in the service of the eldest
sister fell upon him, bound him with cords, and dragged him through the
water to the royal stables.

Now the people of the under-waters, having no horses,--for sea horses
are but tiny creatures,--had tamed great dolphins to carry them about. A
hundred of these monsters, each with a bronze ring in his nose, were
ranged along the sides of the stables, and on the fiercest and angriest
of them all, the Princess's servants tied the sailor. How the great
fish, fastened to a bar by a chain and his nose-ring, pulled, rolled,
swerved aside, and thrashed his tail! But all his twistings were of no
avail, for the poor sailor lad was soon fastened to his back with a rope
of seaweed. Then the creature was released from his chain, given a blow
on the side with a whip of shark-skin, and turned into the wilds of the
under-waters.

For half an hour, the fish, frightened at his burden, fled at lightning
speed over the roofs of the city, and sped on into the lonely plain.
Then, ceasing his mad flight, he tried again to shake himself free of
the sailor. He turned, he leaped, he dived, but all in vain, for the
sailor was securely fastened to his back. Terrified anew, with a swift
motion of his great fins, he shot violently to one side and rushed on
and on into the dark. All that long night he fled. Toward the morning of
the next day, however, the sailor managed to work one arm free, and draw
the cutlass from his waist. With this he made short work of his bonds
and rolled off the fish's back. The great animal, delivered of the
weight which had lain upon it, rose on the tip of its tail and shot
madly toward the surface, and the sailor tumbled through the waters to
the bottom.

Weak and hungry, the poor young seaman gazed about in the half-gloom,
and found himself on the lower slopes of a sunken mountain rising from
the ocean floor. In no direction could he find a sign of the City under
the Sea. Hoping, however, to see better from the mountain's top, he
decided to climb it. Strange plants and shells lay in the crevices of
the weedy rocks, schools of bright fish fled past him like living
arrows, and huge crabs scuttled away as he appeared. Suddenly, lying on
her side in a little ravine of the mountain, he saw a ship--the black
ship of the Emerald of the Sea! Weary and weak though he was, it took
the sailor but a moment to clamber aboard, and hurry past the broken
masts into the captain's cabin. A steady, green rad