Soon they arrived at the city of the King of the East, who seeing them said to his servants secretly:
“These seven fellows have come to take away my daughter. Heaven forbid! They are bashful lads and will hardly eat a bowlful of soup. Now go and bake twenty-one ovens full of bread and make twenty-one cauldrons full of soup and put it all before them. If they can eat all at one sitting, I will give them my daughter; if not, I will not.”
The lad and his crew were entertained in an apartment some distance from the King’s apartment, where he was giving these instructions to his men. The ground-listener, hearing the King’s orders, said to the lad:
“Brother Steel-shield-steel-spear, did you hear what the King said to his men?”
“No, blockhead!” said the lad, “how can I hear him while he is in another apartment far from us?”
The ground-listener said: “They are going to serve us twenty-one horse-loads of bread and twenty-one cauldrons full of soup, and in case we fail to eat all at one meal they will refuse to give us the princess.”
“Be of good cheer.” said the ravenous eater; “I take the responsibility upon myself.”
On the following day all the bread and soup was served to one man, and there was not enough to gratify him. He was still crying, “I am hungry! I am famishing! Give me something to eat!”
“A plague upon these fellows!” said the King to his peers; “we could not satisfy one; what if all the seven should eat! Now I tell you what to do; entertain them in another house; bring quantities of wood and rushes at night and pile them round about the building, and in the middle of the night when they are asleep set fire to the piles. Thus they will perish and we shall get rid of them.”