[ii]

“The thing whirred up into the air, and hung poised on its wings, . . . a dragon fly, . . . the king of all the flies.”—P. 74 (Frontispiece)

[iii]

THE WATER-BABIES

A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby

BY

CHARLES KINGSLEY

[iv]

[v]

[vii]

Contents

ILLUSTRATIONS

[viii]

[1]

CHAPTER I

One day a smart little groom rode into the
court where Tom lived. Tom was just hiding
behind a wall, to heave half a brick at his horse’s
legs, as is the custom of that country when they
welcome strangers; but the groom saw him, and[3]
halloed to him to know where Mr. Grimes, the
chimney-sweep, lived. Now, Mr. Grimes was
Tom’s own master, and Tom was a good man of
business, and always civil to customers, so he put
the half-brick down quietly behind the wall, and
proceeded to take orders.

Mr. Grimes was to come up next morning to
Sir John Harthover’s, at the Place, for his old
chimney-sweep was gone to prison, and the
chimneys wanted sweeping. And so he rode
away, not giving Tom time to ask what the sweep
had gone to prison for, which was a matter of
interest to Tom, as he had been in prison once or
twice himself. Moreover, the groom looked so
very neat and clean, with his drab gaiters, drab
breeches, drab jacket, snow-white tie with a smart
pin in it, and clean round ruddy face, that Tom
was offended and disgusted at his appearance, and
considered him a stuck-up fellow, who gave himself
airs because he wore smart clothes, and other
people paid for them; and went behind the wall
to fetch the half-brick after all; but did not,
remembering that he had come in the way of
business, and was, as it were, under a flag of truce.

His master was so delighted at his new customer
that he knocked Tom down out of hand, and drank
more beer that night than he usually did in two,
in order to be sure of getting up in time next
morning; for the more a man’s head aches when
he wakes, the more glad he is to turn out, and
have a breath of fresh air. And, when he did get
up at four the next morning, he knocked Tom[4]
down again, in order to teach him (as young
gentlemen used to be taught at public schools)
that he must be an extra good boy that day, as
they were going to a very great house, and might
make a very good thing of it, if they could but
give satisfaction.

And Tom thought so likewise, and, indeed,
would have done and behaved his best, even without
being knocked down. For, of all places upon
earth, Harthover Place (which he had never seen)
was the most wonderful, and, of all men on earth,
Sir John (whom he had seen, having been sent to
gaol by him twice) was the most awful.

Harthover Place was really a grand place, even
for the rich North country; with a house so large
that in the frame-breaking riots, which Tom could
just remember, the Duke of Wellington, and ten
thousand soldiers to match, were easily housed
therein; at least, so Tom believed; with a park
full of deer, which Tom believed to be monsters
who were in the habit of eating children; with
miles of game-preserves, in which Mr. Grimes
and the collier lads poached at times, on which
occasions Tom saw pheasants, and wondered what
they tasted like; with a noble salmon-river, in
which Mr. Grimes and his friends would have
liked to poach; but then they must have got into
cold water, and that they did not like at all. In
short, Harthover was a grand place, and Sir John
a grand old man, whom even Mr. Grimes respected;
for not only could he send Mr. Grimes to prison
when he deserved it, as he did once or twice a[5]
week; not only did he own all the land about for
miles; not only was he a jolly, honest, sensible
squire, as ever kept a pack of hounds, who would
do what he thought right by his neighbours, as
well as get what he thought right for himself; but,
what was more, he weighed full fifteen stone, was
nobody knew how many inches round the chest,
and could have thrashed Mr. Grimes himself in
fair fight, which very few folk round there could
do, and which, my dear little boy, would not have
been right for him to do, as a great many things
are not which one both can do, and would like
very much to do. So Mr. Grimes touched his
hat to him when he rode through the town, and
called him a “buirdly awd chap,” and his young
ladies “gradely lasses,” which are two high compliments
in the North country; and thought that
that made up for his poaching Sir John’s pheasants;
whereby you may perceive that Mr. Grimes had
not been to a properly-inspected Government
National School.

Now, I dare say, you never got up at three
o’clock on a midsummer morning. Some people
get up then because they want to catch salmon;
and some because they want to climb Alps; and a
great many more because they must, like Tom.
But, I assure you, that three o’clock on a midsummer
morning is the pleasantest time of all
the twenty-four hours, and all the three hundred
and sixty-five days; and why every one does not
get up then, I never could tell, save that they
are all determined to spoil their nerves and their[6]
complexions by doing all night what they might just
as well do all day. But Tom, instead of going out
to dinner at half-past eight at night, and to a ball
at ten, and finishing off somewhere between twelve
and four, went to bed at seven, when his master
went to the public-house, and slept like a dead
pig; for which reason he was as piert as a game-cock
(who always gets up early to wake the maids),
and just ready to get up when the fine gentlemen
and ladies were just ready to go to bed.

So he and his master set out; Grimes rode the
donkey in front, and Tom and the brushes walked
behind; out of the court, and up the street, past
the closed window-shutters, and the winking weary
policemen, and the roofs all shining grey in the
grey dawn.

They passed through the pitmen’s village, all
shut up and silent now, and through the turnpike;
and then they were out in the real country, and
plodding along the black dusty road, between black
slag walls, with no sound but the groaning and
thumping of the pit-engine in the next field. But
soon the road grew white, and the walls likewise;
and at the wall’s foot grew long grass and gay
flowers, all drenched with dew; and instead of the
groaning of the pit-engine, they heard the skylark
saying his matins high up in the air, and the pit-bird
warbling in the sedges, as he had warbled all
night long.

All else was silent. For old Mrs. Earth was
still fast asleep; and, like many pretty people, she
looked still prettier asleep than awake. The great[7]
elm-trees in the gold-green meadows were fast
asleep above, and the cows fast asleep beneath
them; nay, the few clouds which were about
were fast asleep likewise, and so tired that they
had lain down on the earth to rest, in long white
flakes and bars, among the stems of the elm-trees,
and along the tops of the alders by the stream,
waiting for the sun to bid them rise and go about
their day’s business in the clear blue overhead.

On they went; and Tom looked, and looked,
for he never had been so far into the country
before; and longed to get over a gate, and pick
buttercups, and look for birds’ nests in the hedge;
but Mr. Grimes was a man of business, and would
not have heard of that.

Soon they came up with a poor Irishwoman,
trudging along with a bundle at her back. She
had a grey shawl over her head, and a crimson
madder petticoat; so you may be sure she came
from Galway. She had neither shoes nor stockings,
and limped along as if she were tired and footsore;
but she was a very tall handsome woman, with
bright grey eyes, and heavy black hair hanging
about her cheeks. And she took Mr. Grimes’
fancy so much, that when he came alongside he
called out to her:

“This is a hard road for a gradely foot like
that. Will ye up, lass, and ride behind me?”

But, perhaps, she did not admire Mr. Grimes’
look and voice; for she answered quietly:

“No, thank you; I’d sooner walk with your
little lad here.”[8]

“You may please yourself,” growled Grimes,
and went on smoking.

So she walked beside Tom, and talked to him,
and asked him where he lived, and what he knew,
and all about himself, till Tom thought he had
never met such a pleasant-spoken woman. And
she asked him, at last, whether he said his prayers!
and seemed sad when he told her that he knew no
prayers to say.

Then he asked her where she lived, and she
said far away by the sea. And Tom asked her
about the sea; and she told him how it rolled and
roared over the rocks in winter nights, and lay still
in the bright summer days, for the children to
bathe and play in it; and many a story more, till
Tom longed to go and see the sea, and bathe in it
likewise.

At last, at the bottom of a hill, they came to a
spring; not such a spring as you see here, which
soaks up out of a white gravel in the bog, among
red fly-catchers, and pink bottle-heath, and sweet
white orchis; nor such a one as you may see, too,
here, which bubbles up under the warm sandbank
in the hollow lane, by the great tuft of lady ferns,
and makes the sand dance reels at the bottom, day
and night, all the year round; not such a spring
as either of those; but a real North country limestone
fountain, like one of those in Sicily or Greece,
where the old heathen fancied the nymphs sat
cooling themselves the hot summer’s day, while
the shepherds peeped at them from behind the
bushes. Out of a low cave of rock, at the foot of[9]
a limestone crag, the great fountain rose, quelling,
and bubbling, and gurgling, so clear that you could
not tell where the water ended and the air began;
and ran away under the road, a stream large enough
to turn a mill; among blue geranium, and golden
globe-flower, and wild raspberry, and the bird-cherry
with its tassels of snow.

And there Grimes stopped, and looked; and
Tom looked too. Tom was wondering whether
anything lived in that dark cave, and came out at
night to fly in the meadows. But Grimes was not
wondering at all. Without a word, he got off his
donkey, and clambered over the low road wall, and
knelt down, and began dipping his ugly head into
the spring—and very dirty he made it.

Tom was picking the flowers as fast as he
could. The Irishwoman helped him, and showed
him how to tie them up; and a very pretty nosegay
they had made between them. But when he
saw Grimes actually wash, he stopped, quite
astonished; and when Grimes had finished, and
began shaking his ears to dry them, he said:

“Why, master, I never saw you do that
before.”

“Nor will again, most likely. ‘Twasn’t for
cleanliness I did it, but for coolness. I’d be
ashamed to want washing every week or so, like
any smutty collier lad.”

“I wish I might go and dip my head in,” said
poor little Tom. “It must be as good as putting
it under the town-pump; and there is no beadle
here to drive a chap away.”[10]

“Thou come along,” said Grimes; “what
dost want with washing thyself? Thou did not
drink half a gallon of beer last night, like me.”

“I don’t care for you,” said naughty Tom, and
ran down to the stream, and began washing his face.

Grimes was very sulky, because the woman
preferred Tom’s company to his; so he dashed at
him with horrid words, and tore him up from his
knees, and began beating him. But Tom was
accustomed to that, and got his head safe between
Mr. Grimes’ legs, and kicked his shins with all
his might.

“Are you not ashamed of yourself, Thomas
Grimes?” cried the Irishwoman over the wall.

Grimes looked up, startled at her knowing his
name; but all he answered was, “No, nor never
was yet”; and went on beating Tom.

“True for you. If you ever had been ashamed
of yourself, you would have gone over into Vendale
long ago.”

“What do you know about Vendale?” shouted
Grimes; but he left off beating Tom.

“I know about Vendale, and about you, too.
I know, for instance, what happened in Aldermire
Copse, by night, two years ago come Martinmas.”

“You do?” shouted Grimes; and leaving
Tom, he climbed up over the wall, and faced the
woman. Tom thought he was going to strike
her; but she looked him too full and fierce in the
face for that.

“Yes; I was there,” said the Irishwoman
quietly.[11]

“You are no Irishwoman, by your speech,”
said Grimes, after many bad words.

“Never mind who I am. I saw what I saw;
and if you strike that boy again, I can tell what
I know.”

Grimes seemed quite cowed, and got on his
donkey without another word.

“Stop!” said the Irishwoman. “I have one
more word for you both; for you will both see
me again before all is over. Those that wish to
be clean, clean they will be; and those that wish
to be foul, foul they will be. Remember.”

And she turned away, and through a gate into
the meadow. Grimes stood still a moment, like a
man who had been stunned. Then he rushed after
her, shouting, “You come back.” But when
he got into the meadow, the woman was not
there.

Had she hidden away? There was no place
to hide in. But Grimes looked about, and Tom
also, for he was as puzzled as Grimes himself at
her disappearing so suddenly; but look where
they would, she was not there.

Grimes came back again, as silent as a post, for
he was a little frightened; and, getting on his
donkey, filled a fresh pipe, and smoked away,
leaving Tom in peace.

And now they had gone three miles and more,
and came to Sir John’s lodge-gates.

Very grand lodges they were, with very grand
iron gates and stone gate-posts, and on the top of
each a most dreadful bogy, all teeth, horns, and[12]
tail, which was the crest which Sir John’s ancestors
wore in the Wars of the Roses; and very prudent
men they were to wear it, for all their enemies
must have run for their lives at the very first sight
of them.

Grimes rang at the gate, and out came a keeper
on the spot, and opened.

“I was told to expect thee,” he said. “Now
thou’lt be so good as to keep to the main avenue,
and not let me find a hare or a rabbit on thee when
thou comest back. I shall look sharp for one, I
tell thee.”

“Not if it’s in the bottom of the soot-bag,”
quoth Grimes, and at that he laughed; and the
keeper laughed and said:

“If that’s thy sort, I may as well walk up with
thee to the hall.”

“I think thou best had. It’s thy business to
see after thy game, man, and not mine.”

So the keeper went with them; and, to Tom’s
surprise, he and Grimes chatted together all the
way quite pleasantly. He did not know that a
keeper is only a poacher turned outside in, and a
poacher a keeper turned inside out.

They walked up a great lime avenue, a full
mile long, and between their stems Tom peeped
trembling at the horns of the sleeping deer, which
stood up among the ferns. Tom had never seen
such enormous trees, and as he looked up he fancied
that the blue sky rested on their heads. But he
was puzzled very much by a strange murmuring
noise, which followed them all the way. So much[13]
puzzled, that at last he took courage to ask the
keeper what it was.

He spoke very civilly, and called him Sir, for
he was horribly afraid of him, which pleased the
keeper, and he told him that they were the bees
about the lime flowers.

“What are bees?” asked Tom.

“What make honey.”

“What is honey?” asked Tom.

“Thou hold thy noise,” said Grimes.

“Let the boy be,” said the keeper. “He’s a
civil young chap now, and that’s more than he’ll
be long if he bides with thee.”

Grimes laughed, for he took that for a compliment.

“I wish I were a keeper,” said Tom, “to live
in such a beautiful place, and wear green velveteens,
and have a real dog-whistle at my button, like
you.”

The keeper laughed; he was a kind-hearted
fellow enough.

“Let well alone, lad, and ill too at times.
Thy life’s safer than mine at all events, eh, Mr.
Grimes?”

And Grimes laughed again, and then the two
men began talking quite low. Tom could hear,
though, that it was about some poaching fight;
and at last Grimes said surlily, “Hast thou anything
against me?”

“Not now.”

“Then don’t ask me any questions till thou
hast, for I am a man of honour.”[14]

And at that they both laughed again, and
thought it a very good joke.

And by this time they were come up to the
great iron gates in front of the house; and Tom
stared through them at the rhododendrons and
azaleas, which were all in flower; and then at the
house itself, and wondered how many chimneys
there were in it, and how long ago it was built,
and what was the man’s name that built it, and
whether he got much money for his job?

These last were very difficult questions to
answer. For Harthover had been built at ninety
different times, and in nineteen different styles, and
looked as if somebody had built a whole street of
houses of every imaginable shape, and then stirred
them together with a spoon.

And the rest from nothing in heaven, or earth,
or under the earth.

So that Harthover House was a great puzzle
to antiquarians, and a thorough Naboth’s vineyard
to critics, and architects, and all persons who like
meddling with other men’s business, and spending
other men’s money. So they were all setting upon
poor Sir John, year after year, and trying to talk
him into spending a hundred thousand pounds or
so, in building, to please them and not himself.
But he always put them off, like a canny North-countryman
as he was. One wanted him to build
a Gothic house, but he said he was no Goth; and
another to build an Elizabethan, but he said he
lived under good Queen Victoria, and not good
Queen Bess; and another was bold enough to tell
him that his house was ugly, but he said he lived
inside it, and not outside; and another, that there
was no unity in it, but he said that that was just
why he liked the old place. For he liked to see
how each Sir John, and Sir Hugh, and Sir Ralph,
and Sir Randal, had left his mark upon the place,
each after his own taste; and he had no more
notion of disturbing his ancestors’ work than of
disturbing their graves. For now the house looked
like a real live house, that had a history, and had
grown and grown as the world grew; and that it[16]
was only an upstart fellow who did not know who
his own grandfather was, who would change it for
some spick and span new Gothic or Elizabethan
thing, which looked as if it had been all spawned
in a night, as mushrooms are. From which you
may collect (if you have wit enough) that Sir John
was a very sound-headed, sound-hearted squire,
and just the man to keep the country side in order,
and show good sport with his hounds.

But Tom and his master did not go in through
the great iron gates, as if they had been Dukes or
Bishops, but round the back way, and a very long
way round it was; and into a little back-door,
where the ash-boy let them in, yawning horribly;
and then in a passage the housekeeper met them,
in such a flowered chintz dressing-gown, that Tom
mistook her for My Lady herself, and she gave
Grimes solemn orders about “You will take care
of this, and take care of that,” as if he was going
up the chimneys, and not Tom. And Grimes
listened, and said every now and then, under his
voice, “You’ll mind that, you little beggar?” and
Tom did mind, all at least that he could. And
then the housekeeper turned them into a grand
room, all covered up in sheets of brown paper, and
bade them begin, in a lofty and tremendous voice;
and so after a whimper or two, and a kick from his
master, into the grate Tom went, and up the
chimney, while a housemaid stayed in the room
to watch the furniture; to whom Mr. Grimes paid
many playful and chivalrous compliments, but met
with very slight encouragement in return.[17]

How many chimneys Tom swept I cannot say;
but he swept so many that he got quite tired, and
puzzled too, for they were not like the town flues
to which he was accustomed, but such as you would
find—if you would only get up them and look,
which perhaps you would not like to do—in old
country-houses, large and crooked chimneys, which
had been altered again and again, till they ran one
into another, anastomosing (as Professor Owen
would say) considerably. So Tom fairly lost his
way in them; not that he cared much for that,
though he was in pitchy darkness, for he was as
much at home in a chimney as a mole is underground;
but at last, coming down as he thought
the right chimney, he came down the wrong one,
and found himself standing on the hearthrug in a
room the like of which he had never seen before.

Tom had never seen the like. He had never
been in gentlefolks’ rooms but when the carpets
were all up, and the curtains down, and the furniture
huddled together under a cloth, and the pictures
covered with aprons and dusters; and he had often
enough wondered what the rooms were like when
they were all ready for the quality to sit in. And
now he saw, and he thought the sight very pretty.

The room was all dressed in white,—white
window-curtains, white bed-curtains, white furniture,
and white walls, with just a few lines of pink
here and there. The carpet was all over gay little
flowers; and the walls were hung with pictures
in gilt frames, which amused Tom very much.
There were pictures of ladies and gentlemen, and[18]
pictures of horses and dogs. The horses he liked;
but the dogs he did not care for much, for there
were no bull-dogs among them, not even a terrier.
But the two pictures which took his fancy most
were, one a man in long garments, with little
children and their mothers round him, who was
laying his hand upon the children’s heads. That
was a very pretty picture, Tom thought, to hang
in a lady’s room. For he could see that it was
a lady’s room by the dresses which lay about.

The other picture was that of a man nailed to
a cross, which surprised Tom much. He fancied
that he had seen something like it in a shop-window.
But why was it there? “Poor man,”
thought Tom, “and he looks so kind and quiet.
But why should the lady have such a sad picture
as that in her room? Perhaps it was some kinsman
of hers, who had been murdered by the savages
in foreign parts, and she kept it there for a remembrance.”
And Tom felt sad, and awed, and turned
to look at something else.

The next thing he saw, and that too puzzled
him, was a washing-stand, with ewers and basins,
and soap and brushes, and towels, and a large bath
full of clean water—what a heap of things all for
washing! “She must be a very dirty lady,”
thought Tom, “by my master’s rule, to want as
much scrubbing as all that. But she must be very
cunning to put the dirt out of the way so well
afterwards, for I don’t see a speck about the room,
not even on the very towels.”

And then, looking toward the bed, he saw[19]
that dirty lady, and held his breath with astonishment.

Under the snow-white coverlet, upon the snow-white
pillow, lay the most beautiful little girl that
Tom had ever seen. Her cheeks were almost as
white as the pillow, and her hair was like threads
of gold spread all about over the bed. She might
have been as old as Tom, or maybe a year or two
older; but Tom did not think of that. He thought
only of her delicate skin and golden hair, and
wondered whether she was a real live person, or
one of the wax dolls he had seen in the shops.
But when he saw her breathe, he made up his
mind that she was alive, and stood staring at her,
as if she had been an angel out of heaven.

No. She cannot be dirty. She never could
have been dirty, thought Tom to himself. And
then he thought, “And are all people like that
when they are washed?” And he looked at his
own wrist, and tried to rub the soot off, and wondered
whether it ever would come off. “Certainly
I should look much prettier then, if I grew at all
like her.”

And looking round, he suddenly saw, standing
close to him, a little ugly, black, ragged figure,
with bleared eyes and grinning white teeth. He
turned on it angrily. What did such a little black
ape want in that sweet young lady’s room? And
behold, it was himself, reflected in a great mirror,
the like of which Tom had never seen before.

And Tom, for the first time in his life, found
out that he was dirty; and burst into tears with[20]
shame and anger; and turned to sneak up the
chimney again and hide; and upset the fender and
threw the fire-irons down, with a noise as of ten
thousand tin kettles tied to ten thousand mad dogs’
tails.

“In rushed a stout old nurse from the next room.”—P. 20.

Up jumped the little white lady in her bed,
and, seeing Tom, screamed as shrill as any peacock.
In rushed a stout old nurse from the next room,
and seeing Tom likewise, made up her mind that
he had come to rob, plunder, destroy, and burn;
and dashed at him, as he lay over the fender, so
fast that she caught him by the jacket.

But she did not hold him. Tom had been in
a policeman’s hands many a time, and out of them
too, what is more; and he would have been
ashamed to face his friends for ever if he had been
stupid enough to be caught by an old woman; so
he doubled under the good lady’s arm, across the
room, and out of the window in a moment.

He did not need to drop out, though he would
have done so bravely enough. Nor even to let
himself down a spout, which would have been an
old game to him; for once he got up by a spout
to the church roof, he said to take jackdaws’ eggs,
but the policeman said to steal lead; and, when
he was seen on high, sat there till the sun got too
hot, and came down by another spout, leaving the
policemen to go back to the stationhouse and eat
their dinners.

But all under the window spread a tree, with
great leaves and sweet white flowers, almost as big
as his head. It was magnolia, I suppose; but[21]
Tom knew nothing about that, and cared less; for
down the tree he went, like a cat, and across the
garden lawn, and over the iron railings, and up the
park towards the wood, leaving the old nurse to
scream murder and fire at the window.

The under gardener, mowing, saw Tom, and
threw down his scythe; caught his leg in it, and
cut his shin open, whereby he kept his bed for a
week; but in his hurry he never knew it, and
gave chase to poor Tom. The dairymaid heard
the noise, got the churn between her knees, and
tumbled over it, spilling all the cream; and yet
she jumped up, and gave chase to Tom. A groom
cleaning Sir John’s hack at the stables let him go
loose, whereby he kicked himself lame in five
minutes; but he ran out and gave chase to Tom.
Grimes upset the soot-sack in the new-gravelled
yard, and spoilt it all utterly; but he ran out and
gave chase to Tom. The old steward opened the
park-gate in such a hurry, that he hung up his
pony’s chin upon the spikes, and, for aught I
know, it hangs there still; but he jumped off, and
gave chase to Tom. The ploughman left his
horses at the headland, and one jumped over the
fence, and pulled the other into the ditch, plough
and all; but he ran on, and gave chase to Tom.
The keeper, who was taking a stoat out of a trap,
let the stoat go, and caught his own finger; but
he jumped up, and ran after Tom; and considering
what he said, and how he looked, I should have
been sorry for Tom if he had caught him. Sir
John looked out of his study window (for he was[22]
an early old gentleman) and up at the nurse, and a
marten dropped mud in his eye, so that he had at
last to send for the doctor; and yet he ran out,
and gave chase to Tom. The Irishwoman, too,
was walking up to the house to beg,—she must
have got round by some byway,—but she threw
away her bundle, and gave chase to Tom likewise.
Only my Lady did not give chase; for when she
had put her head out of the window, her night-wig
fell into the garden, and she had to ring up
her lady’s-maid, and send her down for it privately,
which quite put her out of the running, so that
she came in nowhere, and is consequently not
placed.

In a word, never was there heard at Hall Place—not
even when the fox was killed in the conservatory,
among acres of broken glass, and tons of
smashed flower-pots—such a noise, row, hubbub,
babel, shindy, hullabaloo, stramash, charivari, and
total contempt of dignity, repose, and order, as
that day, when Grimes, gardener, the groom, the
dairymaid, Sir John, the steward, the ploughman,
the keeper, and the Irishwoman, all ran up the
park, shouting “Stop thief,” in the belief that
Tom had at least a thousand pounds’ worth of
jewels in his empty pockets; and the very magpies
and jays followed Tom up, screaking and screaming,
as if he were a hunted fox, beginning to droop
his brush.

