"Very well," said Ellen, "I'll do it. But I can't break the lamp. How can I destroy it?"
"I will cause the earth to open,—to open down to the great fires below. Then throw the lamp in and the flames will destroy it."
"Very well," said the little girl.
The genie struck his foot upon the ground and muttered some magic words. Immediately the ground was rent open, and down in this chasm could be heard the roaring of the under fires. "Make haste," he cried. "Cast the lamp into the flames or they will devour thee."
Hardly knowing what she did Ellen threw the lamp from her down into the fiery chasm.
Immediately there was a loud roaring like thunder. The earth and sky seemed to shake and the castle to tremble from its foundation to its highest turret. A mist came before Ellen's eyes. When it cleared away all was still. The chasm had closed and the distant castle was still in its place.
The gander, which had crouched down in its terror with its head and neck stretched along the ground, arose slowly and looked about it.
The genie had become as thin as smoke, but he was standing there dark and gigantic as before. "I am free! I am free!" he cried in a joyful voice. "At last I may come and go as I choose, no longer a slave of the lamp. It is you, child, who have freed me, and I am not ungrateful, as you shall soon see. If I have made Aladdin rich and powerful, I will make you ten times more so. You shall have a castle even more magnificent than his with slaves and treasures and horses and chariots."
Ellen gasped. "Oh no," she said, "I don't think I want all that. I have to go home pretty soon, and I don't believe I'd like to have to live in a castle."