eel that I shall soon have to seek the
Fairy Despair, ruler of half this island. She carries off the lovers
who have been cast away by their mistresses, and wish to have done with
life. She places them in a labyrinth where they are condemned to walk
for ever, with a bracelet on their arms and a cord round their necks,
unless they meet another as miserable as themselves. Then the cord is
pulled and they lie where they fall, till they are buried by the first
passer by. Terrible as this death would be,' added the Prince, 'it would
be sweeter than life if I had lost your love.'

The sight of all these happy lovers only made the Prince grieve the
more, and he wandered along the seashore spending his days; but one day
he was sitting on a rock bewailing his fate, and the impossibility
of leaving the island, when all in a moment the sea appeared to raise
itself nearly to the skies, and the caves echoed with hideous screams.
As he looked a woman rose from the depths of the sea, flying madly
before a furious giant. The cries she uttered softened the heart of
the Prince; he took the stone from his mouth, and drawing his sword
he rushed after the giant, so as to give the lady time to escape. But
hardly had he come within reach of the enemy, than the giant touched him
with a ring that he held in his hand, and the Prince remained immovable
where he stood. The giant then hastily rejoined his prey, and, seizing
her in his arms, he plunged her into the sea. Then he sent some tritons
to bind chains about the Prince of the Golden Isle, and he too felt
himself borne to the depths of the ocean, and without the hope of ever
again seeing the Princess.

Now the giant whom the invisible had so rashly attacked was the Lord
of the Sea, and the third son of the Queen of the Elements, and he had
touched the youth with a magic ring which enabled a mortal to live under
water. So the Prince of the Golden Isle found, when bound in chains by
the tritons, he was carried through the homes of strange monsters
and past immense seaweed forests, till he reached a vast sandy space,
surrounded by huge rocks. On the tallest of the rocks sat the giant as
on a throne.

'Rash mortal,' said he, when the Prince was dragged before him, 'you
have deserved death, but you shall live only to suffer more cruelly. Go,
and add to the number of those whom it is my pleasure to torture.'

At these words the unhappy Prince found himself tied to a rock; but he
was not alone i