And all the while poor Tom paddled up the
park with his little bare feet, like a small black
gorilla fleeing to the forest. Alas for him! there[23]
was no big father gorilla therein to take his part—to
scratch out the gardener’s inside with one
paw, toss the dairymaid into a tree with another,
and wrench off Sir John’s head with a third, while
he cracked the keeper’s skull with his teeth as
easily as if it had been a cocoa-nut or a paving-stone.

However, Tom did not remember ever having
had a father; so he did not look for one, and
expected to have to take care of himself; while as
for running, he could keep up for a couple of miles
with any stage-coach, if there was the chance of a
copper or a cigar-end, and turn coach-wheels on
his hands and feet ten times following, which is
more than you can do. Wherefore his pursuers
found it very difficult to catch him; and we will
hope that they did not catch him at all.

Tom, of course, made for the woods. He had
never been in a wood in his life; but he was sharp
enough to know that he might hide in a bush, or
swarm up a tree, and, altogether, had more chance
there than in the open. If he had not known
that, he would have been foolisher than a mouse
or a minnow.

But when he got into the wood, he found it
a very different sort of place from what he had
fancied. He pushed into a thick cover of rhododendrons,
and found himself at once caught in a
trap. The boughs laid hold of his legs and arms,
poked him in his face and his stomach, made him
shut his eyes tight (though that was no great loss,
for he could not see at best a yard before his nose);[24]
and when he got through the rhododendrons, the
hassock-grass and sedges tumbled him over, and
cut his poor little fingers afterwards most spitefully;
the birches birched him as soundly as if
he had been a nobleman at Eton, and over
the face too (which is not fair swishing, as all
brave boys will agree); and the lawyers tripped
him up, and tore his shins as if they had
sharks’ teeth—which lawyers are likely enough
to have.

“I must get out of this,” thought Tom, “or I
shall stay here till somebody comes to help me—which
is just what I don’t want.”

But how to get out was the difficult matter.
And indeed I don’t think he would ever have got
out at all, but have stayed there till the cock-robins
covered him with leaves, if he had not suddenly run
his head against a wall.

Now running your head against a wall is not
pleasant, especially if it is a loose wall, with the
stones all set on edge, and a sharp cornered one hits
you between the eyes and makes you see all manner
of beautiful stars. The stars are very beautiful,
certainly; but unfortunately they go in the twenty-thousandth
part of a split second, and the pain
which comes after them does not. And so Tom
hurt his head; but he was a brave boy, and did
not mind that a penny. He guessed that over the
wall the cover would end; and up it he went, and
over like a squirrel.

And there he was, out on the great grouse-moors,
which the country folk called Harthover[25]
Fell—heather and bog and rock, stretching away
and up, up to the very sky.

Now, Tom was a cunning little fellow—as
cunning as an old Exmoor stag. Why not?
Though he was but ten years old, he had lived
longer than most stags, and had more wits to start
with into the bargain.

He knew as well as a stag that if he backed he
might throw the hounds out. So the first thing
he did when he was over the wall was to make the
neatest double sharp to his right, and run along
under the wall for nearly half a mile.

Whereby Sir John, and the keeper, and the
steward, and the gardener, and the ploughman, and
the dairymaid, and all the hue-and-cry together,
went on ahead half a mile in the very opposite
direction, and inside the wall, leaving him a
mile off on the outside; while Tom heard their
shouts die away in the woods and chuckled to
himself merrily.

At last he came to a dip in the land, and went
to the bottom of it, and then he turned bravely
away from the wall and up the moor; for he knew
that he had put a hill between him and his enemies,
and could go on without their seeing him.

But the Irishwoman, alone of them all, had seen
which way Tom went. She had kept ahead of
every one the whole time; and yet she neither
walked nor ran. She went along quite smoothly
and gracefully, while her feet twinkled past each
other so fast that you could not see which was foremost;
till every one asked the other who the[26]
strange woman was; and all agreed, for want of
anything better to say, that she must be in league
with Tom.

But when she came to the plantation, they lost
sight of her; and they could do no less. For she
went quietly over the wall after Tom, and followed
him wherever he went. Sir John and the rest
saw no more of her; and out of sight was out
of mind.

And now Tom was right away into the heather,
over just such a moor as those in which you have
been bred, except that there were rocks and stones
lying about everywhere, and that, instead of the
moor growing flat as he went upwards, it grew
more and more broken and hilly, but not so rough
but that little Tom could jog along well enough,
and find time, too, to stare about at the strange
place, which was like a new world to him.

He saw great spiders there, with crowns and
crosses marked on their backs, who sat in the middle
of their webs, and when they saw Tom coming,
shook them so fast that they became invisible.
Then he saw lizards, brown and grey and green,
and thought they were snakes, and would sting
him; but they were as much frightened as he, and
shot away into the heath. And then, under a rock,
he saw a pretty sight—a great brown, sharp-nosed
creature, with a white tag to her brush, and round
her four or five smutty little cubs, the funniest
fellows Tom ever saw. She lay on her back, rolling
about, and stretching out her legs and head and tail
in the bright sunshine; and the cubs jumped over[27]
her, and ran round her, and nibbled her paws, and
lugged her about by the tail; and she seemed to
enjoy it mightily. But one selfish little fellow stole
away from the rest to a dead crow close by, and
dragged it off to hide it, though it was nearly as
big as he was. Whereat all his little brothers set
off after him in full cry, and saw Tom; and then
all ran back, and up jumped Mrs. Vixen, and
caught one up in her mouth, and the rest toddled
after her, and into a dark crack in the rocks; and
there was an end of the show.

And next he had a fright; for, as he scrambled
up a sandy brow—whirr-poof-poof-cock-cock-kick—something
went off in his face, with a most
horrid noise. He thought the ground had blown
up, and the end of the world come.

And when he opened his eyes (for he shut them
very tight) it was only an old cock-grouse, who had
been washing himself in sand, like an Arab, for want
of water; and who, when Tom had all but trodden
on him, jumped up with a noise like the express
train, leaving his wife and children to shift for
themselves, like an old coward, and went off,
screaming “Cur-ru-u-uck, cur-ru-u-uck—murder,
thieves, fire—cur-u-uck-cock-kick—the end of the
world is come—kick-kick-cock-kick.” He was
always fancying that the end of the world was
come, when anything happened which was farther
off than the end of his own nose. But the end of
the world was not come, any more than the twelfth
of August was; though the old grouse-cock was
quite certain of it.[28]

So the old grouse came back to his wife and
family an hour afterwards, and said solemnly,
“Cock-cock-kick; my dears, the end of the world
is not quite come; but I assure you it is coming
the day after to-morrow—cock.” But his wife
had heard that so often that she knew all about it,
and a little more. And, besides, she was the mother
of a family, and had seven little poults to wash and
feed every day; and that made her very practical,
and a little sharp-tempered; so all she answered
was: “Kick-kick-kick—go and catch spiders, go
and catch spiders—kick.”

So Tom went on and on, he hardly knew why;
but he liked the great wide strange place, and the
cool fresh bracing air. But he went more and
more slowly as he got higher up the hill; for now
the ground grew very bad indeed. Instead of soft
turf and springy heather, he met great patches of
flat limestone rock, just like ill-made pavements,
with deep cracks between the stones and ledges,
filled with ferns; so he had to hop from stone to
stone, and now and then he slipped in between, and
hurt his little bare toes, though they were tolerably
tough ones; but still he would go on and up, he
could not tell why.

What would Tom have said if he had seen,
walking over the moor behind him, the very same
Irishwoman who had taken his part upon the
road? But whether it was that he looked too
little behind him, or whether it was that she kept
out of sight behind the rocks and knolls, he never
saw her, though she saw him.[29]

And now he began to get a little hungry, and
very thirsty; for he had run a long way, and the
sun had risen high in heaven, and the rock was
as hot as an oven, and the air danced reels over it,
as it does over a limekiln, till everything round
seemed quivering and melting in the glare.

But he could see nothing to eat anywhere, and
still less to drink.

The heath was full of bilberries and whimberries;
but they were only in flower yet, for it
was June. And as for water, who can find that on
the top of a limestone rock? Now and then he
passed by a deep dark swallow-hole, going down
into the earth, as if it was the chimney of some
dwarf’s house underground; and more than once,
as he passed, he could hear water falling, trickling,
tinkling, many many feet below. How he longed
to get down to it, and cool his poor baked lips!
But, brave little chimney-sweep as he was,
he dared not climb down such chimneys as
those.

So he went on and on, till his head spun round
with the heat, and he thought he heard church-bells
ringing, a long way off.

“Ah!” he thought, “where there is a church
there will be houses and people; and, perhaps,
some one will give me a bit and a sup.” So he
set off again, to look for the church; for he was
sure that he heard the bells quite plain.

And in a minute more, when he looked round,
he stopped again, and said, “Why, what a big
place the world is!”[30]

And so it was; for, from the top of the
mountain he could see—what could he not see?

Behind him, far below, was Harthover, and the
dark woods, and the shining salmon river; and on
his left, far below, was the town, and the smoking
chimneys of the collieries; and far, far away, the
river widened to the shining sea; and little white
specks, which were ships, lay on its bosom. Before
him lay, spread out like a map, great plains, and
farms, and villages, amid dark knots of trees.
They all seemed at his very feet; but he had sense
to see that they were long miles away.

And to his right rose moor after moor, hill
after hill, till they faded away, blue into blue sky.
But between him and those moors, and really at
his very feet, lay something, to which, as soon as
Tom saw it, he determined to go, for that was the
place for him.

A deep, deep green and rocky valley, very
narrow, and filled with wood; but through the
wood, hundreds of feet below him, he could see
a clear stream glance. Oh, if he could but get
down to that stream! Then, by the stream, he
saw the roof of a little cottage, and a little garden
set out in squares and beds. And there was a tiny
little red thing moving in the garden, no bigger
than a fly. As Tom looked down, he saw that it
was a woman in a red petticoat. Ah! perhaps she
would give him something to eat. And there were
the church-bells ringing again. Surely there must
be a village down there. Well, nobody would
know him, or what had happened at the Place.[31]
The news could not have got there yet, even if
Sir John had set all the policemen in the county
after him; and he could get down there in five
minutes.

Tom was quite right about the hue-and-cry
not having got thither; for he had come without
knowing it, the best part of ten miles from
Harthover; but he was wrong about getting down
in five minutes, for the cottage was more than a
mile off, and a good thousand feet below.

“Play by me, bathe in me, mother and child.”—P. 32.

However, down he went, like a brave little
man as he was, though he was very footsore, and
tired, and hungry, and thirsty; while the church-bells
rang so loud, he began to think that they
must be inside his own head, and the river chimed
and tinkled far below; and this was the song which
it sang:—

So Tom went down; and all the while he
never saw the Irishwoman going down behind him.

[34]

[35]

CHAPTER II

“A quiet, silent, rich, happy place.”—P. 35.

So Tom found it; though it seemed as if he
could have chucked a pebble on to the back of
the woman in the red petticoat who was weeding
in the garden, or even across the dale to the rocks
beyond. For the bottom of the valley was just
one field broad, and on the other side ran the
stream; and above it, grey crag, grey down, grey
stair, grey moor walled up to heaven.

A quiet, silent, rich, happy place; a narrow
crack cut deep into the earth; so deep, and so
out of the way, that the bad bogies can hardly
find it out. The name of the place is Vendale;
and if you want to see it for yourself, you must
go up into the High Craven, and search from
Bolland Forest north by Ingleborough, to the Nine
Standards and Cross Fell; and if you have not
found it, you must turn south, and search the Lake
Mountains, down to Scaw Fell and the sea; and
then, if you have not found it, you must go northward
again by merry Carlisle, and search the
Cheviots all across, from Annan Water to Berwick
Law; and then, whether you have found Vendale
or not, you will have found such a country, and[36]
such a people, as ought to make you proud of
being a British boy.

So Tom went to go down; and first he went
down three hundred feet of steep heather, mixed
up with loose brown gritstone, as rough as a file;
which was not pleasant to his poor little heels, as
he came bump, stump, jump, down the steep. And
still he thought he could throw a stone into the
garden.

Then he went down three hundred feet of
limestone terraces, one below the other, as straight
as if a carpenter had ruled them with his ruler and
then cut them out with his chisel. There was no
heath there, but—

First, a little grass slope, covered with the
prettiest flowers, rockrose and saxifrage, and thyme
and basil, and all sorts of sweet herbs.

Then bump down a two-foot step of limestone.

Then another bit of grass and flowers.

Then bump down a one-foot step.

Then another bit of grass and flowers for fifty
yards, as steep as the house-roof, where he had to
slide down on his dear little tail.

Then another step of stone, ten feet high; and
there he had to stop himself, and crawl along the
edge to find a crack; for if he had rolled over, he
would have rolled right into the old woman’s
garden, and frightened her out of her wits.

Then, when he had found a dark narrow crack,
full of green-stalked fern, such as hangs in the
basket in the drawing-room, and had crawled down
through it, with knees and elbows, as he would[37]
down a chimney, there was another grass slope, and
another step, and so on, till—oh, dear me! I wish
it was all over; and so did he. And yet he thought
he could throw a stone into the old woman’s
garden.

At last he came to a bank of beautiful shrubs;
white-beam with its great silver-backed leaves, and
mountain-ash, and oak; and below them cliff and
crag, cliff and crag, with great beds of crown-ferns
and wood-sedge; while through the shrubs he
could see the stream sparkling, and hear it murmur
on the white pebbles. He did not know that it
was three hundred feet below.

You would have been giddy, perhaps, at looking
down: but Tom was not. He was a brave little
chimney-sweep; and when he found himself on the
top of a high cliff, instead of sitting down and crying
for his baba (though he never had had any baba
to cry for), he said, “Ah, this will just suit me!”
though he was very tired; and down he went, by
stock and stone, sedge and ledge, bush and rush, as
if he had been born a jolly little black ape, with
four hands instead of two.

And all the while he never saw the Irishwoman
coming down behind him.

But he was getting terribly tired now. The
burning sun on the fells had sucked him up; but
the damp heat of the woody crag sucked him up
still more; and the perspiration ran out of the ends
of his fingers and toes, and washed him cleaner
than he had been for a whole year. But, of course,
he dirtied everything terribly as he went. There[38]
has been a great black smudge all down the crag
ever since. And there have been more black
beetles in Vendale since than ever were known
before; all, of course, owing to Tom’s having
blacked the original papa of them all, just as he
was setting off to be married, with a sky-blue coat
and scarlet leggings, as smart as a gardener’s dog
with a polyanthus in his mouth.

At last he got to the bottom. But, behold, it
was not the bottom—as people usually find when
they are coming down a mountain. For at the
foot of the crag were heaps and heaps of fallen
limestone of every size from that of your head to
that of a stage-waggon, with holes between them
full of sweet heath-fern; and before Tom got
through them, he was out in the bright sunshine
again; and then he felt, once for all and suddenly,
as people generally do, that he was b-e-a-t, beat.

You must expect to be beat a few times in your
life, little man, if you live such a life as a man
ought to live, let you be as strong and healthy as
you may: and when you are, you will find it a
very ugly feeling. I hope that that day you may
have a stout staunch friend by you who is not beat;
for, if you have not, you had best lie where you
are, and wait for better times, as poor Tom did.

He could not get on. The sun was burning,
and yet he felt chill all over. He was quite empty,
and yet he felt quite sick. There was but two
hundred yards of smooth pasture between him and
the cottage, and yet he could not walk down it.
He could hear the stream murmuring only one[39]
field beyond it, and yet it seemed to him as if it
was a hundred miles off.

He lay down on the grass till the beetles ran
over him, and the flies settled on his nose. I don’t
know when he would have got up again, if the
gnats and the midges had not taken compassion
on him. But the gnats blew their trumpets so
loud in his ear, and the midges nibbled so at his
hands and face wherever they could find a place
free from soot, that at last he woke up, and stumbled
away, down over a low wall, and into a narrow
road, and up to the cottage door.

And a neat pretty cottage it was, with clipped
yew hedges all round the garden, and yews inside
too, cut into peacocks and trumpets and teapots
and all kinds of queer shapes. And out of the
open door came a noise like that of the frogs on
the Great-A, when they know that it is going to
be scorching hot to-morrow—and how they know
that I don’t know, and you don’t know, and nobody
knows.

He came slowly up to the open door, which
was all hung round with clematis and roses; and
then peeped in, half afraid.

And there sat by the empty fireplace, which
was filled with a pot of sweet herbs, the nicest old
woman that ever was seen, in her red petticoat, and
short dimity bedgown, and clean white cap, with a
black silk handkerchief over it, tied under her chin.
At her feet sat the grandfather of all the cats; and
opposite her sat, on two benches, twelve or fourteen
neat, rosy, chubby little children, learning their[40]
Chris-cross-row; and gabble enough they made
about it.

Such a pleasant cottage it was, with a shiny
clean stone floor, and curious old prints on the
walls, and an old black oak sideboard full of bright
pewter and brass dishes, and a cuckoo clock in the
corner, which began shouting as soon as Tom
appeared: not that it was frightened at Tom, but
that it was just eleven o’clock.

All the children started at Tom’s dirty black
figure,—the girls began to cry, and the boys began
to laugh, and all pointed at him rudely enough;
but Tom was too tired to care for that.

“What art thou, and what dost want?” cried
the old dame. “A chimney-sweep! Away with
thee! I’ll have no sweeps here.”

“Water,” said poor little Tom, quite faint.

“Water? There’s plenty i’ the beck,” she
said, quite sharply.

“But I can’t get there; I’m most clemmed with
hunger and drought.” And Tom sank down upon
the door-step, and laid his head against the post.

And the old dame looked at him through her
spectacles one minute, and two, and three; and
then she said, “He’s sick; and a bairn’s a bairn,
sweep or none.”

“Water,” said Tom.

“God forgive me!” and she put by her
spectacles, and rose, and came to Tom. “Water’s
bad for thee; I’ll give thee milk.” And she
toddled off into the next room, and brought a cup
of milk and a bit of bread.[41]

Tom drank the milk off at one draught, and
then looked up, revived.

“Where didst come from?” said the dame.

“Over Fell, there,” said Tom, and pointed up
into the sky.

“Over Harthover? and down Lewthwaite
Crag? Art sure thou art not lying?”

“Why should I?” said Tom, and leant his
head against the post.

“And how got ye up there?”

“I came over from the Place”; and Tom was
so tired and desperate he had no heart or time to
think of a story, so he told all the truth in a few
words.

“Bless thy little heart! And thou hast not
been stealing, then?”

“No.”

“Bless thy little heart! and I’ll warrant not.
Why, God’s guided the bairn, because he was
innocent! Away from the Place, and over
Harthover Fell, and down Lewthwaite Crag!
Who ever heard the like, if God hadn’t led him?
Why dost not eat thy bread?”

“I can’t.”

“It’s good enough, for I made it myself.”

“I can’t,” said Tom, and he laid his head on
his knees, and then asked—

“Is it Sunday?”

“No, then; why should it be?”

“Because I hear the church-bells ringing so.”

“Bless thy pretty heart! The bairn’s sick.
Come wi’ me, and I’ll hap thee up somewhere.[42]
If thou wert a bit cleaner I’d put thee in my own
bed, for the Lord’s sake. But come along here.”

But when Tom tried to get up, he was so tired
and giddy that she had to help him and lead him.

She put him in an outhouse upon soft sweet
hay and an old rug, and bade him sleep off his
walk, and she would come to him when school was
over, in an hour’s time.

And so she went in again, expecting Tom to
fall fast asleep at once.

But Tom did not fall asleep.

Instead of it he turned and tossed and kicked
about in the strangest way, and felt so hot all over
that he longed to get into the river and cool himself;
and then he fell half asleep, and dreamt that
he heard the little white lady crying to him, “Oh,
you’re so dirty; go and be washed”; and then
that he heard the Irishwoman saying, “Those that
wish to be clean, clean they will be.” And then
he heard the church-bells ring so loud, close to
him too, that he was sure it must be Sunday, in
spite of what the old dame had said; and he
would go to church, and see what a church was
like inside, for he had never been in one, poor
little fellow, in all his life. But the people would
never let him come in, all over soot and dirt like
that. He must go to the river and wash first.
And he said out loud again and again, though
being half asleep he did not know it, “I must be
clean, I must be clean.”

And all of a sudden he found himself, not in
the outhouse on the hay, but in the middle of a[43]
meadow, over the road, with the stream just before
him, saying continually, “I must be clean, I must
be clean.” He had got there on his own legs,
between sleep and awake, as children will often
get out of bed, and go about the room, when they
are not quite well. But he was not a bit surprised,
and went on to the bank of the brook, and lay
down on the grass, and looked into the clear, clear
limestone water, with every pebble at the bottom
bright and clean, while the little silver trout dashed
about in fright at the sight of his black face; and
he dipped his hand in and found it so cool, cool,
cool; and he said, “I will be a fish; I will swim
in the water; I must be clean, I must be clean.”

So he pulled off all his clothes in such haste
that he tore some of them, which was easy enough
with such ragged old things. And he put his
poor hot sore feet into the water; and then his
legs; and the farther he went in, the more the
church-bells rang in his head.

“Ah,” said Tom, “I must be quick and wash
myself; the bells are ringing quite loud now; and
they will stop soon, and then the door will be shut,
and I shall never be able to get in at all.”

Tom was mistaken: for in England the church
doors are left open all service time, for everybody
who likes to come in, Churchman or Dissenter;
ay, even if he were a Turk or a Heathen; and if
any man dared to turn him out, as long as he
behaved quietly, the good old English law would
punish that man, as he deserved, for ordering any
peaceable person out of God’s house, which belongs[44]
to all alike. But Tom did not know that, any
more than he knew a great deal more which people
ought to know.

“She was the Queen of them all.”—P.44

And all the while he never saw the Irishwoman,
not behind him this time, but before.

For just before he came to the river side, she
had stept down into the cool clear water; and her
shawl and her petticoat floated off her, and the
green water-weeds floated round her sides, and the
white water-lilies floated round her head, and the
fairies of the stream came up from the bottom and
bore her away and down upon their arms; for she
was the Queen of them all; and perhaps of more
besides.

“Where have you been?” they asked her.

“I have been smoothing sick folks’ pillows,
and whispering sweet dreams into their ears;
opening cottage casements, to let out the stifling
air; coaxing little children away from gutters, and
foul pools where fever breeds; turning women
from the gin-shop door, and staying men’s hands
as they were going to strike their wives; doing
all I can to help those who will not help themselves;
and little enough that is, and weary work
for me. But I have brought you a new little
brother, and watched him safe all the way here.”

Then all the fairies laughed for joy at the
thought that they had a little brother coming.

“But mind, maidens, he must not see you, or
know that you are here. He is but a savage now,
and like the beasts which perish; and from the
beasts which perish he must learn. So you must[45]
not play with him, or speak to him, or let him
see you: but only keep him from being harmed.”

Then the fairies were sad, because they could
not play with their new brother, but they always
did what they were told.

And their Queen floated away down the river;
and whither she went, thither she came. But all
this Tom, of course, never saw or heard: and
perhaps if he had it would have made little difference
in the story; for he was so hot and thirsty,
and longed so to be clean for once, that he tumbled
himself as quick as he could into the clear cool
stream.

And he had not been in it two minutes before
he fell fast asleep, into the quietest, sunniest, cosiest
sleep that ever he had in his life; and he dreamt
about the green meadows by which he had walked
that morning, and the tall elm-trees, and the sleeping
cows; and after that he dreamt of nothing at all.

The reason of his falling into such a delightful
sleep is very simple; and yet hardly any one has
found it out. It was merely that the fairies took
him.

Some people think that there are no fairies.
Cousin Cramchild tells little folks so in his Conversations.
Well, perhaps there are none—in
Boston, U.S., where he was raised. There are
only a clumsy lot of spirits there, who can’t make
people hear without thumping on the table: but
they get their living thereby, and I suppose that is
all they want. And Aunt Agitate, in her Arguments
on political economy, says there are none.[46]
Well, perhaps there are none—in her political
economy. But it is a wide world, my little man—and
thank Heaven for it, for else, between
crinolines and theories, some of us would get
squashed—and plenty of room in it for fairies,
without people seeing them; unless, of course,
they look in the right place. The most wonderful
and the strongest things in the world, you know,
are just the things which no one can see. There
is life in you; and it is the life in you which
makes you grow, and move, and think: and yet
you can’t see it. And there is steam in a steam-engine;
and that is what makes it move: and yet
you can’t see it; and so there may be fairies in the
world, and they may be just what makes the world
go round to the old tune of

You don’t see the logic of that? Perhaps not.
Then please not to see the logic of a great many
arguments exactly like it, which you will hear
before your beard is grey.[47]

The kind old dame came back at twelve, when
school was over, to look at Tom: but there was
no Tom there. She looked about for his footprints;
but the ground was so hard that there was no slot,
as they say in dear old North Devon. And if you
grow up to be a brave healthy man, you may know
some day what no slot means, and know too, I
hope, what a slot does mean—a broad slot, with
blunt claws, which makes a man put out his cigar,
and set his teeth, and tighten his girths, when he
sees it; and what his rights mean, if he has them,
brow, bay, tray, and points; and see something
worth seeing between Haddon Wood and Countisbury
Cliff, with good Mr. Palk Collyns to show
you the way, and mend your bones as fast as you
smash them. Only when that jolly day comes,
please don’t break your neck; stogged in a mire
you never will be, I trust; for you are a heath-cropper
bred and born.

