CHAPTER VII
"NOW," said Tom, "I am ready to be off, if it's to the world's end."
"Ah!" said the fairy, "that is a brave, good boy. But you must gofarther than the world's end, if you want to find Mr. Grimes; for he isat the Other-end-of-Nowhere. You must go to Shiny Wall, and through thewhite gate that never was opened; and then you will come to Peacepool,and Mother Carey's Haven, where the good whales go when they die. Andthere Mother Carey will tell you the way to the Other-end-of-Nowhere,and there you will find Mr. Grimes."
"Oh, dear!" said Tom. "But I do not know my way to Shiny Wall, or whereit is at all."
"Little boys must take the trouble to find out things for themselves,or they will never grow to be men; so that you must ask all the beastsin the sea and the birds in the air, and if you have been good to them,some of them will tell you the way to Shiny Wall."
"Well," said Tom, "it will be a long journey, so I had better start atonce. Good-bye, Miss Ellie; you know I am getting a big boy, and I mustgo out and see the world."
"I know you must," said Ellie; "but you will not forget me, Tom. I shallwait here till you come."
And she shook hands with him, and bade him good-bye. Tom longed verymuch again to kiss her; but he thought it would not be respectful,considering she was a lady born; so he promised not to forget her: buthis little whirl-about of a head was so full of the notion of going outto see the world, that it forgot her in five minutes: however, thoughhis head forgot her, I am glad to say his heart did not.
So he asked all the beasts in the sea, and all the birds in the air, butnone of them knew the way to Shiny Wall. For why? He was still too fardown south.
Then he met a ship, far larger than he had ever seen--a gallantocean-steamer, with a long cloud of smoke trailing behind; and hewondered how she went on without sails, and swam up to her to see. Aschool of dolphins were running races round and round her, going threefeet for her one, and Tom asked them the way to Shiny Wall: but they didnot know. Then he tried to find out how she moved, and at last he sawher screw, and was so delighted with it that he played under her quarterall day, till he nearly had his nose knocked off by the fans, andthought it time to move. Then he watched the sailors upon deck, and theladies, with their bonnets and parasols: but none of them could see him,because their eyes were not opened--as, indeed, most people's eyes arenot.
At last there came out into the quarter-gallery a very pretty lady, indeep black widow's weeds, and in her arms a baby. She leaned over thequarter-gallery, and looked back and back toward England far away; andas she looked she sang:
I.
"_Soft soft wind, from out the sweet south sliding, Waft thy silver cloud-webs athwart the summer sea; Thin thin threads of mist on dewy fingers twining Weave a veil of dappled gauze to shade my babe and me._
II.
"_Deep deep Love, within thine own abyss abiding, Pour Thyself abroad, O Lord, on earth and air and sea; Worn weary hearts within Thy holy Temple hiding, Shield from sorrow, sin, and shame my helpless babe and me._"
Her voice was so soft and low, and the music of the air so sweet, thatTom could have listened to it all day. But as she held the baby over thegallery rail, to show it the dolphins leaping and the water gurgling inthe ship's wake, lo! and behold, the baby saw Tom.
He was quite sure of that; for when their eyes met, the baby smiled andheld out his hands; and Tom smiled and held out his hands too; and thebaby kicked and leaped, as if it wanted to jump overboard to him.
"What do you see, my darling?" said the lady; and her eyes followed thebaby's till she too caught sight of Tom, swimming about among thefoam-beads below.
She gave a little shriek and start; and then she said, quite quietly,"Babies in the sea? Well, perhaps it is the happiest place for them;"and waved her hand to Tom, and cried, "Wait a little, darling, only alittle: and perhaps we shall go with you and be at rest."
And at that an old nurse, all in black, came out and talked to her, anddrew her in. And Tom turned away northward, sad and wondering; andwatched the great steamer slide away into the dusk, and the lights onboard peep out one by one, and die out again, and the long bar of smokefade away into the evening mist, till all was out of sight.
