Then he sorrowfully returned to his waiting ship
"I have at least found out that the king of Naples has a daughter and that she is the most beautiful princess in the whole world," he said. "If she prefers not to have a run-away marriage it will doubtless be better for me to sail home and tell my father to make arrangements with the king of Naples for our wedding. There are some advantages in this more dignified method."
Thus it happened that the prince sailed away for his own country, never dreaming that the princess had kept her promise to steal down the stairway in the night and that she was then in the hands of the wicked robber.
The daughter of the king of Naples sobbed and cried so loud when she found that it was not her own prince with whom she was sailing that the robber became quite disgusted with her.
"I thought you were a pretty little maid," he said, "when I first saw you, but now I've changed my mind about you."
Indeed no person with good eyesight would have called the princess pretty at that moment, with her face all red and swollen with much weeping.
The robber decided that he did not want to bother with her any longer, so he landed in the country of the Junqueiras and left her there. The princess wandered about the place until night came without seeing a single soul,—nothing but the sea, sky and rocks.
She was really, however, not far from the hut in which there lived the wife and daughter of a poor fisherman. In the stillness of the night they heard a cry.
"Some one is in trouble outside, mother," said the daughter.
"Perhaps the pirates have come and by this cry are trying to lure us out," answered her mother cautiously. There were often pirate ships which stopped there. The daughter listened carefully.
"No, mother," she insisted. "I'm sure this is a girl's cry."
The two women opened their door and crept out in the darkness. The sobs of the princess soon led them to the place upon the rocks where she lay crying as if her heart would break. They lifted her tenderly and carried her home.
The fisherman's daughter gave the princess some of her own clothes to wear and they lived together as if they were sisters. Together they did all the work of the little house and the princess was too busy to weep. Sometimes, however, she cried in the night when the fisherman's wife and daughter were asleep. She wept for her lost love and for the royal palace of the king of Naples which had always been her home.
Now it happened that the prince's ship encountered a great storm and was driven about by the sea. At last it was blown by the gales to the land of the Junqueiras.
The prince saw the fisherman's daughter and the princess standing on the rocks by the sea. He stared hard at the princess. Then he spoke in a voice which shook.
"You remind me of some one I used to know," he said. "Tell me your name, I pray you, fair maid."
The princess looked down at the garments of the fisher maid which she wore. She blushed. The prince she had recognized the very moment she had seen him.
"I am the daughter of the king of Naples," she said.
The fisherman's daughter stared at her in amazement.
"She is no king's daughter!" she cried. "She is a poor abandoned maid who came to us out of the sea. We found her upon these very rocks. It is my own dress that she is wearing. A king's daughter, indeed! She is no more the daughter of the king of Naples than I am!"
But the prince had taken the daughter of the king of Naples in his arms. As soon as they returned to the palace their wedding was celebrated with great joy and they lived together as God lives with the angels.
