sparkled. "I was standing beside the Sultan, who was leaning on my
shoulder. Before me and around me howled a rebellious multitude, and
the Sultan was pale and sad. Turning towards me he sighed, 'Wherewith
shall I appease this raging sea?' For a long time I could find no
answer. It was as if something were weighing me down, something as
heavy as a mountain, when suddenly the words escaped from my lips,
'With swords, with guns, with weapons!' And then the Padishah girded
his own sword upon me, and I rushed among the howling mob, and I cut
and hacked away at them till they were all consumed, and at last a
field that had been reaped lay before me, and it was covered with
nothing but corpses."

"That is a foolish dream," said Leonidas. "Why did you eat so much
last night?"

And now Milieva told her dream.

"I also must have been confused by the wine. Before me also a
rebellious multitude appeared, and it then seemed to me as if I was
not a girl but a boy. Furiously they rushed upon me from every side,
but I feared them not, and when they were quite near to me I cried out
to them, 'Down on your knees before me! I am the Sultan's daughter!'
And everything was instantly quiet."

The merchant laughed till he choked at this dream. Who but children
could dream such rubbish?

"But at home they used to say," observed Thomar, with a grave face,
"that whatever any one dreams in a strange place where he has never
slept before, he will see that dream accomplished."

"Well, I am much obliged to you," said the merchant, "for in my dream
I was hanging up in Salonika by my feet, with my head downwards."

Then the merchant made the children leave the cavern.

"Come, my children," said he, "let us see if the sea has calmed down,
and whether a ship is approaching from anywhere."

Thomar obeyed, quitted the cavern, and exclaimed, in astonishment:

"Look, my dear foster-father! How could a ship come here when the very
sea has vanished, and only the bottom of it remains."

And indeed the district stretching out before them was quite bare and
barren enough to be taken for the bottom of the sea.

Leonidas took the lad's words for a joke, and it was a joke he did not
relish.

"Keep your witticisms for another time, my son," said he, "and rub
your eyes that they may see the better."

But Milieva leaped after Thomar, and when she had got up to him she
clapped her hands together, and exclaimed, with naive amazement:

"Why, the sea