So the old dame went in again quite sulky,
thinking that little Tom had tricked her with a
false story, and shammed ill, and then run away
again.

But she altered her mind the next day. For,
when Sir John and the rest of them had run themselves
out of breath, and lost Tom, they went back
again, looking very foolish.

And they looked more foolish still when Sir
John heard more of the story from the nurse; and
more foolish still, again, when they heard the
whole story from Miss Ellie, the little lady in
white. All she had seen was a poor little black[48]
chimney-sweep, crying and sobbing, and going to
get up the chimney again. Of course, she was
very much frightened: and no wonder. But that
was all. The boy had taken nothing in the room;
by the mark of his little sooty feet, they could see
that he had never been off the hearthrug till the
nurse caught hold of him. It was all a mistake.

So Sir John told Grimes to go home, and
promised him five shillings if he would bring the
boy quietly up to him, without beating him, that
he might be sure of the truth. For he took for
granted, and Grimes too, that Tom had made his
way home.

But no Tom came back to Mr. Grimes that
evening; and he went to the police-office, to tell
them to look out for the boy. But no Tom was
heard of. As for his having gone over those great
fells to Vendale, they no more dreamed of that
than of his having gone to the moon.

So Mr. Grimes came up to Harthover next
day with a very sour face; but when he got there,
Sir John was over the hills and far away; and Mr.
Grimes had to sit in the outer servants’ hall all
day, and drink strong ale to wash away his sorrows;
and they were washed away long before Sir John
came back.

For good Sir John had slept very badly that
night; and he said to his lady, “My dear, the
boy must have got over into the grouse-moors, and
lost himself; and he lies very heavily on my
conscience, poor little lad. But I know what I
will do.”[49]

So, at five the next morning up he got, and
into his bath, and into his shooting-jacket and
gaiters, and into the stableyard, like a fine old
English gentleman, with a face as red as a rose,
and a hand as hard as a table, and a back as broad
as a bullock’s; and bade them bring his shooting
pony, and the keeper to come on his pony, and the
huntsman, and the first whip, and the second whip,
and the under-keeper with the bloodhound in a
leash—a great dog as tall as a calf, of the colour of
a gravel-walk, with mahogany ears and nose, and
a throat like a church-bell. They took him up to
the place where Tom had gone into the wood;
and there the hound lifted up his mighty voice,
and told them all he knew.

Then he took them to the place where Tom
had climbed the wall; and they shoved it down,
and all got through.

And then the wise dog took them over the
moor, and over the fells, step by step, very slowly;
for the scent was a day old, you know, and very
light from the heat and drought. But that was why
cunning old Sir John started at five in the morning.

And at last he came to the top of Lewthwaite
Crag, and there he bayed, and looked up in their
faces, as much as to say, “I tell you he is gone
down here!”

They could hardly believe that Tom would
have gone so far; and when they looked at that
awful cliff, they could never believe that he would
have dared to face it. But if the dog said so, it
must be true.[50]

“Heaven forgive us!” said Sir John. “If we
find him at all, we shall find him lying at the
bottom.” And he slapped his great hand upon
his great thigh, and said—

“Who will go down over Lewthwaite Crag,
and see if that boy is alive? Oh that I were
twenty years younger, and I would go down
myself!” And so he would have done, as well
as any sweep in the county. Then he said—

“Twenty pounds to the man who brings me
that boy alive!” and as was his way, what he said
he meant.

Now among the lot was a little groom-boy, a
very little groom indeed; and he was the same
who had ridden up the court, and told Tom to
come to the Hall; and he said—

“Twenty pounds or none, I will go down over
Lewthwaite Crag, if it’s only for the poor boy’s
sake. For he was as civil a spoken little chap as
ever climbed a flue.”

So down over Lewthwaite Crag he went: a
very smart groom he was at the top, and a very
shabby one at the bottom; for he tore his gaiters,
and he tore his breeches, and he tore his jacket,
and he burst his braces, and he burst his boots, and
he lost his hat, and what was worst of all, he lost
his shirt pin, which he prized very much, for it
was gold, and he had won it in a raffle at Malton,
and there was a figure at the top of it, of t’ould
mare, noble old Beeswing herself, as natural as
life; so it was a really severe loss: but he never
saw anything of Tom.[51]

And all the while Sir John and the rest were
riding round, full three miles to the right, and
back again, to get into Vendale, and to the foot of
the crag.

When they came to the old dame’s school, all
the children came out to see. And the old dame
came out too; and when she saw Sir John, she
curtsied very low, for she was a tenant of his.

“Well, dame, and how are you?” said Sir
John.

“Blessings on you as broad as your back,
Harthover,” says she—she didn’t call him Sir
John, but only Harthover, for that is the fashion
in the North country—”and welcome into Vendale:
but you’re no hunting the fox this time of
the year?”

“I am hunting, and strange game too,” said he.

“Blessings on your heart, and what makes you
look so sad the morn?”

“I’m looking for a lost child, a chimney-sweep,
that is run away.”

“Oh, Harthover, Harthover,” says she, “ye
were always a just man and a merciful; and ye’ll
no harm the poor little lad if I give you tidings of
him?”

“Not I, not I, dame. I’m afraid we hunted
him out of the house all on a miserable mistake,
and the hound has brought him to the top of
Lewthwaite Crag, and——”

Whereat the old dame broke out crying,
without letting him finish his story.

“So he told me the truth after all, poor little[52]
dear! Ah, first thoughts are best, and a body’s
heart’ll guide them right, if they will but hearken
to it.” And then she told Sir John all.

“Bring the dog here, and lay him on,” said
Sir John, without another word, and he set his
teeth very hard.

And the dog opened at once; and went away
at the back of the cottage, over the road, and over
the meadow, and through a bit of alder copse;
and there, upon an alder stump, they saw Tom’s
clothes lying. And then they knew as much
about it all as there was any need to know.

And Tom?

Ah, now comes the most wonderful part of this
wonderful story. Tom, when he woke, for of
course he woke—children always wake after they
have slept exactly as long as is good for them—found
himself swimming about in the stream,
being about four inches, or—that I may be accurate—3.87902
inches long, and having round
the parotid region of his fauces a set of external
gills (I hope you understand all the big words)
just like those of a sucking eft, which he mistook
for a lace frill, till he pulled at them, found he
hurt himself, and made up his mind that they
were part of himself, and best left alone.

In fact, the fairies had turned him into a water-baby.

A water-baby? You never heard of a water-baby.
Perhaps not. That is the very reason why
this story was written. There are a great many
things in the world which you never heard of;[53]
and a great many more which nobody ever heard
of; and a great many things, too, which nobody
will ever hear of, at least until the coming of the
Cocqcigrues, when man shall be the measure of
all things.

“But there are no such things as water-babies.”

How do you know that? Have you been
there to see? And if you had been there to see,
and had seen none, that would not prove that there
were none. If Mr. Garth does not find a fox in
Eversley Wood—as folks sometimes fear he never
will—that does not prove that there are no such
things as foxes. And as is Eversley Wood to all
the woods in England, so are the waters we know
to all the waters in the world. And no one has a
right to say that no water-babies exist, till they
have seen no water-babies existing; which is quite
a different thing, mind, from not seeing water-babies;
and a thing which nobody ever did, or
perhaps ever will do.

“But surely if there were water-babies, somebody
would have caught one at least?”

Well. How do you know that somebody has
not?

“But they would have put it into spirits, or
into the Illustrated News, or perhaps cut it into
two halves, poor dear little thing, and sent one to
Professor Owen, and one to Professor Huxley, to
see what they would each say about it.”

Ah, my dear little man! that does not follow
at all, as you will see before the end of the story.

“But a water-baby is contrary to nature.”[54]

Well, but, my dear little man, you must learn
to talk about such things, when you grow older,
in a very different way from that. You must not
talk about “ain’t” and “can’t” when you speak of
this great wonderful world round you, of which
the wisest man knows only the very smallest
corner, and is, as the great Sir Isaac Newton said,
only a child picking up pebbles on the shore of
a boundless ocean.

You must not say that this cannot be, or that
that is contrary to nature. You do not know what
Nature is, or what she can do; and nobody
knows; not even Sir Roderick Murchison, or
Professor Owen, or Professor Sedgwick, or Professor
Huxley, or Mr. Darwin, or Professor
Faraday, or Mr. Grove, or any other of the great
men whom good boys are taught to respect.
They are very wise men; and you must listen
respectfully to all they say: but even if they
should say, which I am sure they never would,
“That cannot exist. That is contrary to nature,”
you must wait a little, and see; for perhaps even
they may be wrong. It is only children who read
Aunt Agitate’s Arguments, or Cousin Cramchild’s
Conversations; or lads who go to popular lectures,
and see a man pointing at a few big ugly pictures
on the wall, or making nasty smells with bottles
and squirts, for an hour or two, and calling that
anatomy or chemistry—who talk about “cannot
exist,” and “contrary to nature.” Wise men are
afraid to say that there is anything contrary to
nature, except what is contrary to mathematical[55]
truth; for two and two cannot make five, and two
straight lines cannot join twice, and a part cannot
be as great as the whole, and so on (at least, so it
seems at present): but the wiser men are, the less
they talk about “cannot.” That is a very rash,
dangerous word, that “cannot”; and if people use
it too often, the Queen of all the Fairies, who
makes the clouds thunder and the fleas bite, and
takes just as much trouble about one as about the
other, is apt to astonish them suddenly by showing
them, that though they say she cannot, yet she
can, and what is more, will, whether they approve
or not.

And therefore it is, that there are dozens and
hundreds of things in the world which we should
certainly have said were contrary to nature, if we
did not see them going on under our eyes all day
long. If people had never seen little seeds grow
into great plants and trees, of quite different shape
from themselves, and these trees again produce
fresh seeds, to grow into fresh trees, they would
have said, “The thing cannot be; it is contrary to
nature.” And they would have been quite as right
in saying so, as in saying that most other things
cannot be.

Or suppose again, that you had come, like M.
Du Chaillu, a traveller from unknown parts; and
that no human being had ever seen or heard of an
elephant. And suppose that you described him to
people, and said, “This is the shape, and plan, and
anatomy of the beast, and of his feet, and of his
trunk, and of his grinders, and of his tusks, though[56]
they are not tusks at all, but two fore teeth run
mad; and this is the section of his skull, more like
a mushroom than a reasonable skull of a reasonable
or unreasonable beast; and so forth, and so forth;
and though the beast (which I assure you I have
seen and shot) is first cousin to the little hairy coney
of Scripture, second cousin to a pig, and (I suspect)
thirteenth or fourteenth cousin to a rabbit, yet he is
the wisest of all beasts, and can do everything save
read, write, and cast accounts.” People would
surely have said, “Nonsense; your elephant is
contrary to nature”; and have thought you were
telling stories—as the French thought of Le
Vaillant when he came back to Paris and said that
he had shot a giraffe; and as the king of the
Cannibal Islands thought of the English sailor,
when he said that in his country water turned to
marble, and rain fell as feathers. They would
tell you, the more they knew of science, “Your
elephant is an impossible monster, contrary to the
laws of comparative anatomy, as far as yet known.”
To which you would answer the less, the more
you thought.

Did not learned men, too, hold, till within the
last twenty-five years, that a flying dragon was an
impossible monster? And do we not now know
that there are hundreds of them found fossil up
and down the world? People call them Pterodactyles:
but that is only because they are ashamed
to call them flying dragons, after denying so long
that flying dragons could exist.

The truth is, that folks’ fancy that such and[57]
such things cannot be, simply because they have
not seen them, is worth no more than a savage’s
fancy that there cannot be such a thing as a
locomotive, because he never saw one running wild
in the forest. Wise men know that their business
is to examine what is, and not to settle what is
not. They know that there are elephants; they
know that there have been flying dragons; and the
wiser they are, the less inclined they will be to say
positively that there are no water-babies.

No water-babies, indeed? Why, wise men of
old said that everything on earth had its double in
the water; and you may see that that is, if not
quite true, still quite as true as most other theories
which you are likely to hear for many a day. There
are land-babies—then why not water-babies? Are
there not water-rats, water-flies, water-crickets, water-crabs,
water-tortoises, water-scorpions, water-tigers and
water-hogs, water-cats and water-dogs, sea-lions and
sea-bears, sea-horses and sea-elephants, sea-mice and
sea-urchins, sea-razors and sea-pens, sea-combs and sea-fans;
and of plants, are there not water-grass, and
water-crowfoot, water-milfoil, and so on, without end?

“But all these things are only nicknames; the
water things are not really akin to the land things.”

That’s not always true. They are, in millions
of cases, not only of the same family, but actually
the same individual creatures. Do not even you
know that a green drake, and an alder-fly, and a
dragon-fly, live under water till they change their
skins, just as Tom changed his? And if a water
animal can continually change into a land animal,[58]
why should not a land animal sometimes change
into a water animal? Don’t be put down by any
of Cousin Cramchild’s arguments, but stand up to
him like a man, and answer him (quite respectfully,
of course) thus:—

If Cousin Cramchild says, that if there are
water-babies, they must grow into water-men, ask
him how he knows that they do not? and then,
how he knows that they must, any more than the
Proteus of the Adelsberg caverns grows into a
perfect newt.

If he says that it is too strange a transformation
for a land-baby to turn into a water-baby,
ask him if he ever heard of the transformation
of Syllis, or the Distomas, or the common jelly-fish,
of which M. Quatrefages says excellently well—”Who
would not exclaim that a miracle had
come to pass, if he saw a reptile come out of the
egg dropped by the hen in his poultry-yard, and
the reptile give birth at once to an indefinite
number of fishes and birds? Yet the history of the
jelly-fish is quite as wonderful as that would be.”
Ask him if he knows about all this; and if he does
not, tell him to go and look for himself; and advise
him (very respectfully, of course) to settle no more
what strange things cannot happen, till he has
seen what strange things do happen every day.

If he says that things cannot degrade, that is,
change downwards into lower forms, ask him, who
told him that water-babies were lower than land-babies?
But even if they were, does he know
about the strange degradation of the common goose-barnacles,[59]
which one finds sticking on ships’
bottoms; or the still stranger degradation of some
cousins of theirs, of which one hardly likes to talk,
so shocking and ugly it is?

And, lastly, if he says (as he most certainly
will) that these transformations only take place in
the lower animals, and not in the higher, say that
that seems to little boys, and to some grown people,
a very strange fancy. For if the changes of the
lower animals are so wonderful, and so difficult to
discover, why should not there be changes in the
higher animals far more wonderful, and far more
difficult to discover? And may not man, the
crown and flower of all things, undergo some
change as much more wonderful than all the rest,
as the Great Exhibition is more wonderful than a
rabbit-burrow? Let him answer that. And if he
says (as he will) that not having seen such a change
in his experience, he is not bound to believe it, ask
him respectfully, where his microscope has been?
Does not each of us, in coming into this world, go
through a transformation just as wonderful as that
of a sea-egg, or a butterfly? and do not reason and
analogy, as well as Scripture, tell us that that transformation
is not the last? and that, though what
we shall be, we know not, yet we are here but as the
crawling caterpillar, and shall be hereafter as the
perfect fly. The old Greeks, heathens as they
were, saw as much as that two thousand years ago;
and I care very little for Cousin Cramchild, if he
sees even less than they. And so forth, and so
forth, till he is quite cross. And then tell him[60]
that if there are no water-babies, at least there
ought to be; and that, at least, he cannot answer.

And meanwhile, my dear little man, till you
know a great deal more about nature than Professor
Owen and Professor Huxley put together, don’t
tell me about what cannot be, or fancy that anything
is too wonderful to be true. “We are fearfully
and wonderfully made,” said old David; and
so we are; and so is everything around us, down
to the very deal table. Yes; much more fearfully
and wonderfully made, already, is the table, as it
stands now, nothing but a piece of dead deal wood,
than if, as foxes say, and geese believe, spirits could
make it dance, or talk to you by rapping on it.

Am I in earnest? Oh dear no! Don’t you
know that this is a fairy tale, and all fun and pretence;
and that you are not to believe one word
of it, even if it is true?

But at all events, so it happened to Tom.
And, therefore, the keeper, and the groom, and Sir
John made a great mistake, and were very unhappy
(Sir John at least) without any reason, when they
found a black thing in the water, and said it was
Tom’s body, and that he had been drowned. They
were utterly mistaken. Tom was quite alive; and
cleaner, and merrier, than he ever had been. The
fairies had washed him, you see, in the swift river,
so thoroughly, that not only his dirt, but his whole
husk and shell had been washed quite off him, and
the pretty little real Tom was washed out of the
inside of it, and swam away, as a caddis does when
its case of stones and silk is bored through, and[61]
away it goes on its back, paddling to the shore,
there to split its skin, and fly away as a caperer, on
four fawn-coloured wings, with long legs and
horns. They are foolish fellows, the caperers, and
fly into the candle at night, if you leave the door
open. We will hope Tom will be wiser, now he
has got safe out of his sooty old shell.

But good Sir John did not understand all this,
not being a fellow of the Linnæan Society; and he
took it into his head that Tom was drowned.
When they looked into the empty pockets of his
shell, and found no jewels there, nor money—nothing
but three marbles, and a brass button with
a string to it—then Sir John did something as like
crying as ever he did in his life, and blamed himself
more bitterly than he need have done. So he
cried, and the groom-boy cried, and the huntsman
cried, and the dame cried, and the little girl cried,
and the dairymaid cried, and the old nurse cried
(for it was somewhat her fault), and my lady cried,
for though people have wigs, that is no reason why
they should not have hearts; but the keeper did
not cry, though he had been so good-natured to
Tom the morning before; for he was so dried up
with running after poachers, that you could no
more get tears out of him than milk out of leather:
and Grimes did not cry, for Sir John gave him ten
pounds, and he drank it all in a week. Sir John
sent, far and wide, to find Tom’s father and mother:
but he might have looked till Doomsday for them,
for one was dead, and the other was in Botany Bay.
And the little girl would not play with her dolls for[62]
a whole week, and never forgot poor little Tom.
And soon my lady put a pretty little tombstone
over Tom’s shell in the little churchyard in Vendale,
where the old dalesmen all sleep side by side
between the limestone crags. And the dame
decked it with garlands every Sunday, till she grew
so old that she could not stir abroad; then the
little children decked it for her. And always she
sang an old old song, as she sat spinning what she
called her wedding-dress. The children could not
understand it, but they liked it none the less for
that; for it was very sweet, and very sad; and
that was enough for them. And these are the
words of it:—

[63]

Those are the words: but they are only the
body of it: the soul of the song was the dear old
woman’s sweet face, and sweet voice, and the sweet
old air to which she sang; and that, alas! one
cannot put on paper. And at last she grew so
stiff and lame, that the angels were forced to carry
her; and they helped her on with her wedding-dress,
and carried her up over Harthover Fells, and
a long way beyond that too; and there was a new
schoolmistress in Vendale, and we will hope that
she was not certificated.

And all the while Tom was swimming about
in the river, with a pretty little lace-collar of gills
about his neck, as lively as a grig, and as clean as
a fresh-run salmon.

Now if you don’t like my story, then go to the
schoolroom and learn your multiplication-table, and
see if you like that better. Some people, no doubt,
would do so. So much the better for us, if not for
them. It takes all sorts, they say, to make a world.

[64]

[65]

CHAPTER III

You had better, then, ask the nearest Government
pupil-teacher, who may possibly answer you
smartly enough, thus—

“Amphibious. Adjective, derived from two
Greek words, amphi, a fish, and bios, a beast. An
animal supposed by our ignorant ancestors to be
compounded of a fish and a beast; which therefore,
like the hippopotamus, can’t live on the land,
and dies in the water.”

However that may be, Tom was amphibious:
and what is better still, he was clean. For the
first time in his life, he felt how comfortable it
was to have nothing on him but himself. But he
only enjoyed it: he did not know it, or think about
it; just as you enjoy life and health, and yet never
think about being alive and healthy; and may it
be long before you have to think about it!

He did not remember having ever been dirty.
Indeed, he did not remember any of his old
troubles, being tired, or hungry, or beaten, or sent
up dark chimneys. Since that sweet sleep, he had
forgotten all about his master, and Harthover[66]
Place, and the little white girl, and in a word, all
that had happened to him when he lived before;
and what was best of all, he had forgotten all the
bad words which he had learned from Grimes,
and the rude boys with whom he used to play.

That is not strange: for you know, when you
came into this world, and became a land-baby, you
remembered nothing. So why should he, when
he became a water-baby?

Then have you lived before?

My dear child, who can tell? One can only
tell that, by remembering something which happened
where we lived before; and as we remember
nothing, we know nothing about it; and no book,
and no man, can ever tell us certainly.

There was a wise man once, a very wise man,
and a very good man, who wrote a poem about
the feelings which some children have about having
lived before; and this is what he said—

There, you can know no more than that. But
if I was you, I would believe that. For then the
great fairy Science, who is likely to be queen of[67]
all the fairies for many a year to come, can only
do you good, and never do you harm; and instead
of fancying, with some people, that your body
makes your soul, as if a steam-engine could make
its own coke; or, with some people, that your
soul has nothing to do with your body, but is only
stuck into it like a pin into a pin-cushion, to fall
out with the first shake;—you will believe the
one true,

doctrine of this wonderful fairy tale; which is,
that your soul makes your body, just as a snail
makes his shell. For the rest, it is enough for us
to be sure that whether or not we lived before, we
shall live again; though not, I hope, as poor little
heathen Tom did. For he went downward into
the water: but we, I hope, shall go upward to a
very different place.

But Tom was very happy in the water. He
had been sadly overworked in the land-world; and
so now, to make up for that, he had nothing but
holidays in the water-world for a long, long time
to come. He had nothing to do now but enjoy
himself, and look at all the pretty things which are[68]
to be seen in the cool clear water-world, where the
sun is never too hot, and the frost is never too cold.

And what did he live on? Water-cresses, perhaps;
or perhaps water-gruel, and water-milk;
too many land-babies do so likewise. But we do
not know what one-tenth of the water-things eat;
so we are not answerable for the water-babies.

Sometimes he went along the smooth gravel
water-ways, looking at the crickets which ran in
and out among the stones, as rabbits do on land;
or he climbed over the ledges of rock, and saw the
sand-pipes hanging in thousands, with every one of
them a pretty little head and legs peeping out; or
he went into a still corner, and watched the caddises
eating dead sticks as greedily as you would eat
plum-pudding, and building their houses with silk
and glue. Very fanciful ladies they were; none of
them would keep to the same materials for a day.
One would begin with some pebbles; then she
would stick on a piece of green wood; then she
found a shell, and stuck it on too; and the poor
shell was alive, and did not like at all being taken
to build houses with: but the caddis did not let
him have any voice in the matter, being rude and
selfish, as vain people are apt to be; then she stuck
on a piece of rotten wood, then a very smart pink
stone, and so on, till she was patched all over like
an Irishman’s coat. Then she found a long straw,
five times as long as herself, and said, “Hurrah!
my sister has a tail, and I’ll have one too”; and
she stuck it on her back, and marched about with
it quite proud, though it was very inconvenient[69]
indeed. And, at that, tails became all the fashion
among the caddis-baits in that pool, as they were
at the end of the Long Pond last May, and they
all toddled about with long straws sticking out
behind, getting between each other’s legs, and
tumbling over each other, and looking so ridiculous,
that Tom laughed at them till he cried, as we did.
But they were quite right, you know; for people
must always follow the fashion, even if it be
spoon-bonnets.

Then sometimes he came to a deep still reach;
and there he saw the water-forests. They would
have looked to you only little weeds: but Tom,
you must remember, was so little that everything
looked a hundred times as big to him as it does to
you, just as things do to a minnow, who sees and
catches the little water-creatures which you can
only see in a microscope.