And he swam northward again, day after day, till at last he met the Kingof the Herrings, with a curry-comb growing out of his nose, and a spratin his mouth for a cigar, and asked him the way to Shiny Wall; so hebolted his sprat head foremost, and said:
"If I were you, young gentleman, I should go to the Allalonestone, andask the last of the Gairfowl. She is of a very ancient clan, very nearlyas ancient as my own; and knows a good deal which these modern upstartsdon't, as ladies of old houses are likely to do."
Tom asked his way to her, and the King of the Herrings told him verykindly, for he was a courteous old gentleman of the old school, thoughhe was horribly ugly, and strangely bedizened too, like the old dandieswho lounge in the club-house windows.
But just as Tom had thanked him and set off, he called after him: "Hi! Isay, can you fly?"
"I never tried," says Tom. "Why?"
"Because, if you can, I should advise you to say nothing to the old ladyabout it. There; take a hint. Good-bye."
And away Tom went for seven days and seven nights due north-west, tillhe came to a great codbank, the like of which he never saw before. Thegreat cod lay below in tens of thousands, and gobbled shell-fish all daylong; and the blue sharks roved above in hundreds, and gobbled them whenthey came up. So they ate, and ate, and ate each other, as they had donesince the making of the world; for no man had come here yet to catchthem, and find out how rich old Mother Carey is.
And there he saw the last of the Gairfowl, standing up on theAllalonestone, all alone. And a very grand old lady she was, full threefeet high, and bolt upright, like some old Highland chieftainess. Shehad on a black velvet gown, and a white pinner and apron, and a veryhigh bridge to her nose (which is a sure mark of high breeding), and alarge pair of white spectacles on it, which made her look rather odd:but it was the ancient fashion of her house.
And instead of wings, she had two little feathery arms, with which shefanned herself, and complained of the dreadful heat; and she kept oncrooning an old song to herself, which she learnt when she was a littlebaby-bird, long ago--
"_Two little birds they sat on a stone, One swam away, and then there was one, With a fal-lal-la-lady._
"_The other swam after, and then there was none, And so the poor stone was left all alone; With a fal-lal-la-lady._"
It was "flew" away, properly, and not "swam" away: but, as she could notfly, she had a right to alter it. However, it was a very fit song forher to sing, because she was a lady herself.
Tom came up to her very humbly, and made his bow; and the first thingshe said was--
"Have you wings? Can you fly?"
"Oh, dear, no, ma'am; I should not think of such a thing," said cunninglittle Tom.
"Then I shall have great pleasure in talking to you, my dear. It isquite refreshing nowadays to see anything without wings. They must allhave wings, forsooth, now, every new upstart sort of bird, and fly. Whatcan they want with flying, and raising themselves above their properstation in life? In the days of my ancestors no birds ever thought ofhaving wings, and did very well without; and now they all laugh at mebecause I keep to the good old fashion. Why, the very marrocks anddovekies have got wings, the vulgar creatures, and poor little onesenough they are; and my own cousins too, the razor-bills, who aregentlefolk born, and ought to know better than to ape their inferiors."
And so she was running on, while Tom tried to get in a word edgeways;and at last he did, when the old lady got out of breath, and beganfanning herself again; and then he asked if she knew the way to ShinyWall.
"Shiny Wall? Who should know better than I? We all came from Shiny Wall,thousands of years ago, when it was de
cently cold, and the climate wasfit for gentlefolk; but now, what with the heat, and what with thesevulgar-winged things who fly up and down and eat everything, so thatgentlepeople's hunting is all spoilt, and one really cannot get one'sliving, or hardly venture off the rock for fear of being flown againstby some creature that would not have dared to come within a mile of onea thousand years ago--what was I saying? Why, we have quite gone down inthe world, my dear, and have nothing left but our honour. And I am thelast of my family. A friend of mine and I came and settled on this rockwhen we were young, to be out of the way of low people. Once we were agreat nation, and spread over all the Northern Isles. But men shot usso, and knocked us on the head, and took our eggs--why, if you willbelieve it, they say that on the coast of Labrador the sailors used tolay a plank from the rock on board the thing called their ship, anddrive us along the plank by hundreds, till we tumbled down into theship's waist in heaps; and then, I suppose, they ate us, the nastyfellows! Well--but--what was I saying? At last, there were none of usleft, except on the old Gairfowlskerry, just off the Iceland coast, upwhich no man could climb. Even there we had no peace; for one day, whenI was quite a young girl, the land rocked, and the sea boiled, and thesky grew dark, and all the air was filled with smoke and dust, and downtumbled the old Gairfowlskerry into the sea. The dovekies and marrocks,of course, all flew away; but we were too proud to do that. Some of uswere dashed to pieces, and some drowned; and those who were left gotaway to Eldey, and the dovekies tell me they are all dead now, and thatanother Gairfowlskerry has risen out of the sea close to the old one,but that it is such a poor flat place that it is not safe to live on:and so here I am left alone."
