will build them simply--one, two! and the ship is ready. My ships will
be the result of the quick headwork of a peasant simpleton. But where
a foreign ship sails a year, mine will sail an hour, and where others
take ten years, mine will take not longer than a week."

"Well, well!" laughed the Tsar. "And thy trade, the fourth Simeon?" he
asked.

The fourth brother bowed.

"My trade needs no wisdom either. If my brother will build thee a
ship, I then will sail that ship; and if an enemy gives chase or a
tempest rises, I'll seize the ship by the black prow and plunge her
into the deep waters where there is eternal quiet; and after the storm
is over or the enemy far, I'll again guide her to the surface of the
wide sea."

"Good!" approved the Tsar. "And thou, fifth Simeon, what dost thou
know? Hast thou also a trade?"

"My trade, Tsar Archidei Aggeivitch, is not a fair one, for I am a
blacksmith. If thou wouldst order a shop built for me, I at once would
forge a self-shooting gun, and no eagle far above in the sky or wild
beast in the wood would be safe from that gun."

"Not bad either," answered the Tsar Archidei, well pleased. "Thy turn
now, sixth Simeon."

"My trade is no trade," answered the sixth Simeon, rather humbly. "If
my brother shoots a bird or a beast, never mind what or where, I can