They stopped in a wide courtyard. The second sister received her brother cordially, and seated him at the oaken table; but the King was left outside, and she loosed greyhounds, and set them at him. The Eagle flew into a rage, jumped up from table, caught up the King, and flew away farther with him. They flew and flew. Says the Eagle:
“My lord King! look round! what is behind us?”
The King looked back.
“There stands behind us a red house.”
“That’s my second sister’s house burning!” said the Eagle. “Now we’ll fly to where my mother and my eldest sister live.”
Well, they flew there. The Eagle’s mother and eldest sister were delighted to see them, and received the King with cordiality and respect.
“Now, my lord King,” said the Eagle, “tarry awhile with us, and afterwards I will give you a ship, and will repay you for all I ate in your house, and then—God speed you home again!”
So the Eagle gave the King a ship and two coffers—the one red, the other green—and said:
“Mind now! don’t open the coffers until you get home. Then open the red coffer in the back court, and the green coffer in the front court.”
The King took the coffers, parted with the Eagle, and sailed along the blue sea. Presently he came to a certain island, and there his ship stopped. He landed on the shore, and began thinking about the coffers, and wondering whatever there could be in them, and why the Eagle had told him not to open them. He thought and thought, and at last couldn’t hold out any more—he longed so awfully to know all about it. So he took the red coffer, set it on the ground, and opened it—and out of it came such a quantity of different kinds of cattle that there was no counting them: the island had barely room enough for them.