This was the Gairfowl's story, and, strange as it may seem, it is everyword of it true.
"If you only had had wings!" said Tom; "then you might all have flownaway too."
"Yes, young gentleman: and if people are not gentlemen and ladies, andforget that _noblesse oblige_, they will find it as easy to get on inthe world as other people who don't care what they do. Why, if I had notrecollected that _noblesse oblige_, I should not have been all alonenow." And the poor old lady sighed.
"How was that, ma'am?"
"Why, my dear, a gentleman came hither with me, and after we had beenhere some time, he wanted to marry--in fact, he actually proposed to me.Well, I can't blame him; I was young, and very handsome then, I don'tdeny: but, you see, I could not hear of such a thing, because he was mydeceased sister's husband, you see?"
"Of course not, ma'am," said Tom; though, of course, he knew nothingabout it. "She was very much diseased, I suppose?"
"You do not understand me, my dear. I mean, that being a lady, and withright and honourable feelings, as our house always has had, I felt it myduty to snub him, and howk him, and peck him continually, to keep him athis proper distance; and, to tell the truth, I once pecked him a littletoo hard, poor fellow, and he tumbled backwards off the rock,and--really, it was very unfortunate, but it was not my fault--a sharkcoming by saw him flapping, and snapped him up. And since then I havelived all alone----
'_With a fal-lal-la-lady._'
And soon I shall be gone, my little dear, and nobody will miss me; andthen the poor stone will be left all alone."
"But, please, which is the way to Shiny Wall?" said Tom.
"Oh, you must go, my little dear--you must go. Let me see--I amsure--that is--really, my poor old brains are getting quite puzzled. Doyou know, my little dear, I am afraid, if you want to know, you must asksome of these vulgar birds about, for I have quite forgotten."
And the poor old Gairfowl began to cry tears of pure oil; and Tom wasquite sorry for her; and for himself too, for he was at his wit's endwhom to ask.
But by there came a flock of petrels, who are Mother Carey's ownchickens; and Tom thought them much prettier than Lady Gairfowl, and soperhaps they were; for Mother Carey had had a great deal of freshexperience between the time that she invented the Gairfowl and the timethat she invented them. They flitted along like a flock of blackswallows, and hopped and skipped from wave to wave, lifting up theirlittle feet behind them so daintily, and whistling to each other sotenderly, that Tom fell in love with them at once, and called them toknow the way to Shiny Wall.
"Shiny Wall? Do you want Shiny Wall? Then come with us, and we will showyou. We are Mother Carey's own chickens, and she sends us out over allthe seas, to show the good birds the way home."
Tom was delighted, and swam off to them, after he had made his bow tothe Gairfowl. But she would not return his bow: but held herself boltupright, and wept tears of oil as she sang:
"_And so the poor stone was left all alone; With a fal-lal-la-lady._"
But she was wrong there; for the stone was not left all alone: and thenext time that Tom goes by it, he will see a sight worth seeing.
