Suddenly the tiger rose up, gave a leap, sprang upon the princess, seized her in his terrible jaws, and rushed away! Shrieks of horror flew from tier to tier among the spectators, but no one had the courage to try to snatch his booty from the tiger.
No one? Ah, one there was! The valiant Prince Abderraman dashed with the speed of the wind into the tiger's path, grasped the monster's gory breast and struggled with him for his precious booty.
Alas, unhappy prince! His right arm was in an instant bitten almost off by the tiger, and he was thrown bleeding and helpless upon the sand; and before any one could come to the aid of the vanquished hero, the tiger had leaped over the high iron railing and escaped with the Princess Lindagull in his mighty jaws!
The anguish of poor old Shah Nadir was great; and great was the grief of all Ispahan,—indeed, of all Persia. The king's guard and the fifty thousand knights with gold saddles rode immediately away to seek the princess. They searched through every bush and cleft in Turan where a tiger's lair might be. Hundreds of tigers and other wild beasts fell before their spears, but fruitlessly. After looking through all Turan and half of Asia, the guard returned sorrowing. No trace of the Princess or her strange captor was to be found.
Shah Nadir tore his gray hair and cursed his sixtieth birthday. He had lost what he held dearest on earth,—his Lindagull. He ordered his people to array themselves in mourning as if a sultana had died. He also commanded that prayers should be offered in all the mosques for the Princess Lindagull's return. And the proclamation was made that whoever restored his daughter to him, living, should receive the hand of the princess and inherit the Persian crown; whoever brought her back dead should receive as a reward sixty asses laden with gold and costly treasure. The hope of so rich a reward led many princes and noblemen to undertake the search for the lost daughter of the king. But sooner or later all came back without having found her. All except one; and that was Prince Abderraman. He had made a solemn vow to seek for the princess fifteen years; to find and rescue her, or die.
If the princess had been carried away by a real tiger, our tale would have ended with that; because nothing is sacred to a royal tiger, not even the noblest princess in the world. But this was not the case. The wizard, Hirmu, had availed himself of the exhibition of wild beasts in order that, transformed into a tiger, he might carry out his master's commands for his own advantage. He had exchanged hearts with the tiger; and so long as the heart was not destroyed or eaten up, Hirmu could not be killed. But such a treasure as a princess he preferred to keep for himself; so, instead of taking his captive to old King Bom Bali in Turan, he carried her away, with flying leaps, to his own far-away home in Lapland.
CHAPTER III
The Captivity
It was now autumn, and dark in Lapland.