Page:Researches respecting the Book of Sindibad and Portuguese Folk-Tales.djvu/115

 Rh service, on reaching the sea, saw a large whale which had been thrown on the beach and was dead. But inside the fish he saw something move, and heard a voice that said, "Take me out of this, take me out of this." The servant fetched a knife, and very carefully cut the skin of the whale, and he then saw the head of a maiden, and he continued to rip up the fish, greatly astonished at what he saw, and at last extricated alive the maiden from the belly of the great fish. He took her with him, but told her she must for the present remain shut up in a room of the palace, and let no one know that she was there. The maiden told him her history, and all that had happened to her during the voyage, and how she had been in the depth of the sea, and a whale had saved her. The servant, on his part, related to her what her neighbour had been at in the palace, presenting her daughter under false colours to the king, and all that followed; and he informed her that her brother was on her account imprisoned and sentenced to die. On reaching the palace the maiden was locked up in an apartment. She looked out of her window every day towards the prison door where her brother was detained, and on one occasion as she did so she saw a little bitch belonging to herself and her brother, and calling out to her pet she spoke to it thus: "Cylindra, tell me how my brother is to-day?" The bitch replied: "He is daily expecting to be sent to execution; and to-day is the first day the town crier publishes it." The next day the maiden again looked out of the window, and again asked her bitch: "Cylindra, tell me how my brother is to-day?" The bitch replied: "To-day the crier publishes his sentence of death for the second time!" But the servant who had delivered the maiden, on hearing this, went up to the king and revealed the whole plot against the maiden. The king, on hearing it, said: "If what you say be true, call me to-morrow when the maiden speaks to the dog, for I wish to listen to what she says." Next day, at the right time, the king stood close to the