as the whirlpool of air caught the Flying Horse, and drew him swiftly
down and down to the shadowy halls. There knelt and wept the nurses of
the Earthquaker on the marble floor; but Jaqueline stood a little apart,
very pale, but not weeping.

Ricardo had leaped off before the horse touched the ground, and rushed to
Jaqueline, and embraced her in his arms; and, oh! how glad she was to see
him, so that she quite forgot her danger and laughed for joy.

"Oh! you have come, you have come; I knew you would come!" she cried.

Then King Prigio advanced, the mighty weight in his hand, to the verge of
the dreadful gulf of the Earthquaker. The dim walls grew radiant; a long
slant arm of yellow light touched the black body of the Earthquaker, and
a thrill went through him, and shook the world, so that, far away, the
bells rang in Pantouflia. A moment more, and he would waken in his
strength; and once awake, he would shatter the city walls and ruin Manoa.
Even now a great mass of rock fell from the roof deep down in the secret
caves, and broke into flying fragments, and all the echoes roared and
rang.

King Prigio stood with the mighty mass poised in his hands.

"Die!" he cried; and he uttered the words of power, the magic spell that
the dark Moon Lady had taught him.

Then all its invincible natural weight came into the mass which the king
held, and down it shot full on the body of the Earthquaker; and where
that had been was nothing but a vast abyss, silent, empty, and blank, and
bottomless.

Far, far below, thousands of miles below, in the very centre of the
earth, lay the dead Earthquaker, crushed flat as a sheet of paper, and
the sun of midsummer-day shone straight down on the dreadful chasm, and
could not waken him any more for ever.

The king drew a long breath.

"Stupidity has saved the world," he said; and, with only strength to draw
back one step from the abyss, he fell down, hiding his face in his hands.

But Jaqueline's arms were round his neck, and the maidens brought him
water from an ice-cold spring; and soon King Prigio was himself again,
and ready for anything. But afterwards he used to say that the moment
when the Earthquaker stirred was the most dreadful in his life.

Now, in Manoa, where all the firm foundations of the city had trembled
once, when the sun just touched the Earthquaker, the people, seeing that
the shadow of the sacred column had crept to its foot, and yet Manoa
stood firm again, an