The old Gairfowl is gone already: but there are better things come inher place; and when Tom comes he will see the fishing-smacks anchoredthere in hundreds, from Scotland, and from Ireland, and from theOrkneys, and the Shetlands, and from all the Northern ports, full ofthe children of the old Norse Vikings, the masters of the sea. And themen will be hauling in the great cod by thousands, till their hands aresore from the lines; and they will be making cod-liver oil and guano,and salting down the fish; and there will be a man-of-war steamer thereto protect them, and a lighthouse to show them the way; and you and I,perhaps, shall go some day to the Allalonestone to the great summersea-fair, and dredge strange creatures such as man never saw before; andwe shall hear the sailors boast that it is not the worst jewel in QueenVictoria's crown, for there are eighty miles of codbank, and food forall the poor folk in the land. That is what Tom will see, and perhapsyou and I shall see it too. And then we shall not be sorry, because wecannot get a Gairfowl to stuff, much less find Gairfowl enough to drivethem into stone pens and slaughter them, as the old Norsemen did, ordrive them on board along a plank till the ship was victualled withthem, as the old English and French rovers used to do, of whom dear oldHakluyt tells: but we shall remember what Mr. Tennyson says how
"_The old order changeth, giving place to the new, And God fulfils himself in many ways._"
And now Tom was all agog to start for Shiny Wall; but the petrels saidnot. They must go first to Allfowlsness, and wait there for the greatgathering of all the sea-birds, before they start for their summerbreeding places far away in the Northern Isles; and there they would besure to find some birds which were going to Shiny Wall: but whereAllfowlsness was, he must promise never to tell, lest men should gothere and shoot the birds, and stuff them, and put them into stupidmuseums, instead of leaving them to play and breed and work in MotherCarey's water-garden, where they ought to be.
So where Allfowlsness is nobody must know; and all that is to be saidabout it is, that Tom waited there many days; and as he waited, he saw avery curious sight. On the rabbit burrows on the shore there gatheredhundreds and hundreds of hoodie-crows, such as you see inCambridgeshire. And they made such a noise, that Tom came on shore andwent up to see what was the matter.
And there he found them holding their great caucus, which they holdevery year in the North; and all their stump-orators were speechifying;and for a tribune, the speaker stood on an old sheep's skull.
And they cawed and cawed, and boasted of all the clever things they haddone; how many lambs' eyes they had picked out, and how many deadbullocks they had eaten, and how many young grouse they had swallowedwhole, and how many grouse eggs they had flown away with, stuck on thepoint of their bills, which is the hoodie-crow's particularly cleverfeat, of which he is as proud as a gipsy is of doing the hokanybaro; andwhat that is, I won't tell you.
And at last they brought out the prettiest, neatest young lady-crow thatever was seen, and set her in the middle, and all began abusing andvilifying, and rating, and bullyragging at her, because she had stolenno grouse-eggs, and had actually dared to say that she would not stealany. So she was to be tried publicly by their law
s (for the hoodiesalways try some offenders in their great yearly parliament). And thereshe stood in the middle, in her black gown and gray hood, looking asmeek and as neat as a Quakeress, and they all bawled at her at once--
And it was in vain that she pleaded--
_That she did not like grouse eggs; That she could get her living very well without them; That she was afraid to eat them, for fear of the gamekeepers; That she had not the heart to eat them, because the grouse were such pretty, kind, jolly birds; And a dozen reasons more._
For all the other scaul-crows set upon her, and pecked her to deaththere and then, before Tom could come to help her; and then flew away,very proud of what they had done.
Now, was not this a scandalous transaction?
But they are true republicans, these hoodies, who do every one just whathe likes, and make other people do so too; so that, for any freedom ofspeech, thought, or action, which is allowed among them, they might aswell be American citizens of the new school.
But the fairies took the good crow, and gave her nine new sets offeathers running, and turned her at last into the most beautiful bird ofparadise with a green velvet suit and a long tail, and sent her to eatfruit in the Spice Islands, where cloves and nutmegs grow.
And Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid settled her account with the wicked hoodies.For, as they flew away, what should they find but a nasty dead dog?--onwhich they all set to work, pecking and gobbling and cawing andquarrelling to their hearts' content. But the moment afterwards, theyall threw up their bills into the air, and gave one screech; and thenturned head over heels backward, and fell down dead, one hundred andtwenty-three of them at once. For why? The fairy had told the gamekeeperin a dream, to fill the dead dog full of strychnine; and so he did.
