prince had become very wilful. He
never listened to any one, not even to his mother, but had his own way
in everything. One day he went with his mother to bathe in the river. A
large boat was riding there at anchor. None of the boatmen were in it.
The prince went into the boat, and told his mother to come into it. His
mother besought him to get down from the boat, as it did not belong to
him. But the prince said, "No, mother I am not coming down; I mean to go
on a voyage, and if you wish to come with me, then delay not but come up
at once, or I shall be off in a trice." The queen besought the prince to
do no such thing, but to come down instantly. But the prince gave no
heed to what she said, and began to take up the anchor. The queen went
up into the boat in great haste; and the moment she was on board the
boat started, and falling into the current passed on swiftly like an
arrow. The boat went on and on till it reached the sea. After it had
gone many furlongs into the open sea, the boat came near a whirlpool
where the prince saw a great many rubies of monstrous size floating on
the waters. Such large rubies no one had ever seen, each being in value
equal to the wealth of seven kings. The prince caught hold of
half-a-dozen of those rubies, and put them on board. His mother said,
"Darling, don't take up those red balls; they must belong to somebody
who has been shipwrecked, and we may be taken up as thieves." At the
repeated entreaties of his mother, the prince threw them into the sea,
keeping only one tied up in his clothes. The boat then drifted toward
the coast, and the queen and the prince arrived at a certain port where
they landed.

The port where they landed was not a small place; it was a large city,
the capital of a great king. Not far from the palace, the queen and her
son hired a hut where they lived. As the prince was yet a boy, he was
fond of playing at marbles. When the children of the king came out to
play on a lawn before the palace, our young prince joined them. He had
no marbles, but he played with the ruby which he had in his possession.
The ruby was so hard that it broke every taw against which it struck.
The daughter of the king, who used to watch the games from a balcony of
the palace, was astonished to see a brilliant red ball in the hand of
the strange lad, and wanted to take possession of it. She told her
father that a boy of the street had an uncommonly bright stone in his
possession which she