And in the water-forest he saw the water-monkeys
and water-squirrels (they had all six legs,
though; everything almost has six legs in the
water, except efts and water-babies); and nimbly
enough they ran among the branches. There were
water-flowers there too, in thousands; and Tom
tried to pick them: but as soon as he touched
them, they drew themselves in and turned into
knots of jelly; and then Tom saw that they were
all alive—bells, and stars, and wheels, and flowers,
of all beautiful shapes and colours; and all alive
and busy, just as Tom was. So now he found that
there was a great deal more in the world than he
had fancied at first sight.[70]

There was one wonderful little fellow, too, who
peeped out of the top of a house built of round
bricks. He had two big wheels, and one little one,
all over teeth, spinning round and round like the
wheels in a thrashing-machine; and Tom stood
and stared at him, to see what he was going to
make with his machinery. And what do you
think he was doing? Brick-making. With his
two big wheels he swept together all the mud
which floated in the water: all that was nice in it
he put into his stomach and ate; and all the mud
he put into the little wheel on his breast, which
really was a round hole set with teeth; and there
he spun it into a neat hard round brick; and then
he took it and stuck it on the top of his house-wall,
and set to work to make another. Now was not
he a clever little fellow?

Tom thought so: but when he wanted to talk
to him the brick-maker was much too busy and
proud of his work to take notice of him.

Now you must know that all the things under
the water talk; only not such a language as ours;
but such as horses, and dogs, and cows, and birds
talk to each other; and Tom soon learned to understand
them and talk to them; so that he might
have had very pleasant company if he had only
been a good boy. But I am sorry to say, he was
too like some other little boys, very fond of hunting
and tormenting creatures for mere sport. Some
people say that boys cannot help it; that it is
nature, and only a proof that we are all originally
descended from beasts of prey. But whether it is[71]
nature or not, little boys can help it, and must help
it. For if they have naughty, low, mischievous
tricks in their nature, as monkeys have, that is no
reason why they should give way to those tricks
like monkeys, who know no better. And therefore
they must not torment dumb creatures; for if
they do, a certain old lady who is coming will
surely give them exactly what they deserve.

But Tom did not know that; and he pecked
and howked the poor water-things about sadly, till
they were all afraid of him, and got out of his way,
or crept into their shells; so he had no one to
speak to or play with.

The water-fairies, of course, were very sorry to
see him so unhappy, and longed to take him, and
tell him how naughty he was, and teach him to
be good, and to play and romp with him too: but
they had been forbidden to do that. Tom had to
learn his lesson for himself by sound and sharp
experience, as many another foolish person has to
do, though there may be many a kind heart yearning
over them all the while, and longing to teach
them what they can only teach themselves.

At last one day he found a caddis, and wanted
it to peep out of its house: but its house-door was
shut. He had never seen a caddis with a house-door
before: so what must he do, the meddlesome
little fellow, but pull it open, to see what the poor
lady was doing inside. What a shame! How
should you like to have any one breaking your
bedroom-door in, to see how you looked when you
were in bed? So Tom broke to pieces the door,[72]
which was the prettiest little grating of silk, stuck
all over with shining bits of crystal; and when he
looked in, the caddis poked out her head, and it
had turned into just the shape of a bird’s. But
when Tom spoke to her she could not answer; for
her mouth and face were tight tied up in a new
night-cap of neat pink skin. However, if she
didn’t answer, all the other caddises did; for they
held up their hands and shrieked like the cats in
Struwwelpeter: “Oh, you nasty horrid boy; there you
are at it again! And she had just laid herself up for
a fortnight’s sleep, and then she would have come out
with such beautiful wings, and flown about, and laid
such lots of eggs: and now you have broken her door,
and she can’t mend it because her mouth is tied up for
a fortnight, and she will die. Who sent you here to
worry us out of our lives?“

So Tom swam away. He was very much
ashamed of himself, and felt all the naughtier; as
little boys do when they have done wrong and
won’t say so.

Then he came to a pool full of little trout, and
began tormenting them, and trying to catch them:
but they slipped through his fingers, and jumped
clean out of water in their fright. But as Tom
chased them, he came close to a great dark hover
under an alder root, and out floushed a huge old
brown trout ten times as big as he was, and ran
right against him, and knocked all the breath out
of his body; and I don’t know which was the more
frightened of the two.

Then he went on sulky and lonely, as he[73]
deserved to be; and under a bank he saw a very
ugly dirty creature sitting, about half as big as
himself; which had six legs, and a big stomach,
and a most ridiculous head with two great eyes and
a face just like a donkey’s.

“Oh,” said Tom, “you are an ugly fellow to be
sure!” and he began making faces at him; and put
his nose close to him, and halloed at him, like a
very rude boy.

When, hey presto; all the thing’s donkey-face
came off in a moment, and out popped a long arm
with a pair of pincers at the end of it, and caught
Tom by the nose. It did not hurt him much; but
it held him quite tight.

“Yah, ah! Oh, let me go!” cried Tom.

“Then let me go,” said the creature. “I want
to be quiet. I want to split.”

Tom promised to let him alone, and he let go.
“Why do you want to split?” said Tom.

“Because my brothers and sisters have all split,
and turned into beautiful creatures with wings; and
I want to split too. Don’t speak to me. I am sure
I shall split. I will split!”

Tom stood still, and watched him. And he
swelled himself, and puffed, and stretched himself
out stiff, and at last—crack, puff, bang—he opened
all down his back, and then up to the top of his
head.

And out of his inside came the most slender,
elegant, soft creature, as soft and smooth as Tom:
but very pale and weak, like a little child who has
been ill a long time in a dark room. It moved its[74]
legs very feebly; and looked about it half ashamed,
like a girl when she goes for the first time into a
ballroom; and then it began walking slowly up a
grass stem to the top of the water.

Tom was so astonished that he never said a
word: but he stared with all his eyes. And he
went up to the top of the water too, and peeped
out to see what would happen.

And as the creature sat in the warm bright
sun, a wonderful change came over it. It grew
strong and firm; the most lovely colours began to
show on its body, blue and yellow and black, spots
and bars and rings; out of its back rose four great
wings of bright brown gauze; and its eyes grew
so large that they filled all its head, and shone like
ten thousand diamonds.

“Oh, you beautiful creature!” said Tom; and
he put out his hand to catch it.

But the thing whirred up into the air, and
hung poised on its wings a moment, and then
settled down again by Tom quite fearless.

“No!” it said, “you cannot catch me. I am
a dragon-fly now, the king of all the flies; and I
shall dance in the sunshine, and hawk over the
river, and catch gnats, and have a beautiful wife
like myself. I know what I shall do. Hurrah!”
And he flew away into the air, and began catching
gnats.

“Oh! come back, come back,” cried Tom,
“you beautiful creature. I have no one to play
with, and I am so lonely here. If you will but
come back I will never try to catch you.”[75]

“I don’t care whether you do or not,” said the
dragon-fly; “for you can’t. But when I have
had my dinner, and looked a little about this pretty
place, I will come back, and have a little chat
about all I have seen in my travels. Why, what
a huge tree this is! and what huge leaves
on it!”

It was only a big dock: but you know the
dragon-fly had never seen any but little water-trees;
starwort, and milfoil, and water-crowfoot,
and such like; so it did look very big to him.
Besides, he was very short-sighted, as all dragon-flies
are; and never could see a yard before his
nose; any more than a great many other folks,
who are not half as handsome as he.

The dragon-fly did come back, and chatted
away with Tom. He was a little conceited about
his fine colours and his large wings; but you
know, he had been a poor dirty ugly creature all
his life before; so there were great excuses for
him. He was very fond of talking about all the
wonderful things he saw in the trees and the
meadows; and Tom liked to listen to him, for he
had forgotten all about them. So in a little while
they became great friends.

And I am very glad to say, that Tom learned
such a lesson that day, that he did not torment
creatures for a long time after. And then the
caddises grew quite tame, and used to tell him
strange stories about the way they built their
houses, and changed their skins, and turned at last
into winged flies; till Tom began to long to[76]
change his skin, and have wings like them some
day.

And the trout and he made it up (for trout
very soon forget if they have been frightened and
hurt). So Tom used to play with them at hare
and hounds, and great fun they had; and he used
to try to leap out of the water, head over heels,
as they did before a shower came on; but somehow
he never could manage it. He liked most, though,
to see them rising at the flies, as they sailed round
and round under the shadow of the great oak,
where the beetles fell flop into the water, and the
green caterpillars let themselves down from the
boughs by silk ropes for no reason at all; and then
changed their foolish minds for no reason at all
either; and hauled themselves up again into the
tree, rolling up the rope in a ball between their
paws; which is a very clever rope-dancer’s trick,
and neither Blondin nor Leotard could do it: but
why they should take so much trouble about it no
one can tell; for they cannot get their living, as
Blondin and Leotard do, by trying to break their
necks on a string.

And very often Tom caught them just as they
touched the water; and caught the alder-flies, and
the caperers, and the cock-tailed duns and spinners,
yellow, and brown, and claret, and grey, and gave
them to his friends the trout. Perhaps he was
not quite kind to the flies; but one must do a
good turn to one’s friends when one can.

And at last he gave up catching even the flies;
for he made acquaintance with one by accident[77]
and found him a very merry little fellow. And
this was the way it happened; and it is all quite
true.

He was basking at the top of the water one
hot day in July, catching duns and feeding the
trout, when he saw a new sort, a dark grey little
fellow with a brown head. He was a very little
fellow indeed: but he made the most of himself,
as people ought to do. He cocked up his head,
and he cocked up his wings, and he cocked up his
tail, and he cocked up the two whisks at his tail-end,
and, in short, he looked the cockiest little
man of all little men. And so he proved to be;
for instead of getting away, he hopped upon Tom’s
finger, and sat there as bold as nine tailors; and he
cried out in the tiniest, shrillest, squeakiest little
voice you ever heard,

“Much obliged to you, indeed; but I don’t
want it yet.”

“Want what?” said Tom, quite taken aback
by his impudence.

“Your leg, which you are kind enough to hold
out for me to sit on. I must just go and see after
my wife for a few minutes. Dear me! what a
troublesome business a family is!” (though the
idle little rogue did nothing at all, but left his
poor wife to lay all the eggs by herself). “When
I come back, I shall be glad of it, if you’ll be so
good as to keep it sticking out just so”; and off
he flew.

Tom thought him a very cool sort of personage;
and still more so, when, in five minutes he came[78]
back, and said—”Ah, you were tired waiting?
Well, your other leg will do as well.”

And he popped himself down on Tom’s knee,
and began chatting away in his squeaking voice.

“So you live under the water? It’s a low
place. I lived there for some time; and was very
shabby and dirty. But I didn’t choose that that
should last. So I turned respectable, and came up
to the top, and put on this grey suit. It’s a very
business-like suit, you think, don’t you?”

“Very neat and quiet indeed,” said Tom.

“Yes, one must be quiet and neat and respectable,
and all that sort of thing for a little, when
one becomes a family man. But I’m tired of it,
that’s the truth. I’ve done quite enough business,
I consider, in the last week, to last me my life.
So I shall put on a ball-dress, and go out and be a
smart man, and see the gay world, and have a
dance or two. Why shouldn’t one be jolly if one
can?”

“And what will become of your wife?”

“Oh! she is a very plain stupid creature, and
that’s the truth; and thinks about nothing but
eggs. If she chooses to come, why she may;
and if not, why I go without her;—and here
I go.”

And, as he spoke, he turned quite pale, and
then quite white.

“Why, you’re ill!” said Tom. But he did
not answer.

“You’re dead,” said Tom, looking at him as
he stood on his knee as white as a ghost.[79]

“No, I ain’t!” answered a little squeaking
voice over his head. “This is me up here, in my
ball-dress; and that’s my skin. Ha, ha! you
could not do such a trick as that!”

And no more Tom could, nor Houdin, nor
Robin, nor Frikell, nor all the conjurers in the
world. For the little rogue had jumped clean out
of his own skin, and left it standing on Tom’s
knee, eyes, wings, legs, tail, exactly as if it had
been alive.

“Ha, ha!” he said, and he jerked and skipped
up and down, never stopping an instant, just as if
he had St. Vitus’s dance. “Ain’t I a pretty fellow
now?”

And so he was; for his body was white,
and his tail orange, and his eyes all the
colours of a peacock’s tail. And what was
the oddest of all, the whisks at the end of his
tail had grown five times as long as they were
before.

“Ah!” said he, “now I will see the gay
world. My living won’t cost me much, for I
have no mouth, you see, and no inside; so I
can never be hungry nor have the stomach-ache
neither.”

No more he had. He had grown as dry and
hard and empty as a quill, as such silly shallow-hearted
fellows deserve to grow.

But, instead of being ashamed of his emptiness,
he was quite proud of it, as a good many fine
gentlemen are, and began flirting and flipping up
and down, and singing[80]—

And he danced up and down for three days and
three nights, till he grew so tired, that he tumbled
into the water, and floated down. But what
became of him Tom never knew, and he himself
never minded; for Tom heard him singing to the
last, as he floated down—

And if he did not care, why nobody else cared
either.

But one day Tom had a new adventure. He
was sitting on a water-lily leaf, he and his friend
the dragon-fly, watching the gnats dance. The
dragon-fly had eaten as many as he wanted, and
was sitting quite still and sleepy, for it was very
hot and bright. The gnats (who did not care the
least for their poor brothers’ death) danced a foot
over his head quite happily, and a large black fly
settled within an inch of his nose, and began
washing his own face and combing his hair with
his paws: but the dragon-fly never stirred, and
kept on chatting to Tom about the times when he
lived under the water.

Suddenly, Tom heard the strangest noise up
the stream; cooing, and grunting, and whining,
and squeaking, as if you had put into a bag two[81]
stock-doves, nine mice, three guinea-pigs, and a
blind puppy, and left them there to settle themselves
and make music.

He looked up the water, and there he saw a
sight as strange as the noise; a great ball rolling
over and over down the stream, seeming one
moment of soft brown fur, and the next of shining
glass: and yet it was not a ball; for sometimes it
broke up and streamed away in pieces, and then
it joined again; and all the while the noise came
out of it louder and louder.

Tom asked the dragon-fly what it could be:
but, of course, with his short sight, he could not
even see it, though it was not ten yards away. So
he took the neatest little header into the water,
and started off to see for himself; and, when he
came near, the ball turned out to be four or five
beautiful creatures, many times larger than Tom,
who were swimming about, and rolling, and diving,
and twisting, and wrestling, and cuddling, and
kissing, and biting, and scratching, in the most
charming fashion that ever was seen. And if you
don’t believe me, you may go to the Zoological
Gardens (for I am afraid that you won’t see it
nearer, unless, perhaps, you get up at five in the
morning, and go down to Cordery’s Moor, and
watch by the great withy pollard which hangs
over the backwater, where the otters breed sometimes),
and then say, if otters at play in the water
are not the merriest, lithest, gracefullest creatures
you ever saw.

But, when the biggest of them saw Tom, she[82]
darted out from the rest, and cried in the water-language
sharply enough, “Quick, children, here
is something to eat, indeed!” and came at poor
Tom, showing such a wicked pair of eyes, and
such a set of sharp teeth in a grinning mouth, that
Tom, who had thought her very handsome, said
to himself, Handsome is that handsome does, and
slipped in between the water-lily roots as fast as
he could, and then turned round and made faces
at her.

“Come out,” said the wicked old otter, “or it
will be worse for you.”

But Tom looked at her from between two
thick roots, and shook them with all his might,
making horrible faces all the while, just as he used
to grin through the railings at the old women,
when he lived before. It was not quite well bred,
no doubt; but you know, Tom had not finished
his education yet.

“Come away, children,” said the otter in
disgust, “it is not worth eating, after all. It is
only a nasty eft, which nothing eats, not even those
vulgar pike in the pond.”

“I am not an eft!” said Tom; “efts have
tails.”

“You are an eft,” said the otter, very positively;
“I see your two hands quite plain, and I know
you have a tail.”

“I tell you I have not,” said Tom. “Look
here!” and he turned his pretty little self quite
round; and sure enough, he had no more tail than
you.[83]

The otter might have got out of it by saying
that Tom was a frog: but, like a great many other
people, when she had once said a thing, she stood
to it, right or wrong; so she answered:

“I say you are an eft, and therefore you are,
and not fit food for gentlefolk like me and my
children. You may stay there till the salmon eat
you (she knew the salmon would not, but she
wanted to frighten poor Tom). Ha! ha! they
will eat you, and we will eat them”; and the
otter laughed such a wicked cruel laugh—as you
may hear them do sometimes; and the first time
that you hear it you will probably think it is
bogies.

“What are salmon?” asked Tom.

“Fish, you eft, great fish, nice fish to eat.
They are the lords of the fish, and we are
lords of the salmon”; and she laughed again.
“We hunt them up and down the pools, and drive
them up into a corner, the silly things; they are
so proud, and bully the little trout, and the
minnows, till they see us coming, and then they
are so meek all at once; and we catch them, but
we disdain to eat them all; we just bite out their
soft throats and suck their sweet juice—Oh, so
good!”—(and she licked her wicked lips)—”and
then throw them away, and go and catch another.
They are coming soon, children, coming soon; I
can smell the rain coming up off the sea, and then
hurrah for a fresh, and salmon, and plenty of eating
all day long.”

And the otter grew so proud that she turned[84]
head over heels twice, and then stood upright half
out of the water, grinning like a Cheshire cat.

“And where do they come from?” asked Tom,
who kept himself very close, for he was considerably
frightened.

“Out of the sea, eft, the great wide sea, where
they might stay and be safe if they liked. But
out of the sea the silly things come, into the great
river down below, and we come up to watch for
them; and when they go down again we go down
and follow them. And there we fish for the bass
and the pollock, and have jolly days along the
shore, and toss and roll in the breakers, and sleep
snug in the warm dry crags. Ah, that is a merry
life too, children, if it were not for those horrid
men.”

“What are men?” asked Tom; but somehow
he seemed to know before he asked.

“Two-legged things, eft: and, now I come to
look at you, they are actually something like you,
if you had not a tail” (she was determined that
Tom should have a tail), “only a great deal bigger,
worse luck for us; and they catch the fish with
hooks and lines, which get into our feet sometimes,
and set pots along the rocks to catch lobsters.
They speared my poor dear husband as he went
out to find something for me to eat. I was laid
up among the crags then, and we were very low
in the world, for the sea was so rough that no fish
would come in shore. But they speared him, poor
fellow, and I saw them carrying him away upon a
pole. Ah, he lost his life for your sakes, my[85]
children, poor dear obedient creature that he
was.”

And the otter grew so sentimental (for otters
can be very sentimental when they choose, like a
good many people who are both cruel and greedy,
and no good to anybody at all) that she sailed
solemnly away down the burn, and Tom saw her
no more for that time. And lucky it was for her
that she did so; for no sooner was she gone, than
down the bank came seven little rough terrier dogs,
snuffing and yapping, and grubbing and splashing,
in full cry after the otter. Tom hid among the water-lilies
till they were gone; for he could not guess
that they were the water-fairies come to help him.

But he could not help thinking of what the
otter had said about the great river and the broad
sea. And, as he thought, he longed to go and see
them. He could not tell why; but the more he
thought, the more he grew discontented with the
narrow little stream in which he lived, and all his
companions there; and wanted to get out into the
wide wide world, and enjoy all the wonderful
sights of which he was sure it was full.

And once he set off to go down the stream.
But the stream was very low; and when he came
to the shallows he could not keep under water, for
there was no water left to keep under. So the sun
burned his back and made him sick; and he went
back again and lay quiet in the pool for a whole
week more.

And then, on the evening of a very hot day, he
saw a sight.[86]

He had been very stupid all day, and so had
the trout; for they would not move an inch to
take a fly, though there were thousands on the
water, but lay dozing at the bottom under the
shade of the stones; and Tom lay dozing too, and
was glad to cuddle their smooth cool sides, for the
water was quite warm and unpleasant.

But toward evening it grew suddenly dark,
and Tom looked up and saw a blanket of black
clouds lying right across the valley above his head,
resting on the crags right and left. He felt not
quite frightened, but very still; for everything
was still. There was not a whisper of wind, nor
a chirp of a bird to be heard; and next a few
great drops of rain fell plop into the water, and
one hit Tom on the nose, and made him pop his
head down quickly enough.

And then the thunder roared, and the lightning
flashed, and leapt across Vendale and back again,
from cloud to cloud, and cliff to cliff, till the very
rocks in the stream seemed to shake: and Tom
looked up at it through the water, and thought it
the finest thing he ever saw in his life.

But out of the water he dared not put his head;
for the rain came down by bucketsful, and the hail
hammered like shot on the stream, and churned it
into foam; and soon the stream rose, and rushed
down, higher and higher, and fouler and fouler,
full of beetles, and sticks; and straws, and worms,
and addle-eggs, and wood-lice, and leeches, and
odds and ends, and omnium-gatherums, and this,
that, and the other, enough to fill nine museums.[87]

Tom could hardly stand against the stream, and
hid behind a rock. But the trout did not; for
out they rushed from among the stones, and began
gobbling the beetles and leeches in the most greedy
and quarrelsome way, and swimming about with
great worms hanging out of their mouths, tugging
and kicking to get them away from each other.

And now, by the flashes of the lightning, Tom
saw a new sight—all the bottom of the stream
alive with great eels, turning and twisting along,
all down stream and away. They had been hiding
for weeks past in the cracks of the rocks, and in
burrows in the mud; and Tom had hardly ever
seen them, except now and then at night: but
now they were all out, and went hurrying past
him so fiercely and wildly that he was quite
frightened. And as they hurried past he could
hear them say to each other, “We must run, we
must run. What a jolly thunderstorm! Down to
the sea, down to the sea!”

And then the otter came by with all her
brood, twining and sweeping along as fast as the
eels themselves; and she spied Tom as she came
by, and said:

“Now is your time, eft, if you want to see the
world. Come along, children, never mind those
nasty eels: we shall breakfast on salmon to-morrow.
Down to the sea, down to the sea!”

Then came a flash brighter than all the rest,
and by the light of it—in the thousandth part of
a second they were gone again—but he had seen
them, he was certain of it—Three beautiful little[88]
white girls, with their arms twined round each
other’s necks, floating down the torrent, as they
sang, “Down to the sea, down to the sea!”

“From which great trout rushed out on Tom.”—P. 88.

“Oh stay! Wait for me!” cried Tom; but
they were gone: yet he could hear their voices
clear and sweet through the roar of thunder and
water and wind, singing as they died away,
“Down to the sea!”

“Down to the sea?” said Tom; “everything
is going to the sea, and I will go too. Good-bye,
trout.” But the trout were so busy gobbling worms
that they never turned to answer him; so that Tom
was spared the pain of bidding them farewell.

And now, down the rushing stream, guided by
the bright flashes of the storm; past tall birch-fringed
rocks, which shone out one moment as
clear as day, and the next were dark as night;
past dark hovers under swirling banks, from which
great trout rushed out on Tom, thinking him to
be good to eat, and turned back sulkily, for the
fairies sent them home again with a tremendous
scolding, for daring to meddle with a water-baby;
on through narrow strids and roaring cataracts,
where Tom was deafened and blinded for a
moment by the rushing waters; along deep
reaches, where the white water-lilies tossed and
flapped beneath the wind and hail; past sleeping
villages; under dark bridge-arches, and away and
away to the sea. And Tom could not stop, and
did not care to stop; he would see the great world
below, and the salmon, and the breakers, and the
wide wide sea.[89]

And when the daylight came, Tom found
himself out in the salmon river.

And what sort of a river was it? Was it like
an Irish stream, winding through the brown bogs,
where the wild ducks squatter up from among the
white water-lilies, and the curlews flit to and fro,
crying “Tullie-wheep, mind your sheep”; and
Dennis tells you strange stories of the Peishtamore,
the great bogy-snake which lies in the black peat
pools, among the old pine-stems, and puts his head
out at night to snap at the cattle as they come
down to drink?—But you must not believe all
that Dennis tells you, mind; for if you ask him:

“Is there a salmon here, do you think,
Dennis?”

“Is it salmon, thin, your honour manes?
Salmon? Cartloads it is of thim, thin, an’ ridgmens,
shouldthering ache out of water, av’ ye’d
but the luck to see thim.”

Then you fish the pool all over, and never get
a rise.

“But there can’t be a salmon here, Dennis!
and, if you’ll but think, if one had come up last
tide, he’d be gone to the higher pools by now.”

“Shure thin, and your honour’s the thrue
fisherman, and understands it all like a book.
Why, ye spake as if ye’d known the wather a
thousand years! As I said, how could there be a
fish here at all, just now?”

“But you said just now they were shouldering
each other out of water?”

And then Dennis will look up at you with his[90]
handsome, sly, soft, sleepy, good-natured, untrustable,
Irish grey eye, and answer with the prettiest
smile:

“Shure, and didn’t I think your honour would
like a pleasant answer?”

