So when the wine was served they all gathered around the table and drank as much as they wanted of it; then the thirsty man picked up flagon after flagon and drank them off until all were empty. And at the end he said that he could have drunken at least fifty flagons more, but that he was not so thirsty as he had been.
When the messengers of the King reported that the wine was all drunken, the King said: “Now are we put to it, for we cannot have this fellow wed the Princess.” So he sent his messengers to the ship bidding Simple come to the palace and make ready for the wedding, and prepared a bath for him. And when Simple entered the room for the bath he found that it was heated so hot that the walls burned his hands when he touched them, and the floors were like red-hot iron. But the man with the straw had come in behind him, warned by the man with the wonderful hearing, and seeing what was afoot, scattered his straw all about the bathroom, and at once it became as cold as one could wish, and, the door having been locked, Simple climbed up on the stove and went to sleep, and there they found him in the morning, wrapped in a blanket.
When this was reported to the King he was very angry, and he said, “This fellow is evidently very smart, but for all of that we cannot have him wed the Princess. I will give him an impossible task. Go you to him,” he said to the messenger, “and tell him that he must come to me at to-morrow’s sunrise with an army fitting the rank of one who would wed the Princess.”
When the man with the wonderful hearing reported this to Simple he was in despair, and lamented and said: “Now at last am I beaten, though, after all, I have a flying ship, even if I do not wed the Princess. It will take me a year to raise an army, perhaps it would take all the rest of my life.”
But the man with the sticks said: “You forget that I am here. Now all of these others have proven that they could help you to win the Princess, let me at least do my share.”
So at dawn they flew out over the parade ground, and the man with the sticks threw them down upon the ground, and immediately there sprung up soldiers, in platoons and regiments, with armor, and captains and colonels and generals to command them. And the King and his courtiers had never seen such an army, and the Princess, standing on the balcony beside her father, as they rode by the palace, seeing Simple riding at the head of the band, with the generals paying him homage, said: “This man must be a very great prince indeed, and, now that I look at him he is not so uncomely, after all.”
And Simple, riding at the head of his army, looking up at the balcony and seeing the Princess there said to himself: “A flying ship is all very well, but the Princess is very beautiful, and to wed her will be the most wonderful thing in the world.”
So Simple and the Princess were married, and the crew of the flying ship were at the wedding, and all of the captains and the colonels and the generals of his army, and never had there been such a wedding in the kingdom. And by and by the King died, and Simple became the King, and the Princess became the Queen, and they lived happily ever after.