And after a while the birds began to gather at Allfowlsness, inthousands and tens of thousands, blackening all the air; swans and brantgeese, harlequins and eiders, harolds and garganeys, smews andgossanders, divers and loons, grebes and dovekies, auks and razor-bills,gannets and petrels, skuas and terns, with gulls beyond all naming ornumbering; and they paddled and washed and splashed and combed andbrushed themselves on the sand, till the shore was white with feathers;and they quacked and clucked and gabbled and chattered and screamed andwhooped as they talked over matters with their friends, and settledwhere they were to go and breed that summer, till you might have heardthem ten miles off; and lucky it was for them that there was no one tohear them but the old keeper, who lived all alone upon the Ness, in aturf hut thatched with heather and fringed round with great stones slungacross the roof by bent-ropes, lest the winter gales should blow thehut right away. But he never minded the birds nor hurt them, becausethey were not in season; indeed, he minded but two things in the wholeworld and those were his Bible and his grouse; for he was as good an oldScotchman as ever knit stockings on a winter's night: only, when all thebirds were going, he toddled out, and took off his cap to them, andwished them a merry journey and a safe return; and then gathered up allthe feathers which they had left, and cleaned them to sell down south,and make feather-beds for stuffy people to lie on.
Then the petrels asked this bird and that whether they would take Tom toShiny Wall: but one set was going to Sutherland, and one to theShetlands, and one to Norway, and one to Spitzbergen, and one toIceland, and one to Greenland: but none would go to Shiny Wall. So thegood-natured petrels said that they would show him part of the waythemselves, but they were only going as far as Jan Mayen's Land; andafter that he must shift for himself.
And then all the birds rose up, and streamed away in long black lines,north, and north-east, and north-west, across the bright blue summersky; and their cry was like ten thousand packs of hounds, and tenthousand peals of bells. Only the puffins stayed behind, and killed theyoung rabbits and laid their eggs in the rabbit-burrows; which was roughpractice, certainly; but a man must see to his own family.
And, as Tom and the petrels went north-eastward, it began to blow righthard; for the old gentleman in the gray great-coat, who looks after thebig copper boiler, in the Gulf of Mexico, had got behindhand with hiswork; so Mother Carey had sent an electric message to him for moresteam; and now the steam was coming, as much in an hour as ought to havecome in a week, puffing and roaring and swishing and swirling, till youcould not see where the sky ended and the sea began. But Tom and thepetrels never cared, for the gale was right abaft, and away they wentover the crests of the billows, as merry as so many flying-fish.
And at last they saw an ugly sight--the black side of a great ship,water-logged in the trough of the sea. Her funnel and her masts wereoverboard, and swayed and surged under her lee; her decks were swept asclean as a barn floor, and there was no living soul on board.
The petrels flew up to her, and wailed round her; for they were verysorry indeed, and also they expected to find some salt pork; and Tomscrambled on board of her and looked round, frightened and sad.
And there, in a little cot, lashed tight under the bulwark, lay a babyfast asleep; the very same baby, Tom saw at once, which he had seen inthe singing lady's arms.
He went up to it, and wanted to wake it; but behold, from under the cotout jumped a little black and tan terrier dog, and began barking andsnapping at Tom, and would not let him touch the cot.
Tom knew the dog's teeth could not hurt him: but at least it could shovehim away, and did; and he and the dog fought and struggled, for hewanted to help the baby, and did not want to throw the poor dogoverboard: but as they were struggling, there came a tall green sea, andwalked in over the weather side of the ship, and swept them all into thewaves.
"Oh, the baby, the baby!" screamed Tom: but the next moment he did notscream at all; for he saw the cot settling down through the green water,with the baby, smiling in it, fast asleep; and he saw the fairies comeup from below, and carry baby and cradle gently down in their soft arms;and then he knew it was all right, and that there would be a newwater-baby in St. Brandan's Isle.
And the poor little dog?
Why, after he had kicked and coughed a little, he sneezed so hard, thathe sneezed himself clean out of his skin, and turned into a water-dog,and jumped and danced round Tom, and ran over the crests of the waves,and snapped at the jelly-fish and the mackerel, and followed Tom thewhole way to the Other-end-of-Nowhere.
