Ting-a-ling

by Frank R. Stockton

Starting presently to his feet, the Prince ran around the tower to find the front door, and, seeing it, he endeavored to push it open, but it was securely fastened. He then turned to look for Mahbracca, and perceived her standing at some distance, surrounded by a crowd of ghouls and demons, who seemed to be greatly enjoying the scene. The Prince shouted loudly to her to send him the keys, at which the whole crowd set up a shout of laughter, and Mahbracca hysterically screamed to him,—

"Enter! Enter, great Prince! Why wait so long outside? You grieve your lovely Princess!"

The Prince, enraged, drew his sword of adamant, and at one blow thrust it through the lock, but the door did not open, and the sword was fixed immovably. In vain did he tug and struggle at it. He could not move it an inch. Hearing greater and wilder cries of derision, he turned towards the crowd and shook his fist at them, and then went back under the window of the Princess, but she was not visible. He called her again and again, at the top of his voice, but she did not answer him nor make her appearance. The night was fast coming on, and overcome with sorrow and despair, and weak with hunger, the Prince fell upon the ground.

When he had lain thus for an hour or two, hearing nothing of the Princess or his enemies, he began to reflect that if he intended to serve his lady-love, he must do something, and that speedily. He himself, he plainly saw, had no power against this sorceress, and perhaps even now she was within the tower, preventing the Princess from answering or appearing to him. He would go for assistance, and, come what would, the Princess should be delivered from that horrid tower. He therefore arose, and, without reflecting how he was to leave this abode of wickedness, he prepared to return to his friend and adviser Trumkard. When he reached the aperture by which he had entered the hollow mountain (which he did without meeting any one), he found it closed by a gate of brass. But he was not to be thus deterred. He ran around the sides of the mountain, rousing in his course several herds of Yabouks and dreadful cattle that gazed, half awake, at his rapid movements, and examined, as well as he could by the dim light, the wall of this great cavern. He soon became convinced, by the knowledge he had gained in a few visits to his step-mother's dominions, that these walls were not very thick. His resolution was quickly formed. Taking off his handsome and richly embroidered clothes, which would only impede him in his labors, he stood dressed only in his under-vest and trousers. Then, springing upon a projecting rock and over another, he entered a great crack, pushed through some loose earth, and made his way through the various crevices of the ground, as he had seen the gnomes do. After about an hour's work, he emerged into the open air very tired and very dirty. After resting awhile, he arose, and, taking his way across a great plain, found himself by daybreak, worn out and footsore, near the gates of a great city. Entering, he inquired of one of the few people who were up so early, what city this was, and was informed that it was the city of the Queen Altabec, and a long distance from the city of the mighty King.

The Prince thanked his informant, and proceeded to look for a tailor's shop, where he might provide himself with clothes; for he perceived that people eyed him with suspicion, and well they might. Having found a shop, he entered, and desired to be immediately fitted with a prince's suit. The master tailor, knowing by his proud air that he was a Prince, and supposing he had been on some youthful adventure, and had thus lost his clothes, was delighted to serve him, and, running to the shelves and drawers, pulled out all the princes' suits, and spread them before his customer. The Prince selected some very handsome clothes, and, having washed himself, put them on, and found they fitted him exactly. He declared his satisfaction with them, and putting his hand in his pocket for his purse, found nothing of the kind there, the tailor not furnishing his clothes in that way. He now remembered that all his money was in the clothes he had left behind him in the mountain, and explained his condition to the tailor. The latter, however, had no wish to deal with princes who had no money, and ordered him to instantly take off the suit. The Prince, who was strictly honest, was about obeying, when one of his feet (which were very tender with his much walking) giving him a sudden pain, he stooped down to see what was in his shoe, and taking it off, out rolled a magnificent pearl and two sapphires.

"There," said the Prince, picking them up, and handing them to the tailor, "if these will be of any use to you, you can have them for the clothes."

The tailor, filled with admiration at the sight of these jewels, and with the most profound respect for a prince who carried such wealth in his shoes, accepted them instantly, and the Prince left the shop. But the good tailor, gazing joyfully at his new-found treasures, was so conscientious and grateful, that he ran out after the Prince, and gave him back one of the sapphires as change.

It may as well be here related that the tailor sold the pearl to a jeweler, who gave him one third of its value, with which he retired into the country, bought great possessions, and lived in much dignity for many years. Some time afterward, the Queen Altabec happening to pass the jeweler's shop, and seeing the pearl in the window, immediately ordered the execution of the jeweler and the seizure of the pearl, which she placed above all the other jewels in the tip-top of her crown, where it still remains. As for the sapphire, the tailor's wife put that away for a rainy day; but as the rainy day never came, and she never went to look for it in its hiding-place, it made no earthly difference to her that her youngest child had found it, and had swapped it off for half of a little stale apple-pie.

After leaving the tailor's shop, the Prince made all haste to an inn, where, having eaten about four meals in one, he bought from an Arab, who was highly recommended to him, a swift dromedary of the desert, for which he gave one sapphire, and requested the landlord of the khan to see that the Arab paid to him, out of its value, what would suffice for the price of his breakfast. This the landlord promised faithfully to do, and it is said that the descendants of that landlord are still drawing on the descendants of that Arab for installments of the price of that wonderful breakfast.

Mounting his dromedary, the Prince would have started, but was detained by the Arab, who embraced the animal, and begged the Prince, out of charity to a poor man, to add a little to the meagre price he had paid for it. Upon which the Prince, knowing the habits of these Arabs, drew his sword, which he had got with his suit, and threatened to split the affectionate man in halves, if he did not immediately take his hands off the beast, which the man instantly did. When he started off, the humpbacked courser might have gone much faster if he had felt inclined, and at last the Prince became so enraged at the exceedingly leisurely style of his trot, that he lifted his sword to serve the animal as he had threatened to serve his old master; but the intelligent dromedary, casting back its only eye, perceived the danger, and set off at such a terrific speed, that the people in the villages through which it passed knew not what it was that had trodden down their children, and upset the old women at their pomegranate stalls.