So you must not trust Dennis, because he is in
the habit of giving pleasant answers: but, instead
of being angry with him, you must remember that
he is a poor Paddy, and knows no better; so you
must just burst out laughing; and then he will
burst out laughing too, and slave for you, and trot
about after you, and show you good sport if he
can—for he is an affectionate fellow, and as fond
of sport as you are—and if he can’t, tell you fibs
instead, a hundred an hour; and wonder all the
while why poor ould Ireland does not prosper like
England and Scotland, and some other places, where
folk have taken up a ridiculous fancy that honesty
is the best policy.

Or was it like a Welsh salmon river, which is
remarkable chiefly (at least, till this last year) for
containing no salmon, as they have been all poached
out by the enlightened peasantry, to prevent the
Cythrawl Sassenach (which means you, my little
dear, your kith and kin, and signifies much the
same as the Chinese Fan Quei) from coming bothering
into Wales, with good tackle, and ready money,
and civilisation, and common honesty, and other
like things of which the Cymry stand in no need
whatsoever?

Or was it such a salmon stream as I trust you
will see among the Hampshire water-meadows[91]
before your hairs are grey, under the wise new
fishing-laws?—when Winchester apprentices shall
covenant, as they did three hundred years ago, not
to be made to eat salmon more than three days a
week; and fresh-run fish shall be as plentiful under
Salisbury spire as they are in Holly-hole at Christchurch;
in the good time coming, when folks
shall see that, of all Heaven’s gifts of food, the
one to be protected most carefully is that worthy
gentleman salmon, who is generous enough to go
down to the sea weighing five ounces, and to come
back next year weighing five pounds, without
having cost the soil or the state one farthing?

Or was it like a Scotch stream, such as Arthur
Clough drew in his “Bothie”:—

Ah, my little man, when you are a big man,
and fish such a stream as that, you will hardly care,
I think, whether she be roaring down in full spate,
like coffee covered with scald cream, while the fish
are swirling at your fly as an oar-blade swirls in a
boat-race, or flashing up the cataract like silver[92]
arrows, out of the fiercest of the foam; or whether
the fall be dwindled to a single thread, and the
shingle below be as white and dusty as a turnpike
road, while the salmon huddle together in one
dark cloud in the clear amber pool, sleeping away
their time till the rain creeps back again off the
sea. You will not care much, if you have eyes
and brains; for you will lay down your rod contentedly,
and drink in at your eyes the beauty of
that glorious place; and listen to the water-ouzel
piping on the stones, and watch the yellow roes
come down to drink and look up at you with their
great soft trustful eyes, as much as to say, “You
could not have the heart to shoot at us?” And
then, if you have sense, you will turn and talk to
the great giant of a gilly who lies basking on the
stone beside you. He will tell you no fibs, my
little man; for he is a Scotchman, and fears God,
and not the priest; and, as you talk with him, you
will be surprised more and more at his knowledge,
his sense, his humour, his courtesy; and you will
find out—unless you have found it out before—that
a man may learn from his Bible to be a more
thorough gentleman than if he had been brought
up in all the drawing-rooms in London.

No. It was none of these, the salmon stream
at Harthover. It was such a stream as you see in
dear old Bewick; Bewick, who was born and bred
upon them. A full hundred yards broad it was,
sliding on from broad pool to broad shallow, and
broad shallow to broad pool, over great fields of
shingle, under oak and ash coverts, past low cliffs[93]
of sandstone, past green meadows, and fair parks,
and a great house of grey stone, and brown moors
above, and here and there against the sky the
smoking chimney of a colliery. You must look at
Bewick to see just what it was like, for he has
drawn it a hundred times with the care and the
love of a true north countryman; and, even if you
do not care about the salmon river, you ought, like
all good boys, to know your Bewick.

At least, so old Sir John used to say, and very
sensibly he put it too, as he was wont to do:

“If they want to describe a finished young
gentleman in France, I hear, they say of him, ‘Il
sait son Rabelais.‘ But if I want to describe one in
England, I say, ‘He knows his Bewick.‘ And I
think that is the higher compliment.”

But Tom thought nothing about what the river
was like. All his fancy was, to get down to the
wide wide sea.

And after a while he came to a place where the
river spread out into broad still shallow reaches, so
wide that little Tom, as he put his head out of the
water, could hardly see across.

And there he stopped. He got a little
frightened. “This must be the sea,” he thought.
“What a wide place it is! If I go on into it I
shall surely lose my way, or some strange thing
will bite me. I will stop here and look out for the
otter, or the eels, or some one to tell me where I
shall go.”

So he went back a little way, and crept into a
crack of the rock, just where the river opened out[94]
into the wide shallows, and watched for some one
to tell him his way: but the otter and the eels
were gone on miles and miles down the stream.

There he waited, and slept too, for he was quite
tired with his night’s journey; and, when he woke,
the stream was clearing to a beautiful amber hue,
though it was still very high. And after a while
he saw a sight which made him jump up; for he
knew in a moment it was one of the things which
he had come to look for.

Such a fish! ten times as big as the biggest
trout, and a hundred times as big as Tom, sculling
up the stream past him, as easily as Tom had
sculled down.

Such a fish! shining silver from head to tail,
and here and there a crimson dot; with a grand
hooked nose and grand curling lip, and a grand
bright eye, looking round him as proudly as a king,
and surveying the water right and left as if all
belonged to him. Surely he must be the salmon,
the king of all the fish.

Tom was so frightened that he longed to creep
into a hole; but he need not have been; for salmon
are all true gentlemen, and, like true gentlemen,
they look noble and proud enough, and yet, like
true gentlemen, they never harm or quarrel with
any one, but go about their own business, and leave
rude fellows to themselves.

The salmon looked at him full in the face, and
then went on without minding him, with a swish
or two of his tail which made the stream boil
again. And in a few minutes came another, and[95]
then four or five, and so on; and all passed Tom,
rushing and plunging up the cataract with strong
strokes of their silver tails, now and then leaping
clean out of water and up over a rock, shining
gloriously for a moment in the bright sun; while
Tom was so delighted that he could have watched
them all day long.

And at last one came up bigger than all the
rest; but he came slowly, and stopped, and looked
back, and seemed very anxious and busy. And
Tom saw that he was helping another salmon, an
especially handsome one, who had not a single spot
upon it, but was clothed in pure silver from nose
to tail.

“My dear,” said the great fish to his companion,
“you really look dreadfully tired, and you
must not over-exert yourself at first. Do rest yourself
behind this rock”; and he shoved her gently
with his nose, to the rock where Tom sat.

You must know that this was the salmon’s
wife. For salmon, like other true gentlemen,
always choose their lady, and love her, and are
true to her, and take care of her and work for her,
and fight for her, as every true gentleman ought;
and are not like vulgar chub and roach and pike,
who have no high feelings, and take no care of
their wives.

Then he saw Tom, and looked at him very
fiercely one moment, as if he was going to bite
him.

“What do you want here?” he said, very
fiercely.[96]

“Oh, don’t hurt me!” cried Tom. “I only
want to look at you; you are so handsome.”

“Ah?” said the salmon, very stately but very
civilly. “I really beg your pardon; I see what
you are, my little dear. I have met one or two
creatures like you before, and found them very
agreeable and well-behaved. Indeed, one of them
showed me a great kindness lately, which I hope
to be able to repay. I hope we shall not be in
your way here. As soon as this lady is rested, we
shall proceed on our journey.”

What a well-bred old salmon he was!

“So you have seen things like me before?”
asked Tom.

“Several times, my dear. Indeed, it was only
last night that one at the river’s mouth came and
warned me and my wife of some new stake-nets
which had got into the stream, I cannot tell how,
since last winter, and showed us the way round
them, in the most charmingly obliging way.”

“So there are babies in the sea?” cried Tom,
and clapped his little hands. “Then I shall have
some one to play with there? How delightful!”

“Were there no babies up this stream?” asked
the lady salmon.

“No! and I grew so lonely. I thought I saw
three last night; but they were gone in an instant,
down to the sea. So I went too; for I had nothing
to play with but caddises and dragon-flies and
trout.”

“Ugh!” cried the lady, “what low company!”[97]

“My dear, if he has been in low company, he
has certainly not learnt their low manners,” said the
salmon.

“No, indeed, poor little dear: but how sad for
him to live among such people as caddises, who
have actually six legs, the nasty things; and dragon-flies,
too! why they are not even good to eat; for
I tried them once, and they are all hard and empty;
and, as for trout, every one knows what they are.”
Whereon she curled up her lip, and looked dreadfully
scornful, while her husband curled up his too,
till he looked as proud as Alcibiades.

“Why do you dislike the trout so?” asked
Tom.

“My dear, we do not even mention them, if we
can help it; for I am sorry to say they are relations
of ours who do us no credit. A great many years
ago they were just like us: but they were so lazy,
and cowardly, and greedy, that instead of going
down to the sea every year to see the world and
grow strong and fat, they chose to stay and poke
about in the little streams and eat worms and grubs;
and they are very properly punished for it; for
they have grown ugly and brown and spotted and
small; and are actually so degraded in their tastes,
that they will eat our children.”

“And then they pretend to scrape acquaintance
with us again,” said the lady. “Why, I have
actually known one of them propose to a lady
salmon, the little impudent little creature.”

“I should hope,” said the gentleman, “that
there are very few ladies of our race who would[98]
degrade themselves by listening to such a creature
for an instant. If I saw such a thing happen, I
should consider it my duty to put them both to
death upon the spot.” So the old salmon said, like
an old blue-blooded hidalgo of Spain; and what is
more, he would have done it too. For you must
know, no enemies are so bitter against each other
as those who are of the same race; and a salmon
looks on a trout, as some great folks look on some
little folks, as something just too much like himself
to be tolerated.

[100]

[101]

CHAPTER IV

“He watched the moonlight on the rippling river.” P. 101.

And, as he went, he had a very strange adventure.
It was a clear still September night, and
the moon shone so brightly down through the
water, that he could not sleep, though he shut his
eyes as tight as possible. So at last he came up to
the top, and sat upon a little point of rock, and
looked up at the broad yellow moon, and wondered
what she was, and thought that she looked at him.
And he watched the moonlight on the rippling
river, and the black heads of the firs, and the silver-frosted
lawns, and listened to the owl’s hoot, and
the snipe’s bleat, and the fox’s bark, and the otter’s
laugh; and smelt the soft perfume of the birches,
and the wafts of heather honey off the grouse moor
far above; and felt very happy, though he could
not well tell why. You, of course, would have[102]
been very cold sitting there on a September night,
without the least bit of clothes on your wet back;
but Tom was a water-baby, and therefore felt cold
no more than a fish.

Suddenly, he saw a beautiful sight. A bright
red light moved along the river-side, and threw
down into the water a long tap-root of flame.
Tom, curious little rogue that he was, must needs
go and see what it was; so he swam to the shore,
and met the light as it stopped over a shallow run
at the edge of a low rock.

And there, underneath the light, lay five or six
great salmon, looking up at the flame with their
great goggle eyes, and wagging their tails, as if they
were very much pleased at it.

Tom came to the top, to look at this wonderful
light nearer, and made a splash.

And he heard a voice say:

“There was a fish rose.”

He did not know what the words meant: but
he seemed to know the sound of them, and to know
the voice which spoke them; and he saw on the
bank three great two-legged creatures, one of whom
held the light, flaring and sputtering, and another
a long pole. And he knew that they were men, and
was frightened, and crept into a hole in the rock,
from which he could see what went on.

The man with the torch bent down over the
water, and looked earnestly in; and then he said:

“Tak’ that muckle fellow, lad; he’s ower
fifteen punds; and haud your hand steady.”

Tom felt that there was some danger coming,[103]
and longed to warn the foolish salmon, who kept
staring up at the light as if he was bewitched.
But before he could make up his mind, down came
the pole through the water; there was a fearful
splash and struggle, and Tom saw that the poor
salmon was speared right through, and was lifted
out of the water.

And then, from behind, there sprang on these
three men three other men; and there were shouts,
and blows, and words which Tom recollected to
have heard before; and he shuddered and turned
sick at them now, for he felt somehow that they
were strange, and ugly, and wrong, and horrible.
And it all began to come back to him. They were
men; and they were fighting; savage, desperate,
up-and-down fighting, such as Tom had seen too
many times before.

And he stopped his little ears, and longed
to swim away; and was very glad that he was a
water-baby, and had nothing to do any more with
horrid dirty men, with foul clothes on their backs,
and foul words on their lips; but he dared not stir
out of his hole: while the rock shook over his
head with the trampling and struggling of the
keepers and the poachers.

All of a sudden there was a tremendous splash,
and a frightful flash, and a hissing, and all was
still.

For into the water, close to Tom, fell one of
the men; he who held the light in his hand.
Into the swift river he sank, and rolled over and
over in the current. Tom heard the men above[104]
run along, seemingly looking for him; but he
drifted down into the deep hole below, and there
lay quite still, and they could not find him.

Tom waited a long time, till all was quiet; and
then he peeped out, and saw the man lying. At
last he screwed up his courage and swam down to
him. “Perhaps,” he thought, “the water has
made him fall asleep, as it did me.”

Then he went nearer. He grew more and
more curious, he could not tell why. He must go
and look at him. He would go very quietly, of
course; so he swam round and round him, closer
and closer; and, as he did not stir, at last he came
quite close and looked him in the face.

The moon shone so bright that Tom could see
every feature; and, as he saw, he recollected, bit by
bit, it was his old master, Grimes.

Tom turned tail, and swam away as fast as he
could.

“Oh dear me!” he thought, “now he will
turn into a water-baby. What a nasty troublesome
one he will be! And perhaps he will find me out,
and beat me again.”

So he went up the river again a little way, and
lay there the rest of the night under an alder root;
but, when morning came, he longed to go down
again to the big pool, and see whether Mr. Grimes
had turned into a water-baby yet.

So he went very carefully, peeping round all the
rocks, and hiding under all the roots. Mr. Grimes
lay there still; he had not turned into a water-baby.
In the afternoon Tom went back again. He could[105]
not rest till he had found out what had become of
Mr. Grimes. But this time Mr. Grimes was gone;
and Tom made up his mind that he was turned
into a water-baby.

He might have made himself easy, poor little
man; Mr. Grimes did not turn into a water-baby,
or anything like one at all. But he did not make
himself easy; and a long time he was fearful lest
he should meet Grimes suddenly in some deep pool.
He could not know that the fairies had carried him
away, and put him, where they put everything which
falls into the water, exactly where it ought to be.
But, do you know, what had happened to Mr.
Grimes had such an effect on him that he never
poached salmon any more. And it is quite certain
that, when a man becomes a confirmed poacher, the
only way to cure him is to put him under water for
twenty-four hours, like Grimes. So when you
grow to be a big man, do you behave as all honest
fellows should; and never touch a fish or a head of
game which belongs to another man without his
express leave; and then people will call you a
gentleman, and treat you like one; and perhaps
give you good sport: instead of hitting you into
the river, or calling you a poaching snob.

Then Tom went on down, for he was afraid of
staying near Grimes: and as he went, all the vale
looked sad. The red and yellow leaves showered
down into the river; the flies and beetles were all
dead and gone; the chill autumn fog lay low upon
the hills, and sometimes spread itself so thickly on
the river that he could not see his way. But he[106]
felt his way instead, following the flow of the
stream, day after day, past great bridges, past boats
and barges, past the great town, with its wharfs,
and mills, and tall smoking chimneys, and ships
which rode at anchor in the stream; and now and
then he ran against their hawsers, and wondered
what they were, and peeped out, and saw the
sailors lounging on board smoking their pipes;
and ducked under again, for he was terribly afraid
of being caught by man and turned into a chimney-sweep
once more. He did not know that the
fairies were close to him always, shutting the
sailors’ eyes lest they should see him, and turning
him aside from millraces, and sewer-mouths, and
all foul and dangerous things. Poor little fellow,
it was a dreary journey for him; and more than
once he longed to be back in Vendale, playing with
the trout in the bright summer sun. But it could
not be. What has been once can never come over
again. And people can be little babies, even water-babies,
only once in their lives.

Besides, people who make up their minds to go
and see the world, as Tom did, must needs find it
a weary journey. Lucky for them if they do not
lose heart and stop half-way, instead of going on
bravely to the end as Tom did. For then they will
remain neither boys nor men, neither fish, flesh, nor
good red-herring: having learnt a great deal too
much, and yet not enough; and sown their wild
oats, without having the advantage of reaping them.

But Tom was always a brave, determined, little
English bull-dog, who never knew when he was[107]
beaten; and on and on he held, till he saw a long
way off the red buoy through the fog. And then
he found to his surprise, the stream turned round,
and running up inland.

It was the tide, of course: but Tom knew
nothing of the tide. He only knew that in a
minute more the water, which had been fresh,
turned salt all round him. And then there came
a change over him. He felt as strong, and light,
and fresh, as if his veins had run champagne; and
gave, he did not know why, three skips out of the
water, a yard high, and head over heels, just as the
salmon do when they first touch the noble rich salt
water, which, as some wise men tell us, is the
mother of all living things.

He did not care now for the tide being against
him. The red buoy was in sight, dancing in the
open sea; and to the buoy he would go, and to it
he went. He passed great shoals of bass and mullet,
leaping and rushing in after the shrimps, but he
never heeded them, or they him; and once he
passed a great black shining seal, who was coming
in after the mullet. The seal put his head and
shoulders out of water, and stared at him, looking
exactly like a fat old greasy negro with a grey pate.
And Tom, instead of being frightened, said, “How
d’ye do, sir; what a beautiful place the sea is!”
And the old seal, instead of trying to bite him,
looked at him with his soft sleepy winking eyes,
and said, “Good tide to you, my little man; are
you looking for your brothers and sisters? I
passed them all at play outside.”[108]

“Oh, then,” said Tom, “I shall have playfellows
at last,” and he swam on to the buoy, and
got upon it (for he was quite out of breath) and
sat there, and looked round for water-babies: but
there were none to be seen.

The sea-breeze came in freshly with the tide
and blew the fog away; and the little waves
danced for joy around the buoy, and the old
buoy danced with them. The shadows of the
clouds ran races over the bright blue bay, and yet
never caught each other up; and the breakers
plunged merrily upon the wide white sands, and
jumped up over the rocks, to see what the green
fields inside were like, and tumbled down and broke
themselves all to pieces, and never minded it a bit,
but mended themselves and jumped up again.
And the terns hovered over Tom like huge white
dragon-flies with black heads, and the gulls laughed
like girls at play, and the sea-pies, with their red
bills and legs, flew to and fro from shore to shore,
and whistled sweet and wild. And Tom looked
and looked, and listened; and he would have been
very happy, if he could only have seen the water-babies.
Then when the tide turned, he left the
buoy, and swam round and round in search of them:
but in vain. Sometimes he thought he heard them
laughing: but it was only the laughter of the
ripples. And sometimes he thought he saw them
at the bottom: but it was only white and pink
shells. And once he was sure he had found one, for
he saw two bright eyes peeping out of the sand. So
he dived down, and began scraping the sand away,[109]
and cried, “Don’t hide; I do want some one to
play with so much!” And out jumped a great
turbot with his ugly eyes and mouth all awry, and
flopped away along the bottom, knocking poor
Tom over. And he sat down at the bottom of the
sea, and cried salt tears from sheer disappointment.

To have come all this way, and faced so many
dangers, and yet to find no water-babies! How
hard! Well, it did seem hard: but people, even
little babies, cannot have all they want without
waiting for it, and working for it too, my little
man, as you will find out some day.

And Tom sat upon the buoy long days, long
weeks, looking out to sea, and wondering when
the water-babies would come back; and yet they
never came.

Then he began to ask all the strange things
which came in out of the sea if they had seen any;
and some said “Yes,” and some said nothing at all.

He asked the bass and the pollock; but they
were so greedy after the shrimps that they did not
care to answer him a word.

Then there came in a whole fleet of purple sea-snails,
floating along, each on a sponge full of foam,
and Tom said, “Where do you come from, you
pretty creatures? and have you seen the water-babies?”

And the sea-snails answered, “Whence we
come we know not; and whither we are going,
who can tell? We float out our life in the mid-ocean,
with the warm sunshine above our heads,
and the warm gulf-stream below; and that is[110]
enough for us. Yes; perhaps we have seen the
water-babies. We have seen many strange things
as we sailed along.” And they floated away, the
happy stupid things, and all went ashore upon
the sands.

Then there came in a great lazy sunfish, as big
as a fat pig cut in half; and he seemed to have
been cut in half too, and squeezed in a clothes-press
till he was flat; but to all his big body and big
fins he had only a little rabbit’s mouth, no bigger
than Tom’s; and, when Tom questioned him, he
answered in a little squeaky feeble voice:

“I’m sure I don’t know; I’ve lost my way.
I meant to go to the Chesapeake, and I’m afraid
I’ve got wrong somehow. Dear me! it was all
by following that pleasant warm water. I’m sure
I’ve lost my way.”

And, when Tom asked him again, he could
only answer, “I’ve lost my way. Don’t talk to
me; I want to think.”

But, like a good many other people, the more
he tried to think the less he could think; and Tom
saw him blundering about all day, till the coastguardsmen
saw his big fin above the water, and
rowed out, and struck a boat-hook into him, and
took him away. They took him up to the town
and showed him for a penny a head, and made a
good day’s work of it. But of course Tom did not
know that.

Then there came by a shoal of porpoises, rolling
as they went—papas, and mammas, and little
children—and all quite smooth and shiny, because[111]
the fairies French-polish them every morning;
and they sighed so softly as they came by, that
Tom took courage to speak to them: but all they
answered was, “Hush, hush, hush”; for that was
all they had learnt to say.

And then there came a shoal of basking sharks,
some of them as long as a boat, and Tom was
frightened at them. But they were very lazy good-natured
fellows, not greedy tyrants, like white
sharks and blue sharks and ground sharks and
hammer-heads, who eat men, or saw-fish and
threshers and ice-sharks, who hunt the poor old
whales. They came and rubbed their great sides
against the buoy, and lay basking in the sun with
their back-fins out of water; and winked at Tom:
but he never could get them to speak. They had
eaten so many herrings that they were quite stupid;
and Tom was glad when a collier brig came by
and frightened them all away; for they did smell
most horribly, certainly, and he had to hold his
nose tight as long as they were there.

And then there came by a beautiful creature,
like a ribbon of pure silver with a sharp head and
very long teeth; but it seemed very sick and sad.
Sometimes it rolled helpless on its side; and then
it dashed away glittering like white fire; and then
it lay sick again and motionless.

“Where do you come from?” asked Tom.
“And why are you so sick and sad?”

“I come from the warm Carolinas, and the
sandbanks fringed with pines; where the great
owl-rays leap and flap, like giant bats, upon the[112]
tide. But I wandered north and north, upon the
treacherous warm gulf-stream, till I met with the
cold icebergs, afloat in the mid ocean. So I got
tangled among the icebergs, and chilled with their
frozen breath. But the water-babies helped me
from among them, and set me free again. And
now I am mending every day; but I am very sick
and sad; and perhaps I shall never get home again
to play with the owl-rays any more.”

“Oh!” cried Tom. “And you have seen
water-babies? Have you seen any near here?”

“Yes; they helped me again last night, or I
should have been eaten by a great black porpoise.”

How vexatious! The water-babies close to
him, and yet he could not find one.

And then he left the buoy, and used to go
along the sands and round the rocks, and come out
in the night—like the forsaken Merman in Mr.
Arnold’s beautiful, beautiful poem, which you must
learn by heart some day—and sit upon a point of
rock, among the shining seaweeds, in the low
October tides, and cry and call for the water-babies;
but he never heard a voice call in return. And at
last, with his fretting and crying, he grew quite
lean and thin.

But one day among the rocks he found a playfellow.
It was not a water-baby, alas! but it was
a lobster; and a very distinguished lobster he was;
for he had live barnacles on his claws, which is
a great mark of distinction in lobsterdom, and
no more to be bought for money than a good
conscience or the Victoria Cross.

“Tom had never seen a lobster before.”—P. 113.

[113]

Tom had never seen a lobster before; and he
was mightily taken with this one; for he thought
him the most curious, odd, ridiculous creature he
had ever seen; and there he was not far wrong;
for all the ingenious men, and all the scientific
men, and all the fanciful men, in the world, with
all the old German bogy-painters into the bargain,
could never invent, if all their wits were boiled
into one, anything so curious, and so ridiculous, as
a lobster.

He had one claw knobbed and the other jagged;
and Tom delighted in watching him hold on to
the seaweed with his knobbed claw, while he cut
up salads with his jagged one, and then put them
into his mouth, after smelling at them, like a
monkey. And always the little barnacles threw
out their casting-nets and swept the water, and
came in for their share of whatever there was for
dinner.

