“Oh!” cried the little boy. “I see a dark thing far away in front! Why, it is the rock where the Princess is! Are we going there?”
The Prince did not answer.
As the sun rose out of the ocean a short time later, the vessel was drawing very near to the rock which rose, like some dark monster, out of the sea, and the Prince and the little boy were on deck, the latter looking eagerly out for the captive Princess.
There she sat, just as she had sat the day before and all those weary days in the years gone by with her hands clasped over her one hope, the Golden Heart. Two dark spots could be seen in the distant sky growing smaller and smaller; they were the two cormorants flying off for food.
As the Princess saw the ship the colour rushed back into her pale cheeks; she fixed her eyes on the advancing sails, and at last distinguished the tall form of the Ugly Prince standing out against the sea and sky beyond. As the vessel came under the shadow of the rock he looked up at the sweet face above him and told her to have courage, and that he had come to take her from her long imprisonment, back to the world she had left.
“Throw me,” he said, “the Golden Heart that you hold.”
The Princess stood up. “Thank Heaven that the cormorant is gone!” she cried. “He stands there so that, if I throw it to anyone, he may catch it in his beak and rob me of my last chance.”