Page:The fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen (c1899).djvu/41

 As evening came on, the sky grew overcast, and there came on such a shower, that it seemed as if the heavens had become one vast sluice that kept pouring down water; besides this, it was darker than it usually is, even at night, except at the bottom of the deepest well. At every step, he either slipped on the wet grass; or stumbled over some bare rock. Everything was dripping wet, and the poor prince had not a dry thread about him. He was obliged to climb over huge blocks of stone, where water was running down from the thick moss. He was near fainting away, when he heard a singular rushing noise, and perceived a large cavern, lighted up by a huge fire, piled up in the middle, and fit to roast a whole deer. And this, indeed, was being done. A very fine deer, with its branching horns, was placed on a spit, and slowly turned round between the felled trunks of two pine-trees. An elderly woman, as bony and masculine as though she were a man in female attire, sat by the fire, and kept throwing in one log of wood after another.

“Come nearer,” said she, “and sit by the fire, and dry your clothes.”

“There is a great draught here,” observed the prince, sitting down on the ground.

“It will be much worse when my sons come home,” returned the woman. “You are in the Cavern of the Winds. My sons are the Four Winds of Heaven—can you understand that?”

“Where are your sons?” asked the prince.

“It is difficult to answer a silly question,” said the woman. “My sons are now at it, with their own hands. They are playing at shuttlecock with the clouds, up there in the King’s hall.” And she pointed above.

“Oh, that’s it!” quoth the prince. “But you seem to speak rather harshly, and are not as gentle as the women I am accustomed to see.

“Because they have nothing else to do. But I must be harsh, to keep my boys in any order; which I manage to do, headstrong as they are. You see those four bags hanging on the wall? Well, they are every bit as much afraid of them as you used to be of the rod behind the looking-glass. I bend the boys in two, I can tell you, and then pop them into the bag, without their making the least resistance. There they stay, and don’t dare come out till I think it proper they should. But here comes one of them.”

It was the North Wind who came in, diffusing an icy coldness around. Large hailstones jumped about on the floor, and snow-flakes were scattered in all directions. He wore a bearskin jacket and clothes; his cap of sea-dog’s skin came down over his ears; long icicles clung to his beard, and one hailstone after another fell from the collar of his jacket.

“Don’t go too near the fire at once,” said the prince, “or your face and hands might easily get frozen.”

“Frozen, quotha!” said the North Wind, with a loud laugh. “Why, cold is my greatest delight! But what kind of little snip are you? How did you come into the Cavern of the Winds?”

“He is my guest,” said the old woman; “and if that does not satisfy you, why, you need only get into the bag. Do you understand me now?”

Well, this did the business at once; and the North Wind then began to relate whence he came, and where he had been staying for nearly a month past.

“I come from the Arctic Sea,” said he, “and I have been on Bear’s Island, with the Russian sea-cow hunters. I sat and slept at the helm, as they sailed away from the North Cape; but