Then they went on again, till they began to see the peak of Jan Mayen'sLand, standing up like a white sugar-loaf, two miles above the clouds.
And there they fell in with a whole flock of molly-mocks, who werefeeding on a dead whale.
"These are the fellows to show you the way," said Mother Carey'schickens; "we cannot help you farther north. We don't like to get amongthe ice pack, for fear it should nip our toes: but the mollys dare flyanywhere."
So the petrels called to the mollys: but they were so busy and greedy,gobbling and pecking and spluttering and fighting over the blubber,that they did not take the least notice.
"Come, come," said the petrels, "you lazy greedy lubbers, this younggentleman is going to Mother Carey, and if you don't attend on him, youwon't earn your discharge from her, you know."
"Greedy we are," says a great fat old molly, "but lazy we ain't; and, asfor lubbers, we're no more lubbers than you. Let's have a look at thelad."
And he flapped right into Tom's face, and stared at him in the mostimpudent way (for the mollys are audacious fellows, as all whalersknow), and then asked him where he hailed from, and what land he sightedlast.
And, when Tom told him, he seemed pleased, and said he was a goodplucked one to have got so far.
"Come along, lads," he said to the rest, "and give this little chap acast over the pack, for Mother Carey's sake. We've eaten blubber enoughfor today, and we'll e'en work out a bit of our time by helping thelad."
So the mollys took Tom up on their backs, and flew off with him,laughing and joking--and oh, how they did smell of train oil!
"Who are you, you jolly birds?" asked Tom.
"We are the spirits of the old Greenland
skippers (as every sailorknows), who hunted here, right whales and horse-whales, full hundreds ofyears agone. But, because we were saucy and greedy, we were all turnedinto mollys, to eat whale's blubber all our days. But lubbers we arenone, and could sail a ship now against any man in the North seas,though we don't hold with this new-fangled steam. And it's a shame ofthose black imps of petrels to call us so; but because they're hergrace's pets, they think they may say anything they like."
"And who are you?" asked Tom of him, for he saw that he was the king ofall the birds.
"My name is Hendrick Hudson, and a right good skipper was I; and my namewill last to the world's end, in spite of all the wrong I did. For Idiscovered Hudson River and I named Hudson's Bay; and many have come inmy wake that dared not have shown me the way. But I was a hard man in mytime, that's truth, and stole the poor Indians off the coast of Maine,and sold them for slaves down in Virginia; and at last I was so cruel tomy sailors, here in these very seas, that they set me adrift in an openboat, and I never was heard of more. So now I'm the king of all mollys,till I've worked out my time."
And now they came to the edge of the pack, and beyond it they could seeShiny Wall looming, through mist, and snow, and storm. But the packrolled horribly upon the swell, and the ice giants fought and roared,and leapt upon each other's backs, and ground each other to powder, sothat Tom was afraid to venture among them, lest he should be ground topowder too. And he was the more afraid, when he saw lying among the icepack the wrecks of many a gallant ship; some with masts and yards allstanding, some with the seamen frozen fast on board. Alas, alas, forthem! They were all true English hearts; and they came to their end likegood knights-errant, in searching for the white gate that never wasopened yet.
But the good mollys took Tom and his dog up, and flew with them safeover the pack and the roaring ice giants, and set them down at the footof Shiny Wall.
"And where is the gate?" asked Tom.
"There is no gate," said the mollys.
"No gate?" cried Tom, aghast.
"None; never a crack of one, and that's the whole of the secret, asbetter fellows, lad, than you have found to their cost; and if there hadbeen, they'd have killed by now every right whale that swims the seas."
"What am I to do, then?"
"Dive under the floe, to be sure, if you have pluck."
"I've not come so far to turn now," said Tom; "so here goes for aheader."
"A lucky voyage to you, lad," said the mollys; "we knew you were one ofthe right sort. So good-bye."
"Why don't you come too?" asked Tom.
But the mollys only wailed sadly, "We can't go yet, we can't go yet,"and flew away over the pack.
