"Look!" cried Fricka, wife of Wotan, "the golden apples even now are withering. Wotan, husband, behold thy doom! See how thy compact hath wrought ruin and wreck for us all!"
Wotan started up, fired by a sudden resolution.
"Up, Loki!" he commanded. "Follow me. We must fare to the caverns of night and seize upon this Gold."
"And then——?" asked Loki. "The Rhine-Daughters implored thine aid. Wilt thou restore it to them?"
"'Tis idle talk," retorted Wotan moodily. "Freia the goddess of youth and beauty must be ransomed, else we shall all perish."
"Then let us hence," said Loki, who had gained the point at which he had aimed from the outset. "Let us hence. I know a cleft in the rock, which serves as a chimney for the Nibelung's forge fires. Perchance he is even now hammering out the Ring of Power. Come, let us descend into his cavernous dwelling."
So saying the god of fire wrapped his mantle about him and set forth, closely followed by Wotan with his dread Spear of Authority.
As two simple wayfarers they travelled down the rocky chasm—down, down, down, and still down, while the hammering from the forges grew louder and the sulphurous smoke came curling up more and more thickly, till it would have suffocated anyone but a god.
At last they emerged into a huge cave, around which hurried hundreds of queer little people, each as ugly and crooked and dirty as Alberich. They were blowing the fires, pounding away upon huge masses of metal, or scurrying about with arm-loads of gold, silver, and precious stones.
Just then the two wayfarers heard a quarrelling in a side passage of the cave, when in came Alberich himself dragging another dwarf shrieking by the ear. It was Mime, his own brother, but that made no difference with Alberich.