The squeaking soon ceased and, quiet being restored, one of the little birds, being of an argumentative turn of mind, began to ask questions. “But if that dreadful man got to our mistress,” he inquired, “how could he find his way to the Princess afterwards?”
“If he were in the cave he might see how our mistress goes to her; you know, she takes off her left shoe and knocks at the wall with it. Then she says:
“ ‘Left-foot shoe, left-foot shoe,
Open, rock, and I’ll pass through.’
And the rock opens in a straight passage and she goes up to the top of it, right outside to where your father and the Princess sit. Now, I’ve told you enough—be quiet.”
All this time the Ugly Prince was looking for the stone like a fish’s head, and soon saw it sticking out in the remotest part of the cavern, so he began climbing towards it. It was weary work, for the cold had made his limbs stiff, and he feared to go quickly in case any sound should attract the old bird’s attention. With much trouble he reached the place, and, looking behind the fish’s head, saw an opening which seemed much too small for a human being to enter. He determined, however, to try what he could do and began to creep in, finding that he could just push himself along, and although he could see no light at the other end, he pressed forward. A horrible sickening sensation came over him when he had gone some way, and he felt as though he should be suffocated in this stifling place, from which none could deliver him, and which his crew, if they began to search for him, could never find. The air grew so close and the tunnel so narrow that he had almost given up all hope of life when his head struck against the rock and he lay half stunned. “Now,” he thought, “all is really lost, for I can get no further, and must die in this loathsome place.”
As he lay in his cramped position he saw what seemed to be a white pebble embedded in the rock somewhere on his left. He stretched out his hand with great difficulty, and found that it came in contact with nothing solid, though it hid the white spot from his view, and he realised that the object was not a pebble at all, but a speck of light in the far distance, and that he was groping with his arm down a narrow passage, starting away at right angles from the place in which he was imprisoned. A new hope sprang up in his heart, and he dragged himself round the corner. The tunnel grew a little wider, and, with every few inches that he moved forward, his courage rose, and the outer air grew nearer. The stones tore his hands, and he was bruised in every limb as he crept along, but he pressed on till the light became larger and yellower and the air less oppressive, and, at last, after many struggles, he stood upright outside the tunnel’s mouth.
An enormous hall met his eyes; bare rock formed its walls and ceiling and the ground under his feet was covered with fine sand.
From the sides of this place hung twisted shapes. He could hardly see what they were. First he thought that they must be great ropes of sea-weed, then human forms; grinning faces seemed to start from them at every side, and yet he could never really make out that they were the forms of either men or beasts, for, as each thing appeared to take some definite shape, it would speedily turn into something else, like the wild and fleeting images in a dream.
As he stood, the noise of the sea roaring underground in remote hollows of the rocks smote desolately on his ear, and, for a moment, the dreary sound made his heart sink in his body. But he thought of the Princess, and courage leaped up in his soul.