But Tom was most astonished to see how he
fired himself off—snap! like the leap-frogs which
you make out of a goose’s breast-bone. Certainly
he took the most wonderful shots, and backwards,
too. For, if he wanted to go into a narrow crack
ten yards off, what do you think he did? If he
had gone in head foremost, of course he could not
have turned round. So he used to turn his tail to
it, and lay his long horns, which carry his sixth
sense in their tips (and nobody knows what that
sixth sense is), straight down his back to guide
him, and twist his eyes back till they almost came
out of their sockets, and then made ready, present,[114]
fire, snap!—and away he went, pop into the hole;
and peeped out and twiddled his whiskers, as much
as to say, “You couldn’t do that.”

Tom asked him about water-babies. “Yes,”
he said. He had seen them often. But he did
not think much of them. They were meddlesome
little creatures, that went about helping fish and
shells which got into scrapes. Well, for his part,
he should be ashamed to be helped by little soft
creatures that had not even a shell on their backs.
He had lived quite long enough in the world to
take care of himself.

He was a conceited fellow, the old lobster, and
not very civil to Tom; and you will hear how he
had to alter his mind before he was done, as conceited
people generally have. But he was so funny,
and Tom so lonely, that he could not quarrel with
him; and they used to sit in holes in the rocks,
and chat for hours.

And about this time there happened to Tom a
very strange and important adventure—so important,
indeed, that he was very near never finding the
water-babies at all; and I am sure you would have
been sorry for that.

I hope that you have not forgotten the little
white lady all this while. At least, here she
comes, looking like a clean white good little
darling, as she always was, and always will be.
For it befell in the pleasant short December days,
when the wind always blows from the south-west,
till Old Father Christmas comes and spreads the
great white table-cloth, ready for little boys and[115]
girls to give the birds their Christmas dinner of
crumbs—it befell (to go on) in the pleasant
December days, that Sir John was so busy hunting
that nobody at home could get a word out of him.
Four days a week he hunted, and very good sport
he had; and the other two he went to the bench
and the board of guardians, and very good justice
he did; and, when he got home in time, he dined
at five; for he hated this absurd new fashion of
dining at eight in the hunting season, which forces
a man to make interest with the footman for cold
beef and beer as soon as he comes in, and so spoil
his appetite, and then sleep in an arm-chair in his
bedroom, all stiff and tired, for two or three hours
before he can get his dinner like a gentleman.
And do you be like Sir John, my dear little man,
when you are your own master; and, if you want
either to read hard or ride hard, stick to the good
old Cambridge hours of breakfast at eight and
dinner at five; by which you may get two days’
work out of one. But, of course, if you find a fox
at three in the afternoon and run him till dark,
and leave off twenty miles from home, why you
must wait for your dinner till you can get it, as
better men than you have done. Only see that, if
you go hungry, your horse does not; but give
him his warm gruel and beer, and take him gently
home, remembering that good horses don’t grow
on the hedge like blackberries.

It befell (to go on a second time) that Sir John,
hunting all day, and dining at five, fell asleep every
evening, and snored so terribly that all the windows[116]
in Harthover shook, and the soot fell down the
chimneys. Whereon My Lady, being no more
able to get conversation out of him than a song
out of a dead nightingale, determined to go off
and leave him, and the doctor, and Captain Swinger
the agent, to snore in concert every evening to
their hearts’ content. So she started for the seaside
with all the children, in order to put herself
and them into condition by mild applications of
iodine. She might as well have stayed at home
and used Parry’s liquid horse-blister, for there was
plenty of it in the stables; and then she would
have saved her money, and saved the chance, also,
of making all the children ill instead of well (as
hundreds are made), by taking them to some nasty
smelling undrained lodging, and then wondering
how they caught scarlatina and diphtheria: but
people won’t be wise enough to understand that
till they are dead of bad smells, and then it will be
too late; besides you see, Sir John did certainly
snore very loud.

But where she went to nobody must know, for
fear young ladies should begin to fancy that there
are water-babies there! and so hunt and howk
after them (besides raising the price of lodgings),
and keep them in aquariums, as the ladies at
Pompeii (as you may see by the paintings) used to
keep Cupids in cages. But nobody ever heard
that they starved the Cupids, or let them die of
dirt and neglect, as English young ladies do by the
poor sea-beasts. So nobody must know where My
Lady went. Letting water-babies die is as bad as[117]
taking singing birds’ eggs; for, though there are
thousands, ay, millions, of both of them in the
world, yet there is not one too many.

Now it befell that, on the very shore, and over
the very rocks, where Tom was sitting with his
friend the lobster, there walked one day the little
white lady, Ellie herself, and with her a very wise
man indeed—Professor Ptthmllnsprts.

His mother was a Dutchwoman, and therefore
he was born at Curaçao (of course you have learnt
your geography, and therefore know why); and
his father a Pole, and therefore he was brought up
at Petropaulowski (of course you have learnt your
modern politics, and therefore know why): but
for all that he was as thorough an Englishman
as ever coveted his neighbour’s goods. And his
name, as I said, was Professor Ptthmllnsprts, which
is a very ancient and noble Polish name.

He was, as I said, a very great naturalist, and
chief professor of Necrobioneopalæonthydrochthonanthropopithekology
in the new university which the
king of the Cannibal Islands had founded; and,
being a member of the Acclimatisation Society, he
had come here to collect all the nasty things which
he could find on the coast of England, and turn
them loose round the Cannibal Islands, because
they had not nasty things enough there to eat
what they left.

But he was a very worthy kind good-natured
little old gentleman; and very fond of children
(for he was not the least a cannibal himself); and
very good to all the world as long as it was good[118]
to him. Only one fault he had, which cock-robins
have likewise, as you may see if you look
out of the nursery window—that, when any one
else found a curious worm, he would hop round
them, and peck them, and set up his tail, and
bristle up his feathers, just as a cock-robin would;
and declare that he found the worm first; and that
it was his worm; and, if not, that then it was not
a worm at all.

He had met Sir John at Scarborough, or Fleetwood,
or somewhere or other (if you don’t
care where, nobody else does), and had made
acquaintance with him, and become very fond of
his children. Now, Sir John knew nothing about
sea-cockyolybirds, and cared less, provided the
fishmonger sent him good fish for dinner; and
My Lady knew as little: but she thought it proper
that the children should know something. For
in the stupid old times, you must understand,
children were taught to know one thing, and to
know it well; but in these enlightened new times
they are taught to know a little about everything,
and to know it all ill; which is a great deal
pleasanter and easier, and therefore quite right.

So Ellie and he were walking on the rocks,
and he was showing her about one in ten thousand
of all the beautiful and curious things which are
to be seen there. But little Ellie was not satisfied
with them at all. She liked much better to play
with live children, or even with dolls, which she
could pretend were alive; and at last she said
honestly, “I don’t care about all these things,[119]
because they can’t play with me, or talk to me.
If there were little children now in the water, as
there used to be, and I could see them, I should
like that.”

“Children in the water, you strange little
duck?” said the professor.

“Yes,” said Ellie. “I know there used to be
children in the water, and mermaids too, and
mermen. I saw them all in a picture at home, of
a beautiful lady sailing in a car drawn by dolphins,
and babies flying round her, and one sitting in her
lap; and the mermaids swimming and playing,
and the mermen trumpeting on conch-shells; and
it is called ‘The Triumph of Galatea’; and there
is a burning mountain in the picture behind. It
hangs on the great staircase, and I have looked at
it ever since I was a baby, and dreamt about it a
hundred times; and it is so beautiful, that it must
be true.”

But the professor had not the least notion of
allowing that things were true, merely because
people thought them beautiful. For at that rate,
he said, the Baltas would be quite right in thinking
it a fine thing to eat their grandpapas, because they
thought it an ugly thing to put them underground.
The professor, indeed, went further, and held that
no man was forced to believe anything to be true,
but what he could see, hear, taste, or handle.

He held very strange theories about a good
many things. He had even got up once at the
British Association, and declared that apes had
hippopotamus majors in their brains just as men[120]
have. Which was a shocking thing to say; for,
if it were so, what would become of the faith,
hope, and charity of immortal millions? You
may think that there are other more important
differences between you and an ape, such as being
able to speak, and make machines, and know right
from wrong, and say your prayers, and other little
matters of that kind; but that is a child’s fancy,
my dear. Nothing is to be depended on but the
great hippopotamus test. If you have a hippopotamus
major in your brain, you are no ape,
though you had four hands, no feet, and were more
apish than the apes of all aperies. But if a hippopotamus
major is ever discovered in one single
ape’s brain, nothing will save your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-greater-greatest-grandmother
from having
been an ape too. No, my dear little man; always
remember that the one true, certain, final, and
all-important difference between you and an ape is,
that you have a hippopotamus major in your brain,
and it has none; and that, therefore, to discover
one in its brain will be a very wrong and dangerous
thing, at which every one will be very much
shocked, as we may suppose they were at the
professor.—Though really, after all, it don’t much
matter; because—as Lord Dundreary and others
would put it—nobody but men have hippopotamuses
in their brains; so, if a hippopotamus was
discovered in an ape’s brain, why it would not be
one, you know, but something else.

But the professor had gone, I am sorry to say,[121]
even further than that; for he had read at the
British Association at Melbourne, Australia, in the
year 1999, a paper which assured every one who
found himself the better or wiser for the news,
that there were not, never had been, and could
not be, any rational or half-rational beings except
men, anywhere, anywhen, or anyhow; that nymphs,
satyrs, fauns, inui, dwarfs, trolls, elves, gnomes,
fairies, brownies, nixes, wilis, kobolds, leprechaunes,
cluricaunes, banshees, will-o’-the-wisps, follets, lutins,
magots, goblins, afrits, marids, jinns, ghouls, peris,
deevs, angels, archangels, imps, bogies, or worse, were
nothing at all, and pure bosh and wind. And he
had to get up very early in the morning to prove
that, and to eat his breakfast overnight; but he
did it, at least to his own satisfaction. Whereon
a certain great divine, and a very clever divine was
he, called him a regular Sadducee; and probably
he was quite right. Whereon the professor, in
return, called him a regular Pharisee; and probably
he was quite right too. But they did not
quarrel in the least; for, when men are men of
the world, hard words run off them like water off
a duck’s back. So the professor and the divine
met at dinner that evening, and sat together on
the sofa afterwards for an hour, and talked over
the state of female labour on the antarctic continent
(for nobody talks shop after his claret), and
each vowed that the other was the best company
he ever met in his life. What an advantage it is
to be men of the world!

From all which you may guess that the[122]
professor was not the least of little Ellie’s opinion.
So he gave her a succinct compendium of his
famous paper at the British Association, in a form
suited for the youthful mind. But, as we have
gone over his arguments against water-babies once
already, which is once too often, we will not repeat
them here.

Now little Ellie was, I suppose, a stupid little
girl; for, instead of being convinced by Professor
Ptthmllnsprts’ arguments, she only asked the same
question over again.

“But why are there not water-babies?”

I trust and hope that it was because the professor
trod at that moment on the edge of a very
sharp mussel, and hurt one of his corns sadly, that
he answered quite sharply, forgetting that he was
a scientific man, and therefore ought to have known
that he couldn’t know; and that he was a logician,
and therefore ought to have known that he could
not prove a universal negative—I say, I trust and
hope it was because the mussel hurt his corn, that
the professor answered quite sharply:

“Because there ain’t.”

Which was not even good English, my dear
little boy; for, as you must know from Aunt
Agitate’s Arguments, the professor ought to have
said, if he was so angry as to say anything of the
kind—Because there are not: or are none: or are
none of them; or (if he had been reading Aunt
Agitate too) because they do not exist.

And he groped with his net under the weeds so
violently, that, as it befell, he caught poor little Tom.[123]

He felt the net very heavy; and lifted it out
quickly, with Tom all entangled in the meshes.

“Dear me!” he cried. “What a large pink
Holothurian; with hands, too! It must be connected
with Synapta.”

And he took him out.

“It has actually eyes!” he cried. “Why, it
must be a Cephalopod! This is most extraordinary!”

“No, I ain’t!” cried Tom, as loud as he could;
for he did not like to be called bad names.

“It is a water-baby!” cried Ellie; and of
course it was.

“Water-fiddlesticks, my dear!” said the professor;
and he turned away sharply.

There was no denying it. It was a water-baby:
and he had said a moment ago that there
were none. What was he to do?

He would have liked, of course, to have taken
Tom home in a bucket. He would not have put
him in spirits. Of course not. He would have
kept him alive, and petted him (for he was a very
kind old gentleman), and written a book about
him, and given him two long names, of which the
first would have said a little about Tom, and the
second all about himself; for of course he would
have called him Hydrotecnon Ptthmllnsprtsianum,
or some other long name like that; for they are
forced to call everything by long names now,
because they have used up all the short ones, ever
since they took to making nine species out of one.
But—what would all the learned men say to him[124]
after his speech at the British Association? And
what would Ellie say, after what he had just told
her?

There was a wise old heathen once, who said,
“Maxima debetur pueris reverentia”—The greatest
reverence is due to children; that is, that grown
people should never say or do anything wrong
before children, lest they should set them a bad
example.—Cousin Cramchild says it means, “The
greatest respectfulness is expected from little boys.”
But he was raised in a country where little boys
are not expected to be respectful, because all of
them are as good as the President:—Well, every
one knows his own concerns best; so perhaps they
are. But poor Cousin Cramchild, to do him
justice, not being of that opinion, and having a
moral mission, and being no scholar to speak of,
and hard up for an authority—why, it was a very
great temptation for him. But some people, and
I am afraid the professor was one of them, interpret
that in a more strange, curious, one-sided, left-handed,
topsy-turvy, inside-out, behind-before
fashion than even Cousin Cramchild; for they
make it mean, that you must show your respect
for children, by never confessing yourself in the
wrong to them, even if you know that you are so,
lest they should lose confidence in their elders.

Now, if the professor had said to Ellie, “Yes,
my darling, it is a water-baby, and a very wonderful
thing it is; and it shows how little I know of
the wonders of nature, in spite of forty years’
honest labour. I was just telling you that there[125]
could be no such creatures; and, behold! here is
one come to confound my conceit and show me
that Nature can do, and has done, beyond all that
man’s poor fancy can imagine. So, let us thank
the Maker, and Inspirer, and Lord of Nature
for all His wonderful and glorious works, and try
and find out something about this one”;—I
think that, if the professor had said that, little
Ellie would have believed him more firmly, and
respected him more deeply, and loved him better,
than ever she had done before. But he was of a
different opinion. He hesitated a moment. He
longed to keep Tom, and yet he half wished he
never had caught him; and at last he quite longed
to get rid of him. So he turned away and poked
Tom with his finger, for want of anything better
to do; and said carelessly, “My dear little maid,
you must have dreamt of water-babies last night,
your head is so full of them.”

Now Tom had been in the most horrible and
unspeakable fright all the while; and had kept as
quiet as he could, though he was called a Holothurian
and a Cephalopod; for it was fixed in his
little head that if a man with clothes on caught
him, he might put clothes on him too, and make a
dirty black chimney-sweep of him again. But,
when the professor poked him, it was more than
he could bear; and, between fright and rage, he
turned to bay as valiantly as a mouse in a corner,
and bit the professor’s finger till it bled.

“Oh! ah! yah!” cried he; and glad of an
excuse to be rid of Tom, dropped him on to the[126]
seaweed, and thence he dived into the water and
was gone in a moment.

“The fairies came flying in at the window and brought her such a pretty pair of wings.”—P. 126.

“But it was a water-baby, and I heard it
speak!” cried Ellie. “Ah, it is gone!” And
she jumped down off the rock to try and catch
Tom before he slipped into the sea.

Too late! and what was worse, as she sprang
down, she slipped, and fell some six feet, with her
head on a sharp rock, and lay quite still.

The professor picked her up, and tried to waken
her, and called to her, and cried over her, for he
loved her very much: but she would not waken
at all. So he took her up in his arms and carried
her to her governess, and they all went home;
and little Ellie was put to bed, and lay there quite
still; only now and then she woke up and called
out about the water-baby: but no one knew what
she meant, and the professor did not tell, for he
was ashamed to tell.

And, after a week, one moonlight night, the
fairies came flying in at the window and brought
her such a pretty pair of wings that she could not
help putting them on; and she flew with them
out of the window, and over the land, and over
the sea, and up through the clouds, and nobody
heard or saw anything of her for a very long
while.

And this is why they say that no one has ever
yet seen a water-baby. For my part, I believe
that the naturalists get dozens of them when they
are out dredging; but they say nothing about
them, and throw them overboard again, for fear of[127]
spoiling their theories. But, you see the professor
was found out, as every one is in due time. A
very terrible old fairy found the professor out; she
felt his bumps, and cast his nativity, and took the
lunars of him carefully inside and out; and so she
knew what he would do as well as if she had seen
it in a print book, as they say in the dear old west
country; and he did it; and so he was found out
beforehand, as everybody always is; and the old
fairy will find out the naturalists some day, and
put them in the Times, and then on whose side
will the laugh be?

So the old fairy took him in hand very severely
there and then. But she says she is always most
severe with the best people, because there is most
chance of curing them, and therefore they are the
patients who pay her best; for she has to work on
the same salary as the Emperor of China’s physicians
(it is a pity that all do not), no cure, no pay.

So she took the poor professor in hand: and
because he was not content with things as they
are, she filled his head with things as they are not,
to try if he would like them better; and because
he did not choose to believe in a water-baby when
he saw it, she made him believe in worse things
than water-babies—in unicorns, fire-drakes, manticoras,
basilisks, amphisbænas, griffins, phœnixes, rocs,
orcs, dog-headed men, three-headed dogs, three-bodied
geryons, and other pleasant creatures, which folks
think never existed yet, and which folks hope
never will exist, though they know nothing about
the matter, and never will; and these creatures so[128]
upset, terrified, flustered, aggravated, confused,
astounded, horrified, and totally flabbergasted the
poor professor that the doctors said that he was
out of his wits for three months; and perhaps they
were right, as they are now and then.

So all the doctors in the county were called in
to make a report on his case; and of course every
one of them flatly contradicted the other: else
what use is there in being men of science? But
at last the majority agreed on a report in the true
medical language, one half bad Latin, the other
half worse Greek, and the rest what might have
been English, if they had only learnt to write it.
And this is the beginning thereof—

“The subanhypaposupernal anastomoses of peritomic
diacellurite in the encephalo digital region of the distinguished
individual of whose symptomatic phœnomena
we had the melancholy honour (subsequently to a preliminary
diagnostic inspection) of making an inspectorial
diagnosis, presenting the interexclusively quadrilateral
and antinomian diathesis known as Bumpsterhausen’s
blue follicles, we proceeded“—

But what they proceeded to do My Lady never
knew; for she was so frightened at the long words
that she ran for her life, and locked herself into
her bedroom, for fear of being squashed by the
words and strangled by the sentence. A boa
constrictor, she said, was bad company enough:
but what was a boa constrictor made of paving
stones?

“It was quite shocking! What can they think
is the matter with him?” said she to the old nurse.[129]

“That his wit’s just addled; may be wi’
unbelief and heathenry,” quoth she.

“Then why can’t they say so?”

And the heaven, and the sea, and the rocks,
and the vales re-echoed—”Why indeed?” But
the doctors never heard them.

So she made Sir John write to the Times to
command the Chancellor of the Exchequer for
the time being to put a tax on long words;—

A light tax on words over three syllables, which
are necessary evils, like rats: but, like them, must
be kept down judiciously.

A heavy tax on words over four syllables, as
heterodoxy, spontaneity, spiritualism, spuriosity, etc.

And on words over five syllables (of which I
hope no one will wish to see any examples), a
totally prohibitory tax.

And a similar prohibitory tax on words derived
from three or more languages at once; words
derived from two languages having become so
common that there was no more hope of rooting
out them than of rooting out peth-winds.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, being a
scholar and a man of sense, jumped at the notion;
for he saw in it the one and only plan for
abolishing Schedule D: but when he brought in
his bill, most of the Irish members, and (I am
sorry to say) some of the Scotch likewise, opposed
it most strongly, on the ground that in a free
country no man was bound either to understand
himself or to let others understand him. So the
bill fell through on the first reading; and the[130]
Chancellor, being a philosopher, comforted himself
with the thought that it was not the first time that
a woman had hit off a grand idea and the men
turned up their stupid noses thereat.

Now the doctors had it all their own way; and
to work they went in earnest, and they gave the
poor professor divers and sundry medicines, as prescribed
by the ancients and moderns, from Hippocrates
to Feuchtersleben, as below, viz.—

But they found that a great deal too much
trouble, as most people have since; and so had
recourse to[131]—

Boring a hole in his head to let out fumes,
which (says Gordonius) “will, without doubt, do
much good.” But it didn’t.

Then—

After the modern method. But that would
not do.

And if he had but been a convict lunatic, and
had shot at the Queen, killed all his creditors to
avoid paying them, or indulged in any other little
amiable eccentricity of that kind, they would have
given him in addition—

The healthiest situation in England, on Easthampstead
Plain.

Free run of Windsor Forest.

The Times every morning.

A double-barrelled gun and pointers, and leave
to shoot three Wellington College boys a week
(not more) in case black game was scarce.[133]

But as he was neither mad enough nor bad
enough to be allowed such luxuries, they grew
desperate, and fell into bad ways, viz.—

Only they could not find out what it was.

Only they had forgotten its name, so Dr. Gray
could not well procure them a specimen.

But could not get one that mentioned water-babies.

As successfully employed by the old inquisitors
to cure the malady of thought, and now by the
Persian Mollahs to cure that of rheumatism.

But nothing would do; for he screamed and
cried all day for a water-baby, to come and drive
away the monsters; and of course they did not
try to find one, because they did not believe in
them, and were thinking of nothing but Bumpsterhausen’s
blue follicles; having, as usual, set the
cart before the horse, and taken the effect for the
cause.

So they were forced at last to let the poor
professor ease his mind by writing a great book,
exactly contrary to all his old opinions; in which
he proved that the moon was made of green cheese,
and that all the mites in it (which you may see
sometimes quite plain through a telescope, if you
will only keep the lens dirty enough, as Mr.
Weekes kept his voltaic battery) are nothing in
the world but little babies, who are hatching and
swarming up there in millions, ready to come
down into this world whenever children want a
new little brother or sister.

Which must be a mistake, for this one reason:
that, there being no atmosphere round the moon
(though some one or other says there is, at least
on the other side, and that he has been round at
the back of it to see, and found that the moon was
just the shape of a Bath bun, and so wet that the
man in the moon went about on Midsummer-day
in Macintoshes and Cording’s boots, spearing eels
and sneezing); that, therefore, I say, there being
no atmosphere, there can be no evaporation; and
therefore, the dew-point can never fall below
71.5° below zero of Fahrenheit: and, therefore, it[136]
cannot be cold enough there about four o’clock
in the morning to condense the babies’ mesenteric
apophthegms into their left ventricles; and, therefore,
they can never catch the hooping-cough; and
if they do not have hooping-cough, they cannot be
babies at all; and, therefore, there are no babies
in the moon.—Q.E.D.

Which may seem a roundabout reason; and so,
perhaps, it is: but you will have heard worse ones
in your time, and from better men than you are.

But one thing is certain; that, when the good
old doctor got his book written, he felt considerably
relieved from Bumpsterhausen’s blue follicles, and
a few things infinitely worse; to wit, from pride
and vain-glory, and from blindness and hardness of
heart; which are the true causes of Bumpsterhausen’s
blue follicles, and of a good many other
ugly things besides. Whereon the foul flood-water
in his brains ran down, and cleared to a fine coffee
colour, such as fish like to rise in, till very fine
clean fresh-run fish did begin to rise in his brains;
and he caught two or three of them (which is
exceedingly fine sport, for brain rivers), and
anatomised them carefully, and never mentioned
what he found out from them, except to little
children; and became ever after a sadder and a
wiser man; which is a very good thing to become,
my dear little boy, even though one has to pay a
heavy price for the blessing.

[138]

[139]

CHAPTER V

He slipped away off the rocks into the water,
as I said before. But he could not help thinking
of little Ellie. He did not remember who she
was; but he knew that she was a little girl, though
she was a hundred times as big as he. That is not
surprising: size has nothing to do with kindred.
A tiny weed may be first cousin to a great tree;
and a little dog like Vick knows that Lioness is a
dog too, though she is twenty times larger than
herself. So Tom knew that Ellie was a little girl,
and thought about her all that day, and longed to
have had her to play with; but he had very soon
to think of something else. And here is the
account of what happened to him, as it was
published next morning in the Waterproof Gazette,
on the finest watered paper, for the use of the great
fairy, Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid, who reads the news
very carefully every morning, and especially the
police cases, as you will hear very soon.

