Island!’

‘Then you’ve been doing evil!’ said the mother of the winds.

‘What good I did, the others may tell you,’ said he.  ’But here we have my brother from the west; I like him best of all; he smells of the sea and brings a splendid cool breeze with him!’

‘Is that the little Zephyr?’ asked the Prince.

’Yes, certainly it is Zephyr, but he is not so little as all that.  He used to be a pretty boy once, but that’s gone by!’

He looked like a wild man of the woods, but he had a padded hat on so as not to come to any harm.  He carried a mahogany club cut in the American mahogany forests.  It could not be anything less than that.

‘Where do you come from?’ asked his mother.

‘From the forest wildernesses!’ he said, ’where the thorny creepers make a fence between every tree, where the water-snake lies in the wet grass, and where human beings seem to be superfluous!’