A crowd of Under Folk, who were seated on stone benches around rude tables, eating strange luminous food, rose up, and cried, “What news?”
“Four prisoners,” said the Infantryman.
“Upper Folk,” the Colonel said; “and my orders are to deliver them to the Queen herself.”
He passed to the end of the hall and up a long wide flight of steps made of something so green and clear that it was plainly either glass or emerald, and I don’t think it could have been glass, because how could they have made glass in the sea? There were lights below it which shone through the green transparency so clear and lovely that Francis said dreamily—
“‘Sabrina fair,
Listen where thou art sitting,
Under the glassie, cool, translucent wave,’”
and quite suddenly there was much less room in the net, and they were being embraced all at once and with tears of relief and joy by the Princess Freia—their own Mer Princess.
“Oh, I didn’t mean to—Princess dear, I didn’t,” said Francis. “It was the emerald steps made me think of translucent.”
“So they are,” she said, “but oh, if you knew what I’ve felt—you, our guests, our knights-errant, our noble defenders—to be prisoners and all of us safe. I did so hope you’d call me. And I’m so proud that you didn’t—that you were brave enough not to call for me until you did it by accident.”