p like a tall
tree in the hall.

"Play on," said the Tzar of the Sea, and he strode through the gates.
The sturgeons guarding the gates stirred the water with their tails.

And if the Tzar of the Sea was huge in the hall, he was huger still
when he stood outside on the bottom of the sea. He grew taller and
taller, towering like a mountain. His feet were like small hills. His
blue hair hung down to his waist, and he was covered with green
scales. And he began to dance on the bottom of the sea.

Great was that dancing. The sea boiled, and ships went down. The waves
rolled as big as houses. The sea overflowed its shores, and whole
towns were under water as the Tzar danced mightily on the bottom of
the sea. Hither and thither rushed the waves, and the very earth shook
at the dancing of that tremendous Tzar.

He danced till he was tired, and then he came back to the palace of
green wood, and passed the sturgeons, and shrank into himself and
came through the gates into the hall, where Sadko still played on his
dulcimer and sang.

"You have played well and given me pleasure," says the Tzar of the
Sea. "I have thirty daughters, and you shall choose one and marry her,
and be a Prince of the Sea."

"Better than all maidens I love my little river," says Sadko; and the
Tzar of the Sea laughed and threw his head back, with his blue hair
floating all over the hall.

And then there came in the thirty daughters of the Tzar of the Sea.
Beautiful they were, lovely, and graceful; but twenty-nine of them
passed by, and Sadko fingered his dulcimer and thought of his little
river.

There came in the thirtieth, and Sadko cried out aloud. "Here is the
only maiden in the world as pretty as my little river!" says he. And
she looked at him with eyes that shone like stars reflected in the
river. Her hair was dark, like the river at night. She laughed, and
her voice was like the flowing of the river.

"And what is the name of your little river?" says the Tzar.

"It is the little river Volkhov that flows by Novgorod," says Sadko;
"but your daughter is as fair as the little river, and I would gladly
marry her if she will have me."

"It is a strange thing," says the Tzar, "but Volkhov is the name of my
youngest daughter."

He put Sadko's hand in the hand of his youngest daughter, and they
kissed each other. And as they kissed, Sadko saw a necklace round her
neck, and knew it for one he had thrown into the river as a present
for his sw