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buried in this frozen shard of ice. Once, when I was a girl, I chopped through a chunk of ice to get to an
earring my mother bad dropped the night before in a winter dance. That block of ice was the coldest and
hardest ice any man or woman had ever seen. This block is ten degrees colder. Can you chop through
it?"
"I can try," said Jack, "or perhaps die trying. But I can do no more and no less." And he took the
small pickax they had used to help them climb the mountain.
"Will you be finished before breakfast time?" asked Amos, glancing at the sun.
"Of course before breakfast," said the prince, and fell to chopping. The ice chips flew around him,
and he worked up such a sweat that in all the cold he still had to take off his shirt. He worked so hard
that in one hour he had laid open the chunk, and there, sticking out, was the broken fragment of mirror.
Tired but smiling, the prince lifted it from the ice and handed it to Amos. Then he went to pick up his shirt
and coat.
"All right, North Wind," cried Amos. "Take a look at yourself."
"Stand so that the sun is in your eyes," said the North Wind, towering over Amos, "because I do not
want anyone else to see before I have."
So Amos and Jack stood with the sun hi their eyes, and the great blustering North Wind squatted
down to look at himself in the mirror. He must have been pleased with what he saw, because he gave a
long loud laugh that nearly blew them from the peak. Then he leapt a mile into the air, turned over three
tunes, then swooped down upon them, grabbing them up and setting them on his shoulders. Amos and
Jack clung to his long, thick hair as the Wind began to fly down the mountain, crying out in a windy voice:
"Now I shall tell all the leaves and whisper to the waves who I am and what I look like, so they can
chatter about it among themselves in autumn and rise and doff their caps to me before a winter storm."
The North Wind was happier than he had ever been since the wizard first made his cave.
It gets light on the top of a mountain well before it does at the foot, and this mountain was so high that
when they reached the bottom the sun was nowhere in sight, and they had a good half hour until
breakfast time.
"You run and get back in your cell," said Amos, "and when I have given you enough time, I shall
return and eat my eggs and sausages."
So the prince ran down the rocks to the shore and snuck onto the ship, and Amos waited for the sun
to come up. When it did, be started back.
VI
But, at the boat, all had not gone according to Amos' plan during the night The grey man, still puzzling
over Amos' wet clothes and at last he began to inquire whom Amos had solicited from the sailors to go
with him had gone to the brig himself.
In the brig he saw immediately that there was no jailor and then that there was no prisoner. Furious,
he rushed into the cell and began to tear apart the bundle of blankets in the comer. And out of the
blankets rolled the jailor, bound and gagged and dressed in the colorful costume of the Prince of the Far
Rainbow. For it was the jailor's clothes that Jack had worn when he had gone with Amos to the
mountain.
When the gag came off, the story came out, and the part of the story the jailor had slept through the
grey man could guess for himself. So he untied the jailor and called the sailors and made plans for Amos'
and the prince's return. The last thing the grey man did was take the beautiful costume back to his cabin
where the black trunk was waiting.
When Amos came up to the ship with the mirror under his arm, he called, "Here's your mirror.
Where are my eggs and sausages?"
"Sizzling hot and waiting," said the grey man, lifting his sunglasses. "Where is the sailor you took to
help you?"
"Alas," said Amos, "he was blown away in the wind." He climbed up the ladder and handed the grey
man the mirror. "Now we only have a third to go, if I remember right. When do I start looking for that?"
"This afternoon when the sun is its highest and hottest," said the grey man.
"Don't I get a chance to rest?" asked Amos. "I have been climbing up and down mountains all night."
"You may take a nap," said the grey man. "But come and have breakfast first." The grey man put his
arm around Amos' shoulder and took him down to his cabin where the cook brought them a big,
steaming platter of sausages and eggs.
"You have done very well," said the grey man pointing to the wall where he had hung the first two
pieces of the mirror together. Now they could make out what the shape of the third would be. "And if
you get the last one, you will have done very well indeed."
"I can almost feel the weight of those diamonds and emeralds and gold and pearls right now," said
Amos.
"Can you really?" asked the grey man. He pulled a piece of green silk from his pocket, went to the
black box, and stuffed it into a small square door: Orlmnb!
"Where is the third mirror hidden?" asked Amos.
"Two leagues short of over there is a garden of violent colors and rich perfume, where black
butterflies glisten on the rims of pink marble fountains, and the only thing white in it is a silver-white
unicorn who guards the third piece of the mirror."
"Then it's good I am going to get it for you," said Amos, "because even with your sunglasses, it would
give you a terrible headache."
"Curses," said the grey man, "but you're right." He took from his pocket a strip of crimson cloth with
orange design, went to the trunk and lowered it through a small round hole in the top. As the last of it
dropped from sight, the thing in the box went: Mlpbgrm!
"I am very anxious to see you at the happiest moment of your life," said Amos. "But you still haven't
told me what you and your nearest and dearest friend expect to find in the mirror."
"Haven't I?" said the grey man. He reached under the table and took out a white leather boot, went
to the trunk, lifted the lid, and tossed it in.
Org! This sound was not from the trunk; it was Amos swallowing his last piece of sausage much too
fast. He and the grey man looked at one another, and neither said anything. The only sound was from the
trunk: Grublmeumplefrmp. . .hid
"Well," said Amos at last, "I think I'll go outside and walk around the deck a bit."
"Nonsense," said the grey man smoothing his grey gloves over his wrists. "If you're going to be up this
afternoon, you'd better go to sleep right now."
"Believe me, a little air would make me sleep much better."
"Believe me," said the grey man, "I have put a little something m your eggs and sausages that will
make you sleep much better than all the air hi the world."
Suddenly Amos felt his eyes grow heavy, his head grow light, and he slipped down in his chair.
When Amos woke up, he was lying on the floor of the ship's brig inside the cell, and Jack, in his
underwear for the sailors had jumped on him when he came back in the morning and given the jailor
back his clothes was trying to wake him up.
"What happened to you?" Amos asked, and Jack told him.
"What happened to you?" asked Jack, and Amos told him.
"Then we have been found out and all is lost," said the prince. "For it is noon already, and the sun is
at its highest and hottest. The boat has docked two leagues short of over there, and the grey man must be
about to go for the third mirror himself."
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