He was going along the rocks in three-fathom
water, watching the pollock catch prawns, and the
wrasses nibble barnacles off the rocks, shells and all,
when he saw a round cage of green withes; and[140]
inside it, looking very much ashamed of himself,
sat his friend the lobster, twiddling his horns,
instead of thumbs.

“What, have you been naughty, and have they
put you in the lock-up?” asked Tom.

The lobster felt a little indignant at such a
notion, but he was too much depressed in spirits to
argue; so he only said, “I can’t get out.”

“Why did you get in?”

“After that nasty piece of dead fish.” He had
thought it looked and smelt very nice when he was
outside, and so it did, for a lobster: but now he
turned round and abused it because he was angry
with himself.

“Where did you get in?”

“Through that round hole at the top.”

“Then why don’t you get out through it?”

“Because I can’t”: and the lobster twiddled
his horns more fiercely than ever, but he was forced
to confess.

“I have jumped upwards, downwards, backwards,
and sideways, at least four thousand times;
and I can’t get out: I always get up underneath
there, and can’t find the hole.”

Tom looked at the trap, and having more wit
than the lobster, he saw plainly enough what was
the matter; as you may if you will look at a
lobster-pot.

“Stop a bit,” said Tom. “Turn your tail up
to me, and I’ll pull you through hindforemost, and
then you won’t stick in the spikes.”

But the lobster was so stupid and clumsy that[141]
he couldn’t hit the hole. Like a great many fox-hunters,
he was very sharp as long as he was in his
own country; but as soon as they get out of it they
lose their heads; and so the lobster, so to speak,
lost his tail.

Tom reached and clawed down the hole after
him, till he caught hold of him; and then, as was
to be expected, the clumsy lobster pulled him in
head foremost.

“Hullo! here is a pretty business,” said Tom.
“Now take your great claws, and break the points
off those spikes, and then we shall both get out
easily.”

“Dear me, I never thought of that,” said the
lobster; “and after all the experience of life that
I have had!”

You see, experience is of very little good unless
a man, or a lobster, has wit enough to make use of
it. For a good many people, like old Polonius,
have seen all the world, and yet remain little better
than children after all.

But they had not got half the spikes away when
they saw a great dark cloud over them: and lo,
and behold, it was the otter.

How she did grin and grin when she saw Tom.
“Yar!” said she, “you little meddlesome wretch,
I have you now! I will serve you out for telling
the salmon where I was!” And she crawled all
over the pot to get in.

Tom was horribly frightened, and still more
frightened when she found the hole in the top, and
squeezed herself right down through it, all eyes[142]
and teeth. But no sooner was her head inside
than valiant Mr. Lobster caught her by the nose
and held on.

And there they were all three in the pot, rolling
over and over, and very tight packing it was.
And the lobster tore at the otter, and the otter
tore at the lobster, and both squeezed and thumped
poor Tom till he had no breath left in his body;
and I don’t know what would have happened to
him if he had not at last got on the otter’s back,
and safe out of the hole.

He was right glad when he got out: but he
would not desert his friend who had saved him;
and the first time he saw his tail uppermost he
caught hold of it, and pulled with all his might.

But the lobster would not let go.

“Come along,” said Tom; “don’t you see she
is dead?” And so she was, quite drowned and
dead.

And that was the end of the wicked otter.

But the lobster would not let go.

“Come along, you stupid old stick-in-the-mud,”
cried Tom, “or the fisherman will catch you!”
And that was true, for Tom felt some one above
beginning to haul up the pot.

But the lobster would not let go.

Tom saw the fisherman haul him up to the
boat-side, and thought it was all up with him.
But when Mr. Lobster saw the fisherman, he gave
such a furious and tremendous snap, that he snapped
out of his hand, and out of the pot, and safe into
the sea. But he left his knobbed claw behind him;[143]
for it never came into his stupid head to let go
after all, so he just shook his claw off as the easier
method. It was something of a bull, that; but
you must know the lobster was an Irish lobster,
and was hatched off Island Magee at the mouth of
Belfast Lough.

Tom asked the lobster why he never thought
of letting go. He said very determinedly that it
was a point of honour among lobsters. And so
it is, as the Mayor of Plymouth found out once to
his cost—eight or nine hundred years ago, of
course; for if it had happened lately it would be
personal to mention it.

For one day he was so tired with sitting on a
hard chair, in a grand furred gown, with a gold
chain round his neck, hearing one policeman after
another come in and sing, “What shall we do with
the drunken sailor, so early in the morning?” and
answering them each exactly alike:

“Put him in the round house till he gets sober,
so early in the morning”—

That, when it was over, he jumped up, and
played leap-frog with the town-clerk till he burst
his buttons, and then had his luncheon, and burst
some more buttons, and then said: “It is a low
spring-tide; I shall go out this afternoon and cut
my capers.”

Now he did not mean to cut such capers as you
eat with boiled mutton. It was the commandant
of artillery at Valetta who used to amuse himself
with cutting them, and who stuck upon one of the
bastions a notice, “No one allowed to cut capers[144]
here but me,” which greatly edified the midshipmen
in port, and the Maltese on the Nix Mangiare
stairs. But all that the mayor meant was that he
would go and have an afternoon’s fun, like any
schoolboy, and catch lobsters with an iron hook.

So to the Mewstone he went, and for lobsters
he looked. And when he came to a certain crack
in the rocks he was so excited that, instead of
putting in his hook, he put in his hand; and Mr.
Lobster was at home, and caught him by the finger,
and held on.

“Yah!” said the mayor, and pulled as hard as
he dared: but the more he pulled, the more the
lobster pinched, till he was forced to be quiet.

Then he tried to get his hook in with his other
hand; but the hole was too narrow.

Then he pulled again; but he could not stand
the pain.

Then he shouted and bawled for help: but
there was no one nearer him than the men-of-war
inside the breakwater.

Then he began to turn a little pale; for the
tide flowed, and still the lobster held on.

Then he turned quite white; for the tide was
up to his knees, and still the lobster held on.

Then he thought of cutting off his finger; but
he wanted two things to do it with—courage and
a knife; and he had got neither.

Then he turned quite yellow; for the tide was
up to his waist, and still the lobster held on.

Then he thought over all the naughty things
he ever had done; all the sand which he had put[145]
in the sugar, and the sloe-leaves in the tea, and the
water in the treacle, and the salt in the tobacco
(because his brother was a brewer, and a man must
help his own kin).

Then he turned quite blue; for the tide was up
to his breast, and still the lobster held on.

Then, I have no doubt, he repented fully of all
the said naughty things which he had done, and
promised to mend his life, as too many do when
they think they have no life left to mend.
Whereby, as they fancy, they make a very cheap
bargain. But the old fairy with the birch rod soon
undeceives them.

And then he grew all colours at once, and
turned up his eyes like a duck in thunder; for
the water was up to his chin, and still the lobster
held on.

And then came a man-of-war’s boat round the
Mewstone, and saw his head sticking up out of the
water. One said it was a keg of brandy, and
another that it was a cocoa-nut, and another that it
was a buoy loose, and another that it was a black
diver, and wanted to fire at it, which would not
have been pleasant for the mayor: but just then
such a yell came out of a great hole in the middle
of it that the midshipman in charge guessed what
it was, and bade pull up to it as fast as they could.
So somehow or other the Jack-tars got the lobster
out, and set the mayor free, and put him ashore at
the Barbican. He never went lobster-catching
again; and we will hope he put no more salt in
the tobacco, not even to sell his brother’s beer.[146]

“A real live water-baby sitting on the white sand.”—P. 146.

And that is the story of the Mayor of Plymouth,
which has two advantages—first, that of being quite
true; and second, that of having (as folks say all
good stories ought to have) no moral whatsoever:
no more, indeed, has any part of this book, because
it is a fairy tale, you know.

And now happened to Tom a most wonderful
thing; for he had not left the lobster five minutes
before he came upon a water-baby.

A real live water-baby, sitting on the white
sand, very busy about a little point of rock. And
when it saw Tom it looked up for a moment, and
then cried, “Why, you are not one of us. You
are a new baby! Oh, how delightful!”

And it ran to Tom, and Tom ran to it, and they
hugged and kissed each other for ever so long, they
did not know why. But they did not want any
introductions there under the water.

At last Tom said, “Oh, where have you been
all this while? I have been looking for you so
long, and I have been so lonely.”

“We have been here for days and days. There
are hundreds of us about the rocks. How was it
you did not see us, or hear us when we sing and
romp every evening before we go home?”

Tom looked at the baby again, and then he
said:

“Well, this is wonderful! I have seen things
just like you again and again, but I thought you
were shells, or sea-creatures. I never took you for
water-babies like myself.”

Now, was not that very odd? So odd, indeed,[147]
that you will, no doubt, want to know how it
happened, and why Tom could never find a water-baby
till after he had got the lobster out of the pot.
And, if you will read this story nine times over,
and then think for yourself, you will find out why.
It is not good for little boys to be told everything,
and never to be forced to use their own wits.
They would learn, then, no more than they do at
Dr. Dulcimer’s famous suburban establishment for
the idler members of the youthful aristocracy,
where the masters learn the lessons and the boys
hear them—which saves a great deal of trouble—for
the time being.

“Now,” said the baby, “come and help me, or
I shall not have finished before my brothers and
sisters come, and it is time to go home.”

“What shall I help you at?”

“At this poor dear little rock; a great clumsy
boulder came rolling by in the last storm, and
knocked all its head off, and rubbed off all its
flowers. And now I must plant it again with
seaweeds, and coralline, and anemones, and I will
make it the prettiest little rock-garden on all the
shore.”

So they worked away at the rock, and planted
it, and smoothed the sand down round it, and capital
fun they had till the tide began to turn. And then
Tom heard all the other babies coming, laughing
and singing and shouting and romping; and the
noise they made was just like the noise of the ripple.
So he knew that he had been hearing and seeing
the water-babies all along; only he did not[148]
know them, because his eyes and ears were not
opened.

And in they came, dozens and dozens of them,
some bigger than Tom and some smaller, all in the
neatest little white bathing dresses; and when they
found that he was a new baby, they hugged him
and kissed him, and then put him in the middle
and danced round him on the sand, and there was
no one ever so happy as poor little Tom.

“Now then,” they cried all at once, “we must
come away home, we must come away home, or
the tide will leave us dry. We have mended all
the broken seaweed, and put all the rock-pools in
order, and planted all the shells again in the sand,
and nobody will see where the ugly storm swept
in last week.”

And this is the reason why the rock-pools are
always so neat and clean; because the water-babies
come inshore after every storm to sweep them out,
and comb them down, and put them all to rights
again.

Only where men are wasteful and dirty, and let
sewers run into the sea instead of putting the stuff
upon the fields like thrifty reasonable souls; or
throw herrings’ heads and dead dog-fish, or any
other refuse, into the water; or in any way make
a mess upon the clean shore—there the water-babies
will not come, sometimes not for hundreds
of years (for they cannot abide anything smelly or
foul), but leave the sea-anemones and the crabs to
clear away everything, till the good tidy sea has
covered up all the dirt in soft mud and clean sand,[149]
where the water-babies can plant live cockles and
whelks and razor-shells and sea-cucumbers and
golden-combs, and make a pretty live garden again,
after man’s dirt is cleared away. And that, I suppose,
is the reason why there are no water-babies at any
watering-place which I have ever seen.

And where is the home of the water-babies?
In St. Brandan’s fairy isle.

Did you never hear of the blessed St. Brandan,
how he preached to the wild Irish on the wild,
wild Kerry coast, he and five other hermits, till
they were weary and longed to rest? For the wild
Irish would not listen to them, or come to confession
and to mass, but liked better to brew potheen, and
dance the pater o’pee, and knock each other over
the head with shillelaghs, and shoot each other
from behind turf-dykes, and steal each other’s
cattle, and burn each other’s homes; till St. Brandan
and his friends were weary of them, for they would
not learn to be peaceable Christians at all.

So St. Brandan went out to the point of Old
Dunmore, and looked over the tide-way roaring
round the Blasquets, at the end of all the world,
and away into the ocean, and sighed—”Ah that I
had wings as a dove!” And far away, before the
setting sun, he saw a blue fairy sea, and golden
fairy islands, and he said, “Those are the islands
of the blest.” Then he and his friends got into a
hooker, and sailed away and away to the westward,
and were never heard of more. But the people
who would not hear him were changed into
gorillas, and gorillas they are until this day.[150]

And when St. Brandan and the hermits came to
that fairy isle they found it overgrown with cedars
and full of beautiful birds; and he sat down under
the cedars and preached to all the birds in the air.
And they liked his sermons so well that they told
the fishes in the sea; and they came, and St.
Brandan preached to them; and the fishes told the
water-babies, who live in the caves under the isle;
and they came up by hundreds every Sunday, and
St. Brandan got quite a neat little Sunday-school.
And there he taught the water-babies for a great
many hundred years, till his eyes grew too dim to
see, and his beard grew so long that he dared not
walk for fear of treading on it, and then he might
have tumbled down. And at last he and the five
hermits fell fast asleep under the cedar-shades, and
there they sleep unto this day. But the fairies took
to the water-babies, and taught them their lessons
themselves.

And some say that St. Brandan will awake and
begin to teach the babies once more: but some
think that he will sleep on, for better for worse, till
the coming of the Cocqcigrues. But, on still clear
summer evenings, when the sun sinks down into
the sea, among golden cloud-capes and cloud-islands,
and locks and friths of azure sky, the sailors
fancy that they see, away to westward, St. Brandan’s
fairy isle.

“Tom found that the isle stood all on pillars, and that its roots were full of caves.”—P. 151.

But whether men can see it or not, St. Brandan’s
Isle once actually stood there; a great land out in
the ocean, which has sunk and sunk beneath the
waves. Old Plato called it Atlantis, and told strange[151]
tales of the wise men who lived therein, and of the
wars they fought in the old times. And from off
that island came strange flowers, which linger still
about this land:—the Cornish heath, and Cornish
moneywort, and the delicate Venus’s hair, and the
London-pride which covers the Kerry mountains,
and the little pink butterwort of Devon, and the
great blue butterwort of Ireland, and the Connemara
heath, and the bristle-fern of the Turk waterfall,
and many a strange plant more; all fairy tokens
left for wise men and good children from off St.
Brandan’s Isle.

Now when Tom got there, he found that the isle
stood all on pillars, and that its roots were full of
caves. There were pillars of black basalt, like
Staffa; and pillars of green and crimson serpentine,
like Kynance; and pillars ribboned with red and
white and yellow sandstone, like Livermead; and
there were blue grottoes like Capri, and white
grottoes like Adelsberg; all curtained and draped
with seaweeds, purple and crimson, green and
brown; and strewn with soft white sand, on which
the water-babies sleep every night. But, to keep
the place clean and sweet, the crabs picked up all
the scraps off the floor and ate them like so many
monkeys; while the rocks were covered with ten
thousand sea-anemones, and corals and madrepores,
who scavenged the water all day long, and kept it
nice and pure. But, to make up to them for having
to do such nasty work, they were not left black and
dirty, as poor chimney-sweeps and dustmen are.
No; the fairies are more considerate and just than[152]
that, and have dressed them all in the most beautiful
colours and patterns, till they look like vast flower-beds
of gay blossoms. If you think I am talking
nonsense, I can only say that it is true; and that an
old gentleman named Fourier used to say that we
ought to do the same by chimney-sweeps and dustmen,
and honour them instead of despising them;
and he was a very clever old gentleman: but,
unfortunately for him and the world, as mad as a
March hare.

And, instead of watchmen and policemen to
keep out nasty things at night, there were thousands
and thousands of water-snakes, and most wonderful
creatures they were. They were all named after
the Nereids, the sea-fairies who took care of them,
Eunice and Polynoe, Phyllodoce and Psamathe,
and all the rest of the pretty darlings who swim
round their Queen Amphitrite, and her car of
cameo shell. They were dressed in green velvet,
and black velvet, and purple velvet; and were all
jointed in rings; and some of them had three
hundred brains apiece, so that they must have been
uncommonly shrewd detectives; and some had
eyes in their tails; and some had eyes in every
joint, so that they kept a very sharp look-out; and
when they wanted a baby-snake, they just grew
one at the end of their own tails, and when it was
able to take care of itself it dropped off; so that
they brought up their families very cheaply. But
if any nasty thing came by, out they rushed upon
it; and then out of each of their hundreds of feet
there sprang a whole cutler’s shop of[153]

And there were the water-babies in thousands,
more than Tom, or you either, could count.—All
the little children whom the good fairies take to,
because their cruel mothers and fathers will not;
all who are untaught and brought up heathens, and
all who come to grief by ill-usage or ignorance or
neglect; all the little children who are overlaid,
or given gin when they are young, or are let to
drink out of hot kettles, or to fall into the fire; all
the little children in alleys and courts, and tumble-down
cottages, who die by fever, and cholera, and
measles, and scarlatina, and nasty complaints which[154]
no one has any business to have, and which no one
will have some day, when folks have common
sense; and all the little children who have been
killed by cruel masters and wicked soldiers; they
were all there, except, of course, the babes of
Bethlehem who were killed by wicked King
Herod; for they were taken straight to heaven
long ago, as everybody knows, and we call them
the Holy Innocents.

But I wish Tom had given up all his naughty
tricks, and left off tormenting dumb animals now
that he had plenty of playfellows to amuse him.
Instead of that, I am sorry to say, he would meddle
with the creatures, all but the water-snakes, for
they would stand no nonsense. So he tickled the
madrepores, to make them shut up; and frightened
the crabs, to make them hide in the sand and peep
out at him with the tips of their eyes; and put
stones into the anemones’ mouths, to make them
fancy that their dinner was coming.

The other children warned him, and said,
“Take care what you are at. Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid
is coming.” But Tom never heeded them,
being quite riotous with high spirits and good
luck, till, one Friday morning early, Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid
came indeed.

A very tremendous lady she was; and when
the children saw her they all stood in a row, very
upright indeed, and smoothed down their bathing
dresses, and put their hands behind them, just
as if they were going to be examined by the
inspector.[155]

And she had on a black bonnet, and a black
shawl, and no crinoline at all; and a pair of large
green spectacles, and a great hooked nose, hooked
so much that the bridge of it stood quite up above
her eyebrows; and under her arm she carried a
great birch-rod. Indeed, she was so ugly that
Tom was tempted to make faces at her: but did
not; for he did not admire the look of the birch-rod
under her arm.

And she looked at the children one by one,
and seemed very much pleased with them, though
she never asked them one question about how they
were behaving; and then began giving them all
sorts of nice sea-things—sea-cakes, sea-apples, sea-oranges,
sea-bullseyes, sea-toffee; and to the very
best of all she gave sea-ices, made out of sea-cows’
cream, which never melt under water.

And, if you don’t quite believe me, then just
think—What is more cheap and plentiful than
sea-rock? Then why should there not be sea-toffee
as well? And every one can find sea-lemons
(ready quartered too) if they will look for them at
low tide; and sea-grapes too sometimes, hanging
in bunches; and, if you will go to Nice, you will
find the fish-market full of sea-fruit, which they
call “frutta di mare”: though I suppose they call
them “fruits de mer” now, out of compliment to
that most successful, and therefore most immaculate,
potentate who is seemingly desirous of inheriting
the blessing pronounced on those who remove their
neighbours’ land-mark. And, perhaps, that is the
very reason why the place is called Nice, because[156]
there are so many nice things in the sea there: at
least, if it is not, it ought to be.

Now little Tom watched all these sweet things
given away, till his mouth watered, and his eyes
grew as round as an owl’s. For he hoped that his
turn would come at last; and so it did. For the
lady called him up, and held out her fingers with
something in them, and popped it into his mouth;
and, lo and behold, it was a nasty cold hard pebble.

“You are a very cruel woman,” said he, and
began to whimper.

“And you are a very cruel boy; who puts
pebbles into the sea-anemones’ mouths, to take
them in, and make them fancy that they had
caught a good dinner! As you did to them, so I
must do to you.”

“Who told you that?” said Tom.

“You did yourself, this very minute.”

Tom had never opened his lips; so he was
very much taken aback indeed.

“Yes; every one tells me exactly what they
have done wrong; and that without knowing it
themselves. So there is no use trying to hide
anything from me. Now go, and be a good boy,
and I will put no more pebbles in your mouth, if
you put none in other creatures’.”

“I did not know there was any harm in it,”
said Tom.

“Then you know now. People continually
say that to me: but I tell them, if you don’t know
that fire burns, that is no reason that it should not
burn you; and if you don’t know that dirt breeds[157]
fever, that is no reason why the fevers should not
kill you. The lobster did not know that there
was any harm in getting into the lobster-pot; but
it caught him all the same.”

“Dear me,” thought Tom, “she knows everything!”
And so she did, indeed.

“And so, if you do not know that things are
wrong, that is no reason why you should not be
punished for them; though not as much, not as
much, my little man” (and the lady looked very
kindly, after all), “as if you did know.”

“Well, you are a little hard on a poor lad,”
said Tom.

“Not at all; I am the best friend you ever
had in all your life. But I will tell you; I cannot
help punishing people when they do wrong. I
like it no more than they do; I am often very,
very sorry for them, poor things: but I cannot
help it. If I tried not to do it, I should do it all
the same. For I work by machinery, just like an
engine; and am full of wheels and springs inside;
and am wound up very carefully, so that I cannot
help going.”

“Was it long ago since they wound you up?”
asked Tom. For he thought, the cunning little
fellow, “She will run down some day: or they
may forget to wind her up, as old Grimes used
to forget to wind up his watch when he came
in from the public-house; and then I shall be
safe.”

“I was wound up once and for all, so long
ago, that I forget all about it.”[158]

“Dear me,” said Tom, “you must have been
made a long time!”

“I never was made, my child; and I shall go
for ever and ever; for I am as old as Eternity, and
yet as young as Time.”

And there came over the lady’s face a very
curious expression—very solemn, and very sad;
and yet very, very sweet. And she looked up and
away, as if she were gazing through the sea, and
through the sky, at something far, far off; and as
she did so, there came such a quiet, tender, patient,
hopeful smile over her face that Tom thought for
the moment that she did not look ugly at all.
And no more she did; for she was like a great
many people who have not a pretty feature in their
faces, and yet are lovely to behold, and draw little
children’s hearts to them at once; because though
the house is plain enough, yet from the windows a
beautiful and good spirit is looking forth.

And Tom smiled in her face, she looked so
pleasant for the moment. And the strange fairy
smiled too, and said:

“Yes. You thought me very ugly just now,
did you not?”

Tom hung down his head, and got very red
about the ears.

“And I am very ugly. I am the ugliest fairy
in the world; and I shall be, till people behave
themselves as they ought to do. And then I shall
grow as handsome as my sister, who is the loveliest
fairy in the world; and her name is Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby.
So she begins where I end,[159]
and I begin where she ends; and those who will
not listen to her must listen to me, as you will see.
Now, all of you run away, except Tom; and he
may stay and see what I am going to do. It will
be a very good warning for him to begin with,
before he goes to school.

“Now, Tom, every Friday I come down here
and call up all who have ill-used little children and
serve them as they served the children.”

And at that Tom was frightened, and crept
under a stone; which made the two crabs who lived
there very angry, and frightened their friend the
butter-fish into flapping hysterics: but he would
not move for them.

And first she called up all the doctors who give
little children so much physic (they were most of
them old ones; for the young ones have learnt
better, all but a few army surgeons, who still fancy
that a baby’s inside is much like a Scotch
grenadier’s), and she set them all in a row; and
very rueful they looked; for they knew what was
coming.

And first she pulled all their teeth out; and
then she bled them all round: and then she dosed
them with calomel, and jalap, and salts and senna,
and brimstone and treacle; and horrible faces they
made; and then she gave them a great emetic of
mustard and water, and no basons; and began all
over again; and that was the way she spent the
morning.

And then she called up a whole troop of foolish
ladies, who pinch up their children’s waists and[160]
toes; and she laced them all up in tight stays, so
that they were choked and sick, and their noses
grew red, and their hands and feet swelled; and
then she crammed their poor feet into the most
dreadfully tight boots, and made them all dance,
which they did most clumsily indeed; and then
she asked them how they liked it; and when they
said not at all, she let them go: because they had
only done it out of foolish fashion, fancying it was
for their children’s good, as if wasps’ waists and
pigs’ toes could be pretty, or wholesome, or of any
use to anybody.

Then she called up all the careless nursery-maids,
and stuck pins into them all over, and
wheeled them about in perambulators with tight
straps across their stomachs and their heads and
arms hanging over the side, till they were quite
sick and stupid, and would have had sun-strokes:
but, being under the water, they could only have
water-strokes; which, I assure you, are nearly as
bad, as you will find if you try to sit under a mill-wheel.
And mind—when you hear a rumbling
at the bottom of the sea, sailors will tell you that
it is a ground-swell: but now you know better.
It is the old lady wheeling the maids about in
perambulators.

