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Daimur turned towards Queen Amy and found her leaning against the wall in a half-fainting condition, and while he was trying to induce her to make an effort to pass the dead tigers and get away upstairs there suddenly rang out a loud cry of "Fire! Fire!" Daimur recognized Prince Redmond's voice. Doors banged overhead and footsteps scurried across the floor. Daimur waited for no more.
She looked at him with tears in her eyes and begged him to let her know what she could first bestow on him as a small token of her undying gratitude. "I want nothing less than your own heart and hand," declared Daimur, and he told her that he had fallen in love with her the moment he had first seen her, but could not, of course, say anything about it until she was safely at home.
She was dreadfully dirty too, and clad in various garments that seemed to have belonged to someone else much larger. "Don't frighten her, Daimur," said Prince Redmond as he stepped over beside the poor little thing. "Tell us who you are, and what you are doing here," he said, addressing her kindly. "We will do you no harm." "I am Princess Helda of Oaklands," she said in a very timid voice.
The night was very dark, and Daimur could not see because they had thrown a cloak over him and fastened it over his head, but he could tell that it was a small boat by the way it rocked when they moved about. The men ran up a couple of sails and pushed off to sea.
All the next day the King and Queen and little Princess Maya went about quietly among the doves in the woods and told them about Daimur, and about the tablets they hoped to get to release them from their enchantment, and begged them if they valued their lives to leave the fruit they were eating and come and live in the cave with them.
I do wish the wind would come up again and blow us away from this dreadful place, We are safe now from the Magician, but perhaps the witch will pursue us." "No fear of that; she is afraid of us," said Daimur, who had been watching the castle through his spectacles.
The bands played and a great crowd stood on the wharf as Daimur and his royal guests drove down and boarded the ship, and they sailed out of the harbor amid many cheers and wishes for a safe and speedy voyage. Their course was set for the Island of Shells, where King Cyril's brother was ruling in his stead. The wind was good, and they expected to reach port sometime the next day.
They made an extremely loud, shrill sound, and in a flash, from nowhere apparently, the old witch appeared on the dock with her cat on her shoulder. When she saw them she screamed and ran into the house. "For mercy's sake, have you any guns?" cried Daimur to Prince Redmond. "We shall surely need them now, for she is going to call back the Magician."
In a minute or two he heard them coming down the hall. They were talking in a language he could not understand. "What if they should have a light," thought Daimur. "All would be lost, for in this place they could easily make me a prisoner." They entered the room.
The first night, after they were all inside and had finished supper, Daimur told them of the ship which was anchored at the Magician's door, and they immediately cried out, "It is the one he stole from Prince Redmond," and Prince Redmond, a big black dove with a huge red ruff and red crest, nodded, and said he knew it must be his.
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