Page:Lange - The Blue Fairy Book.djvu/40

 is mine. Did I not cause the ring to jump out of the Jew’s mouth?’

‘No, it is mine,’ cried the lame one, ‘for I ran off with the ring.’

And from high words they soon came to blows, and, alas! when the quarrel was fiercest the bronze ring fell into the sea.

‘How are we to face our queen,’ said the three mice, ‘when by our folly we have lost the talisman and condemned our people to be utterly exterminated? We cannot go back to our country; let us land on this desert island and there end our miserable lives.’ No sooner said than done. The boat reached the island, and the mice landed.



The blind mouse was speedily deserted by her two sisters, who went off to hunt flies, but as she wandered sadly along the shore she found a dead fish, and was eating it, when she felt something very hard. At her cries the other two mice ran up.

‘It is the bronze ring! It is the talisman!’ they cried joyfully, and, getting into their boat again, they soon reached the mouse island. It was time they did, for the captain was just going to land his cargo of cats, when a deputation of mice brought him the precious bronze ring.

‘Bronze ring,’ commanded the young man, ‘obey thy master. Let my ship appear as it was before.’

Immediately the genii of the ring set to work, and the old black vessel became once more the wonderful golden ship with sails of