Narrated by Encarnacion Gonzaga, a Visayan from Jaro, Iloilo. The story, she says, is very popular among the Visayans.  
In the town of X, not far from the kingdom of Don Fernando, there lived an old religious woman named Carmen. She had a son named Carlos. She had been a widow since Carlos was [311]nine months old. She was poor—poor even to raggedness. One day she said to her son, “I have named you Carlos because I love you. For me, no name is prettier than yours. Every letter in it means something.” Carlos asked his mother to tell him the meaning of his name; but she said to him, “I’ll tell it to you later. First go to the king’s palace, and there beg something for us to eat. O my son! if you only knew the miseries I have had to endure to bring you up, you would not refuse this request of your poor mother,” she said, weeping.
 
Carlos pitied his mother very much, so he ran towards the king’s palace to beg some food; but when he reached the gate, he hesitated to enter. He was ashamed to beg, so he went and stood silently under the orange-tree which was not far from the princess’s window. “If I should obey my mother’s request,” he said to himself, “what would the princess say? She would probably say to me, ‘You are too young to beg.’ What a disgrace then would it be for me!” As Carlos was looking at the declining sun with tears in his eyes, the princess raised her window and unintentionally spit on his head. Carlos’s eyes flashed. He looked at the princess sternly, and said, “If the Goddess of the Sea, who has a star on her forehead1 and a moon on her throat, does not dare to spit on me, how can you—you who are but the shadow of her power and beauty?”
 
At these harsh words the princess fainted. When she came to herself, she cried. Her tears were like drops of dew falling from the leaves in the morning. Her father entered her room, and found her in her sorrow. “Why do you weep, Florentina?” asked Don Fernando.
 
“O Father!” answered Florentina, “my heart is broken. I have been disgraced.”
 
“Why should you say so?” replied her father. “Who broke your heart, and who disgraced you?”
 
“There’s a man under the orange-tree,” answered the princess, “who said to me these words”—and she repeated what Carlos had said to her.
 
The king instantly ordered Carlos to be seized and brought into his presence. Carlos stood fearless before him, and answered all his questions. Don Fernando at last said, “If within a week you cannot show me that what you said to my daughter is true, you’ll be hanged without mercy.”
 
[312]These words frightened Carlos. With tears in his eyes and with his thoughts devoted to God, who alone could give him consolation, he walked down the shore of the Golden River. He sat down to rest under a pagatpat-tree2. An eagle which had a nest at the very top of the tree saw him crying, and said to him, “Why do you weep, Carlos?”
 
“O Eagle, queen of the birds! I’d be very thankful to you if you’d only tell me where the home of the Goddess of the Sea is,” said Carlos.
 
“Why do you want her house?” asked the eagle. “Don’t you know that no human being is able to see her?”
 
“I didn’t know that; but if I cannot see her, my life is lost,” said Carlos sadly.
 
The eagle pitied Carlos very much: so she said, “Come, Carlos, come! and I’ll lead you to the right path.” Carlos followed her until they came to the mouth of the river. There they stopped. The eagle shouted, “O king of the ............