English Fairy Tales | Page 4

Then, after he had been
invested by the King with the golden spurs of knighthood and had been magnificently
feasted, he retired to rest his weariness, while the beautiful Sâbia from her balcony lulled
him to sleep with her golden lute.
So all seemed happiness; but alas! dark misfortune was at hand.
Almidor, the black King of Morocco, who had long wooed the Princess Sâbia in vain,
without having the courage to defend her, seeing that the maiden had given her whole
heart to her champion, resolved to compass his destruction.
So, going to King Ptolemy, he told him--what was perchance true--namely, that the
beauteous Sâbia had promised St. George to become Christian, and follow him to
England. Now the thought of this so enraged the King that, forgetting his debt of honour,
he determined on an act of basest treachery.
Telling St. George that his love and loyalty needed further trial, he entrusted him with a
message to the King of Persia, and forbade him either to take with him his horse Bayard
or his sword Ascalon; nor would he even allow him to say farewell to his beloved Sâbia.
St. George then set forth sorrowfully, and surmounting many dangers, reached the Court
of the King of Persia in safety; but what was his anger to find that the secret missive he
bore contained nothing but an earnest request to put the bearer of it to death. But he was
helpless, and when sentence had been passed upon him, he was thrown into a loathly
dungeon, clothed in base and servile weeds, and his arms strongly fettered up to iron
bolts, while the roars of the two hungry lions who were to devour him ere long, deafened
his ears. Now his rage and fury at this black treachery was such that it gave him strength,
and with mighty effort he drew the staples that held his fetters; so being part free he tore
his long locks of amber-coloured hair from his head and wound them round his arms
instead of gauntlets. So prepared he rushed on the lions when they were let loose upon
him, and thrusting his arms down their throats choked them, and thereinafter tearing out
their very hearts, held them up in triumph to the gaolers who stood by trembling with
fear.
After this the King of Persia gave up the hopes of putting St. George to death, and,
doubling the bars of the dungeon, left him to languish therein. And there the unhappy
Knight remained for seven long years, his thoughts full of his lost Princess; his only
companions rats and mice and creeping worms, his only food and drink bread made of
the coarsest bran and dirty water.

At last one day, in a dark corner of his dungeon, he found one of the iron staples he had
drawn in his rage and fury. It was half consumed with rust, yet it was sufficient in his
hands to open a passage through the walls of his cell into the King's garden. It was the
time of night when all things are silent; but St. George, listening, heard the voices of
grooms in the stables; which, entering, he found two grooms furnishing forth a horse
against some business. Whereupon, taking the staple with which he had redeemed
himself from prison, he slew the grooms, and mounting the palfrey rode boldly to the city
gates, where he told the watchman at the Bronze Tower that St. George having escaped
from the dungeon, he was in hot pursuit of him. Whereupon the gates were thrown open,
and St. George, clapping spurs to his horse, found himself safe from pursuit before the
first red beams of the sun shot up into the sky.
Now, ere long, being most famished with hunger, he saw a tower set on a high cliff, and
riding thitherward determined to ask for food. But as he neared the castle he saw a
beauteous damsel in a blue and gold robe seated disconsolate at a window. Whereupon,
dismounting, he called aloud to her:
"Lady! If thou hast sorrow of thine own, succour one also in distress, and give me, a
Christian Knight, now almost famished, one meal's meat." To which she replied quickly:
"Sir Knight! Fly quickly as thou canst, for my lord is a mighty giant, a follower of
Mahomed, who hath sworn to destroy all Christians."
Hearing this St. George laughed loud and long. "Go tell him then, fair dame," he cried,
"that a Christian Knight waits at his door, and will either satisfy his wants within his
castle or slay the owner thereof."
Now the giant no sooner heard this valiant challenge than he rushed forth to the combat,
armed with a hugeous crowbar of iron. He was a monstrous giant, deformed,