So Tom dived under the great white gate which never was opened yet, andwent on in black darkness, at the bottom of the sea, for seven days andseven nights. And yet he was not a bit frightened. Why should he be? Hewas a brave English lad, whose business is to go out and see all theworld.
And at last he saw the light, and clear clear water overhead; and up hecame a thousand fathoms, among clouds of sea-moths, which flutteredround his head. There were moths with pink heads and wings and opalbodies, that flapped about slowly; moths with brown wings that flappedabout quickly; yellow shrimps that hopped and skipped most quickly ofall; and jellies of all the colours in the world, that neither hoppednor skipped, but only dawdled and yawned, and would not get out of hisway. The dog snapped at them till his jaws were tired; but Tom hardlyminded them at all, he was so eager to get to the top of the water, andsee the pool where the good whales go.
And a very large pool it was, miles and miles across, though the air wasso clear that the ice cliffs on the opposite side looked as if they wereclose at hand. All round it the ice cliffs rose, in walls and spires andbattlements, and caves and bridges, and stones and galleries, in whichthe ice-fairies live, and drive away the storms and clouds, that MotherCarey's pool may lie calm from year's end to year's end. And the sunacted policeman, and walked round outside every day, peeping just overthe top of the ice wall, to see that all went right; and now and then heplayed conjuring tricks, or had an exhibition of fireworks, to amuse theice-fairies. For he would make himself into four or five suns at once,or paint the sky with rings and crosses and crescents of white fire, andstick himself in the middle of them, and wink at the fairies; and Idaresay they were very much amused; for anything's fun in the country.
And there the good whales lay, the happy sleepy beasts, upon the stilloily sea. They were all right whales, you must know, and finners, andrazor-backs, and bottle-noses, and spotted sea-unicorns with long ivoryhorns. But the sperm whales are such raging, ramping, roaring,rumbustious fellows, that, if Mother Carey let them in, there would beno more peace in Peacepool. So she packs them away in a great pond bythemselves at the South Pole, two hundred and sixty-three milessouth-south-east of Mount Erebus, the great volcano in the ice; andthere they butt each other with their ugly noses, day and night fromyear's end to year's end.
But here there were only good quiet beasts, lying about like the blackhulls of sloops, and blowing every now and then jets of white steam, orsculling round with their huge mouths open, for the sea-moths to swimdown their throats. There were no threshers there to thresh their poorold backs, or sword-fish to stab their stomachs, or saw-fish to rip themup, or ice-sharks to bite lumps out of their sides, or whalers toharpoon and lance them. They were quite safe and happy there; and allthey had to do was to wait quietly in Peacepool, till Mother Carey sentfor them to make them out of old beasts into new.
Tom swam up to the nearest whale, and asked the way to Mother Carey.
"There she sits in the middle," said the whale.
Tom looked; but he could see nothing in the middle of the pool, but onepeaked iceberg; and he said so.
"That's Mother Carey," said the whale, "as you will find when you get toher. There she sits making old beasts into new all the year round."
"How does she do that?"
"That's her concern, not mine," said the old whale; and yawned so wide(for he was very large) that there swam into his mouth 943 sea-moths,13,846 jelly-fish no bigger than pins' heads, a string of salpae nineyards long, and forty-three little ice-crabs, who gave each other aparting pinch all round, tucked their legs under their stomachs, anddetermined to die decently, like Julius Caesar.
"I suppose," said Tom, "she cuts up a great whale like you into a wholeshoal of porpoises?"
At which the old whale laughed so violently that he coughed up all thecreatures; who swam away again very thankful at having escaped out ofthat terrible whalebone net of his, from which bourne no travellerreturns; and Tom went on to the iceberg, wondering.
And, when he came near it, it took the form of the grandest old lady hehad ever seen--a white marble lady, sitting on a white marble throne.And from the foot of the throne there swum away, out and out into thesea, millions of new-born creatures, of more shapes and colours than manever dreamed. And they were Mother Carey's children, whom she makes outof the sea-water all day long.
He expected, of course--like some grown people who ought to knowbetter--to find her snipping, piecing, fitting, stitching, cobbling,basting, filing, planing, hammering, turning, polishing, moulding,measuring, chiselling, clipping, and so forth, as men do when they go towork to make anything.
