were wet with
the tears of the young girls, as they thought of the blue eyes of
Sadko and his golden hair.

And then, in the twelfth year since he walked into Novgorod with the
coffer on his shoulder, he was sailing in a ship on the Caspian Sea,
far, far away. For many days the ship sailed on, and Sadko sat on deck
and played his dulcimer and sang of Novgorod and of the little river
Volkhov that flows under the walls of the town. Blue was the Caspian
Sea, and the waves were like furrows in a field, long lines of white
under the steady wind, while the sails swelled and the ship shot over
the water.

And suddenly the ship stopped.

In the middle of the sea, far from land, the ship stopped and trembled
in the waves, as if she were held by a big hand.

"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 t