"Let us get away from here, my master!" cried Hear-all, whose flesh was creeping with fear. "This castle is not in the grace of God; for I tell your worship that I hear noises under ground that sound like lamentations."
But the gentleman paid Hear-all no attention. His servants followed him, and they went on exploring those corridors and passages that were more intricate than if a lawyer had built them, until they came into a yard that was like an arena for bulls.
They had hardly set foot in it, when a serpent with seven heads, each one more fierce than the others, seven tongues like lances, and fourteen eyes like coals of fire, glided out to attack them.
Carry-much, Blow-hard, and Hear-all, more scared than rats found out of the hole, ran as if they would run out of their trowsers; but the gentleman, who was as valiant as the Cid and as strong as a Bernardo, drew his sword, and with four strokes, and four back-strokes, cut off the creature's seven heads in less time than you could say tilen! The biggest of the seven glared at the gentleman for an instant with its savage eyes that darted fire and blood, and then gave a bound into the middle of the yard and disappeared through a hole which opened in the ground to receive it.
At the gentleman's call, the three who had fled came back, and were well astonished at their master's bravery.
"Be it known to you," said the cavalier, who was looking, without seeing bottom, down the hole the serpent's head had gone into, "that we are going now to the fields to get hemp and palm-leaves to make a line that will reach to the floor of this well." They did so; and the four spent four years making rope. At the end of that time they felt it touch bottom. The master then told Hear-all to slide down it and see what was below there, and come back and let him know. But Hear-all stuck to his supports, as upright as a palm-tree in a gully that no wind moves, and said that he'd be smashed first and go down in pieces.
Then the master told Blow-hard to go. Blow-hard took fast hold of the rope, and descended night and day till he got to the bottom, where he found himself in a palace like the famous ones you read of, and in the presence of the Princess of Naples, who was lying on a bed with her face downward, weeping tears as big as chick-peas. She told him that Lucifer had fallen in love with her, and would keep her enchanted there until one willing and able to fight and vanquish him should present himself. 'Here is one already who is going to undertake the enterprise,' said Blow-hard, and he drew in a long breath, which was scarcely drawn when Lucifer appeared in person. The sight of him frightened Blow-hard so that he ran and climbed to the top of a door. Lucifer unhinged the door with one thwack of his big tail, and it fell to the ground with Blow-hard, and broke one of his legs.
We will leave him with his bitter cud, and go back to the gentleman, who, tired of waiting for Blow-hard to come up, asked Hear-all what was going on down there in the bowels of the earth. Hear-all told him what had passed, and that now he could hear Blow-hard complaining of a broken leg. Then the gentleman sent Carry-much, who assured him that he would shoulder Lucifer and bring him up, if he weighed more than all the lead of the Sierra Almagrera. But, step by step, it happened to Carry-much just as it had to Blow-hard, except that he got an arm broken instead of a leg.
"I will go down myself," said the gentleman, when Hear-all related to him what had taken place.
When he reached the palace and saw the Princess of Naples, he fell into such love with her wonderful beauty that he prepared himself for the encounter with a double ration of valor.