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THE GREEN FAIRY BOOK. |
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One day as he was looking sadly out to sea he became aware of a curious-looking boat which was drifting slowly toward the shore, and which presently ran into a little creek and there stuck fast in the sand. Prince Manikin rushed down eagerly to examine it, and saw with amazement that the masts and spars were all branched and covered thickly with leaves until it looked like a little wood. Thinking from the stillness that there could be no one on board, the prince pushed aside the branches and sprang over the side, and found himself surrounded by the crew, who lay motionless as dead men and in a most deplorable condition. They, too, had become almost like trees, and were growing to the deck, or to the masts, or to the sides of the vessel, or to whatever they had happened to be touching when the enchantment fell upon them.
Manikin was struck with pity for their miserable plight, and set to work with might and main to release them. With the sharp point of one of his arrows he gently detached their hands and feet from the wood which held them yfast, and carried them on shore, one after another, where he rubbed their rigid limbs and bathed them with infusions of various herbs, with such success that after a few days they recovered perfectly and were as fit to manage a boat as ever. You may be sure that the good fairy Genesta had something to do with this marvelous cure, and she also put it into the prince's head to rub the boat itself with the same magic herbs, which cleared it entirely, and not before it was time, for at the rate at which it was growing before it would very soon have become a forest!
The gratitude of the sailors was extreme, and they willingly promised to land the prince upon anv coast he pleased; but when he questioned them about the extraordinary thing that had happened to them and to their ship they could in no way explain it, except that they said that as they were passing along a thickly wooded coast a sudden gust of wind had reached them from the land and enveloped them in a dense cloud of dust, after which everything in the boat that was not metal had sprouted and blossomed as the prince had seen, and that they themselves had grown gradually numb and heavy and had finally lost all consciousness. Prince Manikin was deeply interested in this curious storv, and collected a |
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