o Sadko?" asked Maroosia.

"You shall hear, little pigeon," said old Peter, and he took a pinch
of snuff. Then he went on.

Sadko dropped into the waves, and the waves closed over him. Down he
sank, like a pebble thrown into a pool, down and down. First the water
was blue, then green, and strange fish with goggle eyes and golden
fins swam round him as he sank. He came at last to the bottom of the
sea.

And there, on the bottom of the sea, was a palace built of green wood.
Yes, all the timbers of all the ships that have been wrecked in all
the seas of the world are in that palace, and they are all green, and
cunningly fitted together, so that the palace is worth a ten days'
journey only to see it. And in front of the palace Sadko saw two big
kobbly sturgeons, each a hundred and fifty feet long, lashing their
tails and guarding the gates. Now, sturgeons are the oldest of all
fish, and these were the oldest of all sturgeons.

Sadko walked between the sturgeons and through the gates of the
palace. Inside there was a great hall, and the Tzar of the Sea lay
resting in the hall, with his gold crown on his head and his blue hair
floating round him in the water, and his great body covered with
scales lying along the hall. The Tzar of the Sea filled the hall--and
there is room in that hall for a village. And there were fish swimming
this way and that in and out of the windows.

"Ah, Sadko," says the Tzar of the Sea, "you took what the sea gave
you, but you have been a long time in coming to sing in the palaces of
the sea. Twelve years I have lain here waiting for you."

"Great Tzar, forgive," says Sadko.

"Sing now," says the Tzar of the Sea, and his voice was like the
beating of waves.

And Sadko played on his dulcimer and sang.

He sang of Novgorod and of the little river Volkhov which he loved. It
was in his song that none of the girls of Novgorod were as pretty as
the little river. And there was the sound of wind over the lake in his
song, the sound of ripples under the prow of a boat, the sound of
ripples on the shore, the sound of the river flowing past the tall
reeds, the whispering sound of the river at night. And all the time he
played cunningly on the dulcimer. The girls of Novgorod had never
danced to so sweet a tune when in the old days Sadko played his
dulcimer to earn kopecks and crusts of bread.

Never had the Tzar of the Sea heard such music.

"I would dance," said the Tzar of the Sea, and he stood u