But Niafer cried: "An endless ill is foresaid by these doings. For I
have been to the Island of the Oaks: and under the twelfth oak was a
copper casket, and in the casket was a purple duck, and in the duck was
an egg: and in the egg, O Norka, was and is your death."

"It is true that my death is in such an egg," said the Serpent of the
East, "but nobody will ever find that egg, and therefore I am resistless
and immortal."

"To the contrary, the egg, as you can perceive, is in my hand; and when
I break this egg you will die, and it is smaller worms than you that
will be thanking me for their supper this night."

The serpent looked at the poised egg, and he trembled and writhed so
that his black scales scattered everywhither scintillations of reflected
sunlight. He cried, "Give me the egg, and I will permit you two to
ascend unmolested, to a more terrible destruction."

Niafer was not eager to do this, but Manuel thought it best, and so at
last Niafer consented to the bargain, for the sake of the serpent's
children. Then the two lads went upward, while the serpent bandaged the
eyes of his horse and of his hound, and hooded his falcon, and crept
gingerly away to hide the egg in an unmentionable place.

"But how in the devil," says Manuel, "did you manage to come by that
invaluable egg?"

"It is a quite ordinary duck egg, Manuel. But the Serpent of the East
has no way of discovering the fact unless he breaks the egg: and that is
the one thing the serpent will never do, because he thinks it is the