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"I was dreaming," said Sadko; "I was asleep when I saw the Tzar of the Sea, and there is nothing in the net at all." And then, just as the last of the net was coming ashore, he saw something in it, square and dark. He dragged it out, and found it was a coffer. He opened the coffer, and it was full of precious stones green, red, gold gleaming in the light of the moon.
Many were the pillows that were wet with the tears of the young girls, as they thought of the blue eyes of Sadko and his golden hair. And then, in the twelfth year since he walked into Novgorod with the coffer on his shoulder, he was sailing in a ship on the Caspian Sea, far, far away.
The symphonic poem, Sadko, was hissed and applauded at a Pasdeloup concert in the Cirque d'Hiver, for the new music created, on the whole, a disturbing impression. Sitting next to me and rather amused, I fancy, because of my enthusiasm for Sadko, was a young Russian, a student at the Sorbonne.
"I remember now an old promise I made, and I keep it willingly." He took his dulcimer in his hand, and leapt from the ship into the blue Caspian Sea. The waves had scarcely closed over his head before the ship shot forward again, and flew over the waves like a swan's feather, and came in the end safely to her harbour. "And what happened to Sadko?" asked Maroosia.
And it happened that one evening the fishermen asked him to watch their nets for them on the shore, while they went off to take their fish to sell them in the square at Novgorod. Sadko sat on the shore, on a rock, and played his dulcimer and sang. Very sweetly he sang of the fair lake and the lovely river the little river that he thought prettier than all the girls of Novgorod.
They say he found her, and lives still in the green palaces of the bottom of the sea; and when there is a big storm, you may know that Sadko is playing on his dulcimer and singing, and that the Tzar of the Sea is dancing his tremendous dance down there, on the bottom, under the waves." "Yes, I expect that's what happened," said Ivan.
Hither and thither rushed the waves, and the very earth shook at the dancing of that tremendous Tzar. He danced till he was tired, and then he came back to the palace of green wood, and passed the sturgeons, and shrank into himself and came through the gates into the hall, where Sadko still played on his dulcimer and sang. "You have played well and given me pleasure," says the Tzar of the Sea.
"You shall hear, little pigeon," said old Peter, and he took a pinch of snuff. Then he went on. Sadko dropped into the waves, and the waves closed over him. Down he sank, like a pebble thrown into a pool, down and down. First the water was blue, then green, and strange fish with goggle eyes and golden fins swam round him as he sank. He came at last to the bottom of the sea.
"Hoist more sail yet," says the captain; and up go the white sails, swelling and tugging, while the masts creak and groan. But still the ship lay there shivering and did not move. "There is an unlucky one aboard," says an old sailor. "We must draw lots and find him, and throw him overboard into the sea." The other sailors agreed to this. And still Sadko sat, and played his dulcimer and sang.
"O Sadko, you will not forget me? You will play to me sometimes, and sing?" "I shall never lose sight of you, my pretty one," says he; "and as for music, I will sing and play all the day long." "That's as may be," says she, and they fell asleep.
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