Page:The olive fairy book.djvu/60

 so was able to fathom her stepmother’s wicked plot, and hastily changed herself into a whale, and her foster-brother into its fin. Then the queen took the shape of a shark and gave chase.

For several hours a fierce battle raged between the whale and the shark, and the sea around was red with blood; first one of the combatants got the better, and then the other, but at length it became plain to the crowd of little fishes gathered round to watch, that the victory would be to the whale. And so it was. But when, after a mighty struggle, the shark floated dead and harmless on the surface of the water, the whale was so exhausted that she had only strength enough to drag her wounded body into a quiet little bay, and for three days she remained there as still and motionless as if she had been dead herself. At the end of the three days her wounds were healed, and she began to think what it was best to do.

‘Let us go back to your father’s kingdom,’ she said to Grethari, when they had both resumed their proper shapes, and were sitting on a high cliff above the sea.

‘How clever you are! I never should have thought of that!’ answered Grethari, who, in truth, was not clever at all. But Geirlaug took a small box of white powder from her dress, and sprinkled some over him and some over herself, and, quicker than lightning, they found themselves in the palace grounds from which Grethari had been carried off by the dragon so many years before.

‘Now take up the band with the golden letters and bind it about your forehead,’ said Geirlaug, ‘and go boldly up to the castle. And, remember, however great may be your thirst, you must drink nothing till you have first spoken to your father. If you do, ill will befall us both.’

‘Why should I be thirsty?’ replied Grethari, staring at her in astonishment. ‘It will not take me five