But, instead of that, she sat quite still with her chin upon her hand,looking down into the sea with two great grand blue eyes, as blue as thesea itself. Her hair was as white as the snow--for she was very veryold--in fact, as old as anything which you are likely to come across,except the difference between right and wrong.
And, when she saw Tom, she looked at him very kindly.
"What do you want, my little man? It is long since I have seen awater-baby here."
Tom told her his errand, and asked the way to the Other-end-of-Nowhere.
"You ought to know yourself, for you have been there already."
"Have I, ma'am? I'm sure I forget all about it."
"Then look at me.
" And, as Tom looked into her great blue eyes, herecollected the way perfectly.
Now, was not that strange?
"Thank you, ma'am," said Tom. "Then I won't trouble your ladyship anymore; I hear you are very busy."
"I am never more busy than I am now," she said, without stirring afinger.
"I heard, ma'am, that you were always making new beasts out of old."
"So people fancy. But I am not going to trouble myself to make things,my little dear. I sit here and make them make themselves."
"You are a clever fairy, indeed," thought Tom. And he was quite right.
That is a grand trick of good old Mother Carey's, and a grand answer,which she has had occasion to make several times to impertinent people.
There was once, for instance, a fairy who was so clever that she foundout how to make butterflies. I don't mean sham ones; no: but real liveones, which would fly, and eat, and lay eggs, and do everything thatthey ought; and she was so proud of her skill that she went flyingstraight off to the North Pole, to boast to Mother Carey how she couldmake butterflies.
But Mother Carey laughed.
"Know, silly child," she said, "that any one can make things, if theywill take time and trouble enough: but it is not every one who, like me,can make things make themselves."
But people do not yet believe that Mother Carey is as clever as all thatcomes to; and they will not till they, too, go the journey to theOther-end-of-Nowhere.
"And now, my pretty little man," said Mother Carey, "you are sure youknow the way to the Other-end-of-Nowhere?"
Tom thought; and behold, he had forgotten it utterly.
"That is because you took your eyes off me."
Tom looked at her again, and recollected; and then looked away, andforgot in an instant.
"But what am I to do, ma'am? For I can't keep looking at you when I amsomewhere else."
"You must do without me, as most people have to do, for nine hundred andninety-nine thousandths of their lives; and look at the dog instead; forhe knows the way well enough, and will not forget it. Besides, you maymeet some very queer-tempered people there, who will not let you passwithout this passport of mine, which you must hang round your neck andtake care of; and, of course, as the dog will always go behind you, youmust go the whole way backward."
"Backward!" cried Tom. "Then I shall not be able to see my way."
"On the contrary, if you look forward, you will not see a step beforeyou, and be certain to go wrong; but, if you look behind you, and watchcarefully whatever you have passed, and especially keep your eye on thedog, who goes by instinct, and therefore can't go wrong, then you willknow what is coming next, as plainly as if you saw it in alooking-glass."
Tom was very much astonished: but he obeyed her, for he had learntalways to believe what the fairies told him.
He was very sorely tried; for though, by keeping the dog to heels (orrather to toes, for he had to walk backward), he could see pretty wellwhich way the dog was hunting, yet it was much slower work to gobackwards than to go forwards. But, what was more trying still, nosooner had he got out of Peacepool, than there came running to him allthe conjurors, fortune-tellers, astrologers, prophesiers, projectors,prestigiators, as many as were in those parts (and there are too many ofthem everywhere), all bawling and screaming at him, "Look a-head, onlylook a-head; and we will show you what man never saw before, and rightaway to the end of the world!"
But I am proud to say that Tom was such a little dogged, hard, gnarly,foursquare brick of an English boy, that he never turned his head roundonce all the way from Peacepool to the Other-end-of-Nowhere: but kepthis eye on the dog, and let him pick out the scent, hot or cold,straight or crooked, wet or dry, up hill or down dale; by which means henever made a single mistake, and saw all the wonderful and hithertoby-no-mortal-man-imagined things, which it is my duty to relate to youin the next chapter.
The Water-Babies Page 9
