The Boy Apprenticed to an Enchanter

swords into their belts and marched toward a mountain that was half a day’s journey from the coast. They pitched black tents and they bu

d with no man wounded. Very rich and powerful did they grow with the plunder they took from the caravans, and my master, the man with the hooked nose and the purple beard, grew to be a King

g

were staved off from him. And all his band swore by his good fortune. But one day a wise King who liked him greatly sent my master a message that said: “I rejoice in your good fortune, friend, but am also troubled by it.

e ring that he wore with the great emerald in it. He went down to the seaboard taking me with him, for he would let none of the[Pg 82] forty men know what he was about to do, and he took a boat and he went, I being with him, over the depths of the sea. Then he drew from off his finger the ring that

er than ever they had won before. Also more men came from far

treasure. He told his plan to his forty men and they rejoiced one and all, and they talked to each other as if that tre

gly large and beautiful fish. I divided the fish and began to make it clean. I found within the fish something it had swallowed.

ng to him. I told him that for the ring he had dropped into the depths of the sea another ring ha

s good fortune that this ring had come back to him. Thereupon he rose up and went outside, and gave command to his band that they were to disarm themselves and tie up their horses, and hold themselves back[Pg 84] from making a

ying games together. I would have stayed about the encampment making bread for the ban

wanted me to watch her. I followed where she went and I was led far from the encampment. At the

d seen the pillar on which was written that if I followed the road to the right I should come to my fortune, and about how I had come, not to my fortune, but back to the hut I had left; and I went on, thinking of how I had first heard of the Bird of Gold, and o

turned and lying upon the ground. I saw the horses of the band straying over the plai

that I was following the Bird of Gold or coming back from the place where she had led me. I went[Pg 86] amongst the tents and I saw

e wilderness I hid myself amongst the bushes that the Bird of Gold had flown into. I th