And by that time she was so tired, she had to
go to luncheon.

And after luncheon she set to work again, and
called up all the cruel schoolmasters—whole
regiments and brigades of them; and when she
saw them, she frowned most terribly, and set to[161]
work in earnest, as if the best part of the day’s
work was to come. More than half of them were
nasty, dirty, frowzy, grubby, smelly old monks,
who, because they dare not hit a man of their own
size, amused themselves with beating little children
instead; as you may see in the picture of old Pope
Gregory (good man and true though he was, when
he meddled with things which he did understand),
teaching children to sing their fa-fa-mi-fa with a
cat-o’-nine-tails under his chair: but, because they
never had any children of their own, they took into
their heads (as some folks do still) that they were
the only people in the world who knew how to
manage children: and they first brought into
England, in the old Anglo-Saxon times, the fashion
of treating free boys, and girls too, worse than you
would treat a dog or a horse: but Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid
has caught them all long ago; and given
them many a taste of their own rods; and much
good may it do them.

And she boxed their ears, and thumped them
over the head with rulers, and pandied their hands
with canes, and told them that they told stories,
and were this and that bad sort of people; and the
more they were very indignant, and stood upon
their honour, and declared they told the truth, the
more she declared they were not, and that they
were only telling lies; and at last she birched
them all round soundly with her great birch-rod
and set them each an imposition of three hundred
thousand lines of Hebrew to learn by heart before
she came back next Friday. And at that they all[162]
cried and howled so, that their breaths came all up
through the sea like bubbles out of soda-water;
and that is one reason of the bubbles in the sea.
There are others: but that is the one which
principally concerns little boys. And by that
time she was so tired that she was glad to stop;
and, indeed, she had done a very good day’s work.

Tom did not quite dislike the old lady: but he
could not help thinking her a little spiteful—and
no wonder if she was, poor old soul; for if she has
to wait to grow handsome till people do as they
would be done by, she will have to wait a very
long time.

Poor old Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid! she has a
great deal of hard work before her, and had better
have been born a washerwoman, and stood over a
tub all day: but, you see, people cannot always
choose their own profession.

But Tom longed to ask her one question; and
after all, whenever she looked at him, she did not
look cross at all; and now and then there was a
funny smile in her face, and she chuckled to
herself in a way which gave Tom courage, and at
last he said:

“Pray, ma’am, may I ask you a question?”

“Certainly, my little dear.”

“Why don’t you bring all the bad masters
here and serve them out too? The butties that
knock about the poor collier-boys; and the nailers
that file off their lads’ noses and hammer their
fingers; and all the master sweeps, like my master
Grimes? I saw him fall into the water long ago;[163]
so I surely expected he would have been here.
I’m sure he was bad enough to me.”

Then the old lady looked so very stern that
Tom was quite frightened, and sorry that he had
been so bold. But she was not angry with him.
She only answered, “I look after them all the
week round; and they are in a very different place
from this, because they knew that they were doing
wrong.”

She spoke very quietly; but there was something
in her voice which made Tom tingle from
head to foot, as if he had got into a shoal of sea-nettles.

“But these people,” she went on, “did not know
that they were doing wrong: they were only
stupid and impatient; and therefore I only punish
them till they become patient, and learn to use
their common sense like reasonable beings. But
as for chimney-sweeps, and collier-boys, and nailer
lads, my sister has set good people to stop all that
sort of thing; and very much obliged to her I am;
for if she could only stop the cruel masters from
ill-using poor children, I should grow handsome
at least a thousand years sooner. And now do you
be a good boy, and do as you would be done by,
which they did not; and then, when my sister,
Madame Doasyouwouldbedoneby, comes on
Sunday, perhaps she will take notice of you, and
teach you how to behave. She understands that
better than I do.” And so she went.

Tom was very glad to hear that there was no
chance of meeting Grimes again, though he was a[164]
little sorry for him, considering that he used sometimes
to give him the leavings of the beer: but he
determined to be a very good boy all Saturday;
and he was; for he never frightened one crab, nor
tickled any live corals, nor put stones into the sea
anemones’ mouths, to make them fancy they had
got a dinner; and when Sunday morning came,
sure enough, Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby came
too. Whereat all the little children began dancing
and clapping their hands, and Tom danced too
with all his might.

And as for the pretty lady, I cannot tell you
what the colour of her hair was, or of her eyes:
no more could Tom; for, when any one looks at
her, all they can think of is, that she has the
sweetest, kindest, tenderest, funniest, merriest face
they ever saw, or want to see. But Tom saw that
she was a very tall woman, as tall as her sister:
but instead of being gnarly and horny, and scaly,
and prickly, like her, she was the most nice, soft,
fat, smooth, pussy, cuddly, delicious creature who
ever nursed a baby; and she understood babies
thoroughly, for she had plenty of her own, whole
rows and regiments of them, and has to this day.
And all her delight was, whenever she had a spare
moment, to play with babies, in which she showed
herself a woman of sense; for babies are the best
company, and the pleasantest playfellows, in the
world; at least, so all the wise people in the
world think. And therefore when the children
saw her, they naturally all caught hold of her, and
pulled her till she sat down on a stone, and climbed[165]
into her lap, and clung round her neck, and caught
hold of her hands; and then they all put their
thumbs into their mouths, and began cuddling and
purring like so many kittens, as they ought to have
done. While those who could get nowhere else
sat down on the sand, and cuddled her feet—for no
one, you know, wear shoes in the water, except
horrid old bathing-women, who are afraid of the
water-babies pinching their horny toes. And Tom
stood staring at them; for he could not understand
what it was all about.

“And who are you, you little darling?” she
said.

“Oh, that is the new baby!” they all cried,
pulling their thumbs out of their mouths; “and he
never had any mother,” and they all put their
thumbs back again, for they did not wish to lose
any time.

“Then I will be his mother, and he shall have
the very best place; so get out, all of you, this
moment.”

And she took up two great armfuls of babies—nine
hundred under one arm, and thirteen hundred
under the other—and threw them away, right and
left, into the water. But they minded it no more
than the naughty boys in Struwwelpeter minded
when St. Nicholas dipped them in his inkstand;
and did not even take their thumbs out of their
mouths, but came paddling and wriggling back to
her like so many tadpoles, till you could see
nothing of her from head to foot for the swarm of
little babies.[166]

But she took Tom in her arms, and laid him
in the softest place of all, and kissed him, and
patted him, and talked to him, tenderly and low,
such things as he had never heard before in his
life; and Tom looked up into her eyes, and loved
her, and loved, till he fell fast asleep from pure
love.

And when he woke she was telling the children
a story. And what story did she tell them? One
story she told them, which begins every Christmas
Eve, and yet never ends at all for ever and ever;
and, as she went on, the children took their
thumbs out of their mouths and listened quite
seriously; but not sadly at all; for she never
told them anything sad; and Tom listened too,
and never grew tired of listening. And he
listened so long that he fell fast asleep again,
and, when he woke, the lady was nursing him
still.

“Don’t go away,” said little Tom. “This is
so nice. I never had any one to cuddle me
before.”

“Don’t go away,” said all the children; “you
have not sung us one song.”

“Well, I have time for only one. So what
shall it be?”

“The doll you lost! The doll you lost!”
cried all the babies at once.

So the strange fairy sang:—

What a silly song for a fairy to sing!

And what silly water-babies to be quite
delighted at it!

Well, but you see they have not the advantage
of Aunt Agitate’s Arguments in the sea-land down
below.

“Now,” said the fairy to Tom, “will you be a
good boy for my sake, and torment no more sea-beasts
till I come back?”

“And you will cuddle me again?” said poor
little Tom.

“Of course I will, you little duck. I should
like to take you with me and cuddle you all the
way, only I must not”; and away she went.

So Tom really tried to be a good boy, and[168]
tormented no sea-beasts after that as long as he
lived; and he is quite alive, I assure you, still.

Oh, how good little boys ought to be who
have kind pussy mammas to cuddle them and tell
them stories; and how afraid they ought to be of
growing naughty, and bringing tears into their
mammas’ pretty eyes!

[170]

[171]

CHAPTER VI

The company did not laugh at him; his
moustaches were too long and too grey for that:
but, after he was gone, they called him sentimental
and so forth, all but one dear little old Quaker lady
with a soul as white as her cap, who was not, of
course, generally partial to soldiers; and she said
very quietly, like a Quaker:

“Friends, it is borne upon my mind that that
is a truly brave man.”

“He crept away among the rocks, and got to the cabinet, and behold! it was open.”—P. 172.

Now you may fancy that Tom was quite good,
when he had everything that he could want or
wish: but you would be very much mistaken.
Being quite comfortable is a very good thing;
but it does not make people good. Indeed, it[172]
sometimes makes them naughty, as it has made
the people in America; and as it made the people
in the Bible, who waxed fat and kicked, like horses
overfed and underworked. And I am very sorry
to say that this happened to little Tom. For he
grew so fond of the sea-bullseyes and sea-lollipops
that his foolish little head could think of nothing
else: and he was always longing for more, and
wondering when the strange lady would come
again and give him some, and what she would
give him, and how much, and whether she would
give him more than the others. And he thought
of nothing but lollipops by day, and dreamt of
nothing else by night—and what happened then?

That he began to watch the lady to see where
she kept the sweet things: and began hiding, and
sneaking, and following her about, and pretending
to be looking the other way, or going after something
else, till he found out that she kept them in
a beautiful mother-of-pearl cabinet away in a deep
crack of the rocks.

And he longed to go to the cabinet, and yet he
was afraid; and then he longed again, and was less
afraid; and at last, by continual thinking about it,
he longed so violently that he was not afraid at
all. And one night, when all the other children
were asleep, and he could not sleep for thinking of
lollipops, he crept away among the rocks, and got
to the cabinet, and behold! it was open.

But, when he saw all the nice things inside,
instead of being delighted, he was quite frightened,
and wished he had never come there. And then[173]
he would only touch them, and he did; and then
he would only taste one, and he did; and then he
would only eat one, and he did; and then he
would only eat two, and then three, and so on;
and then he was terrified lest she should come and
catch him, and began gobbling them down so fast
that he did not taste them, or have any pleasure
in them; and then he felt sick, and would have
only one more; and then only one more again;
and so on till he had eaten them all up.

And all the while, close behind him, stood Mrs.
Bedonebyasyoudid.

Some people may say, But why did she not
keep her cupboard locked? Well, I know.—It
may seem a very strange thing, but she never does
keep her cupboard locked; every one may go and
taste for themselves, and fare accordingly. It is
very odd, but so it is; and I am quite sure that
she knows best. Perhaps she wishes people to
keep their fingers out of the fire, by having them
burned.

She took off her spectacles, because she did not
like to see too much; and in her pity she arched
up her eyebrows into her very hair, and her eyes
grew so wide that they would have taken in all
the sorrows of the world, and filled with great big
tears, as they too often do.

But all she said was:

“Ah, you poor little dear! you are just like
all the rest.”

But she said it to herself, and Tom neither
heard nor saw her. Now, you must not fancy[174]
that she was sentimental at all. If you do, and
think that she is going to let off you, or me, or
any human being when we do wrong, because she
is too tender-hearted to punish us, then you will
find yourself very much mistaken, as many a man
does every year and every day.

But what did the strange fairy do when she
saw all her lollipops eaten?

Did she fly at Tom, catch him by the scruff of
the neck, hold him, howk him, hump him, hurry
him, hit him, poke him, pull him, pinch him,
pound him, put him in the corner, shake him,
slap him, set him on a cold stone to reconsider
himself, and so forth?

Not a bit. You may watch her at work if
you know where to find her. But you will never
see her do that. For, if she had, she knew quite
well Tom would have fought, and kicked, and bit,
and said bad words, and turned again that moment
into a naughty little heathen chimney-sweep, with
his hand, like Ishmael’s of old, against every man,
and every man’s hand against him.

Did she question him, hurry him, frighten
him, threaten him, to make him confess? Not a
bit. You may see her, as I said, at her work often
enough if you know where to look for her: but
you will never see her do that. For, if she had,
she would have tempted him to tell lies in his
fright; and that would have been worse for him,
if possible, than even becoming a heathen chimney-sweep
again.

No. She leaves that for anxious parents and[175]
teachers (lazy ones, some call them), who, instead
of giving children a fair trial, such as they would
expect and demand for themselves, force them by
fright to confess their own faults—which is so
cruel and unfair that no judge on the bench dare
do it to the wickedest thief or murderer, for the
good British law forbids it—ay, and even punish
them to make them confess, which is so detestable
a crime that it is never committed now, save by
Inquisitors, and Kings of Naples, and a few other
wretched people of whom the world is weary.
And then they say, “We have trained up the child
in the way he should go, and when he grew up he
has departed from it. Why then did Solomon
say that he would not depart from it?” But
perhaps the way of beating, and hurrying, and
frightening, and questioning, was not the way that
the child should go; for it is not even the way in
which a colt should go if you want to break it in
and make it a quiet serviceable horse.

Some folks may say, “Ah! but the Fairy does
not need to do that if she knows everything
already.” True. But, if she did not know, she
would not surely behave worse than a British
judge and jury; and no more should parents and
teachers either.

So she just said nothing at all about the matter,
not even when Tom came next day with the
rest for sweet things. He was horribly afraid of
coming: but he was still more afraid of staying away,
lest any one should suspect him. He was dreadfully
afraid, too, lest there should be no sweets[176]—as
was to be expected, he having eaten them all—and
lest then the fairy should inquire who had
taken them. But, behold! she pulled out just as
many as ever, which astonished Tom, and frightened
him still more.

And, when the fairy looked him full in the
face, he shook from head to foot: however she gave
him his share like the rest, and he thought within
himself that she could not have found him out.

But, when he put the sweets into his mouth,
he hated the taste of them; and they made him so
sick that he had to get away as fast as he could;
and terribly sick he was, and very cross and
unhappy, all the week after.

Then, when next week came, he had his share
again; and again the fairy looked him full in the
face; but more sadly than she had ever looked.
And he could not bear the sweets: but took them
again in spite of himself.

And when Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby came,
he wanted to be cuddled like the rest; but she
said very seriously:

“I should like to cuddle you; but I cannot,
you are so horny and prickly.”

And Tom looked at himself: and he was all
over prickles, just like a sea-egg.

Which was quite natural; for you must know
and believe that people’s souls make their bodies
just as a snail makes its shell (I am not joking,
my little man; I am in serious, solemn earnest).
And therefore, when Tom’s soul grew all prickly
with naughty tempers, his body could not help[177]
growing prickly too, so that nobody would cuddle
him, or play with him, or even like to look at
him.

What could Tom do now but go away and
hide in a corner and cry? For nobody would
play with him, and he knew full well why.

And he was so miserable all that week that
when the ugly fairy came and looked at him once
more full in the face, more seriously and sadly than
ever, he could stand it no longer, and thrust the
sweetmeats away, saying, “No, I don’t want any:
I can’t bear them now,” and then burst out crying,
poor little man, and told Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid
every word as it happened.

He was horribly frightened when he had done
so; for he expected her to punish him very severely.
But, instead, she only took him up and kissed him,
which was not quite pleasant, for her chin was very
bristly indeed; but he was so lonely-hearted, he
thought that rough kissing was better than none.

“I will forgive you, little man,” she said. “I
always forgive every one the moment they tell me
the truth of their own accord.”

“Then you will take away all these nasty
prickles?”

“That is a very different matter. You put
them there yourself, and only you can take them
away.”

“But how can I do that?” asked Tom, crying
afresh.

“Well, I think it is time for you to go to
school; so I shall fetch you a schoolmistress, who[178]
will teach you how to get rid of your prickles.”
And so she went away.

Tom was frightened at the notion of a schoolmistress;
for he thought she would certainly come
with a birch-rod or a cane; but he comforted himself,
at last, that she might be something like the
old woman in Vendale—which she was not in the
least; for, when the fairy brought her, she was the
most beautiful little girl that ever was seen, with
long curls floating behind her like a golden cloud,
and long robes floating all round her like a silver
one.

“There he is,” said the fairy; “and you must
teach him to be good, whether you like or not.”

“I know,” said the little girl; but she did not
seem quite to like, for she put her finger in her
mouth, and looked at Tom under her brows; and
Tom put his finger in his mouth, and looked at
her under his brows, for he was horribly ashamed
of himself.

The little girl seemed hardly to know how to
begin; and perhaps she would never have begun
at all if poor Tom had not burst out crying, and
begged her to teach him to be good and help him
to cure his prickles; and at that she grew so
tender-hearted that she began teaching him as
prettily as ever child was taught in the world.

And what did the little girl teach Tom? She
taught him, first, what you have been taught ever
since you said your first prayers at your mother’s
knees; but she taught him much more simply.
For the lessons in that world, my child, have no[179]
such hard words in them as the lessons in this, and
therefore the water-babies like them better than
you like your lessons, and long to learn them more
and more; and grown men cannot puzzle nor
quarrel over their meaning, as they do here on
land; for those lessons all rise clear and pure, like
the Test out of Overton Pool, out of the everlasting
ground of all life and truth.

So she taught Tom every day in the week;
only on Sundays she always went away home, and
the kind fairy took her place. And before she
had taught Tom many Sundays, his prickles had
vanished quite away, and his skin was smooth and
clean again.

“Dear me!” said the little girl; “why, I
know you now. You are the very same little
chimney-sweep who came into my bedroom.”

“Dear me!” cried Tom. “And I know you,
too, now. You are the very little white lady whom
I saw in bed.” And he jumped at her, and longed
to hug and kiss her; but did not, remembering
that she was a lady born; so he only jumped
round and round her till he was quite tired.

And then they began telling each other all
their story—how he had got into the water, and
she had fallen over the rock; and how he had
swum down to the sea, and how she had flown
out of the window; and how this, that, and the
other, till it was all talked out: and then they both
began over again, and I can’t say which of the two
talked fastest.

And then they set to work at their lessons[180]
again, and both liked them so well that they
went on well till seven full years were past and
gone.

You may fancy that Tom was quite content
and happy all those seven years; but the truth is,
he was not. He had always one thing on his mind,
and that was—where little Ellie went, when she
went home on Sundays.

To a very beautiful place, she said.

But what was the beautiful place like, and
where was it?

Ah! that is just what she could not say. And
it is strange, but true, that no one can say; and
that those who have been oftenest in it, or even
nearest to it, can say least about it, and make
people understand least what it is like. There
are a good many folks about the Other-end-of-Nowhere
(where Tom went afterwards), who
pretend to know it from north to south as well
as if they had been penny postmen there; but,
as they are safe at the Other-end-of-Nowhere,
nine hundred and ninety-nine million miles away,
what they say cannot concern us.

But the dear, sweet, loving, wise, good, self-sacrificing
people, who really go there, can never
tell you anything about it, save that it is the most
beautiful place in all the world; and, if you ask
them more, they grow modest, and hold their
peace, for fear of being laughed at; and quite
right they are.

So all that good little Ellie could say was, that
it was worth all the rest of the world put together.[181]
And of course that only made Tom the more
anxious to go likewise.

“Miss Ellie,” he said at last, “I will know
why I cannot go with you when you go home on
Sundays, or I shall have no peace, and give you
none either.”

“You must ask the fairies that.”

So when the fairy, Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid,
came next, Tom asked her.

“Little boys who are only fit to play with sea-beasts
cannot go there,” she said. “Those who
go there must go first where they do not like, and
do what they do not like, and help somebody they
do not like.”

“Why, did Ellie do that?”

“Ask her.”

And Ellie blushed, and said, “Yes, Tom; I
did not like coming here at first; I was so much
happier at home, where it is always Sunday. And
I was afraid of you, Tom, at first,—because—because——”

“Because I was all over prickles? But I am
not prickly now, am I, Miss Ellie?”

“No,” said Ellie. “I like you very much
now; and I like coming here, too.”

“And perhaps,” said the fairy, “you will learn
to like going where you don’t like, and helping
some one that you don’t like, as Ellie has.”

But Tom put his finger in his mouth, and hung
his head down; for he did not see that at all.

So when Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby came,
Tom asked her; for he thought in his little head,[182]
She is not so strict as her sister, and perhaps she
may let me off more easily.

Ah, Tom, Tom, silly fellow! and yet I don’t
know why I should blame you, while so many
grown people have got the very same notion in
their heads.

But, when they try it, they get just the same
answer as Tom did. For, when he asked the
second fairy, she told him just what the first did,
and in the very same words.

Tom was very unhappy at that. And, when
Ellie went home on Sunday, he fretted and cried
all day, and did not care to listen to the fairy’s
stories about good children, though they were
prettier than ever. Indeed, the more he overheard
of them, the less he liked to listen, because they
were all about children who did what they did not
like, and took trouble for other people, and worked
to feed their little brothers and sisters instead of
caring only for their play. And, when she began
to tell a story about a holy child in old times, who
was martyred by the heathen because it would not
worship idols, Tom could bear no more, and ran
away and hid among the rocks.

And, when Ellie came back, he was shy with
her, because he fancied she looked down on him,
and thought him a coward. And then he grew
quite cross with her, because she was superior to
him, and did what he could not do. And poor
Ellie was quite surprised and sad; and at last Tom
burst out crying; but he would not tell her what
was really in his mind.[183]

And all the while he was eaten up with
curiosity to know where Ellie went to; so that
he began not to care for his playmates, or for the
sea-palace or anything else. But perhaps that made
matters all the easier for him; for he grew so discontented
with everything round him that he did
not care to stay, and did not care where he went.

“Well,” he said, at last, “I am so miserable
here, I’ll go; if only you will go with me?”

“Ah!” said Ellie, “I wish I might; but the
worst of it is, that the fairy says that you must go
alone if you go at all. Now don’t poke that poor
crab about, Tom” (for he was feeling very naughty
and mischievous), “or the fairy will have to punish
you.”

Tom was very nearly saying, “I don’t care if
she does”; but he stopped himself in time.

“I know what she wants me to do,” he said,
whining most dolefully. “She wants me to go
after that horrid old Grimes. I don’t like him,
that’s certain. And if I find him, he will turn me
into a chimney-sweep again, I know. That’s what
I have been afraid of all along.”

“No, he won’t—I know as much as that.
Nobody can turn water-babies into sweeps, or hurt
them at all, as long as they are good.”

“Ah,” said naughty Tom, “I see what you
want; you are persuading me all along to go,
because you are tired of me, and want to get rid
of me.”

Little Ellie opened her eyes very wide at that,
and they were all brimming over with tears.[184]

“Oh, Tom, Tom!” she said, very mournfully—and
then she cried, “Oh, Tom! where are
you?”

And Tom cried, “Oh, Ellie, where are you?”

For neither of them could see each other—not
the least. Little Ellie vanished quite away, and
Tom heard her voice calling him, and growing
smaller and smaller, and fainter and fainter, till all
was silent.

Who was frightened then but Tom? He
swam up and down among the rocks, into all the
halls and chambers, faster than ever he swam
before, but could not find her. He shouted after
her, but she did not answer; he asked all the other
children, but they had not seen her; and at last he
went up to the top of the water and began crying
and screaming for Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid—which
perhaps was the best thing to do—for she came in
a moment.

“Oh!” said Tom. “Oh dear, oh dear! I
have been naughty to Ellie, and I have killed her—I
know I have killed her.”

“Not quite that,” said the fairy; “but I have
sent her away home, and she will not come back
again for I do not know how long.”

And at that Tom cried so bitterly that the salt
sea was swelled with his tears, and the tide was
.3,954,620,819 of an inch higher than it had been
the day before: but perhaps that was owing to the
waxing of the moon. It may have been so; but
it is considered right in the new philosophy, you
know, to give spiritual causes for physical phenomena—especially[185]
in parlour-tables; and, of course,
physical causes for spiritual ones, like thinking,
and praying, and knowing right from wrong.
And so they odds it till it comes even, as folks say
down in Berkshire.

“How cruel of you to send Ellie away!”
sobbed Tom. “However, I will find her again,
if I go to the world’s end to look for her.”

The fairy did not slap Tom, and tell him to
hold his tongue: but she took him on her lap
very kindly, just as her sister would have done;
and put him in mind how it was not her fault,
because she was wound up inside, like watches, and
could not help doing things whether she liked or
not. And then she told him how he had been in
the nursery long enough, and must go out now and
see the world, if he intended ever to be a man;
and how he must go all alone by himself, as every
one else that ever was born has to go, and see with
his own eyes, and smell with his own nose, and
make his own bed and lie on it, and burn his own
fingers if he put them into the fire. And then she
told him how many fine things there were to be
seen in the world, and what an odd, curious,
pleasant, orderly, respectable, well-managed, and,
on the whole, successful (as, indeed, might have
been expected) sort of a place it was, if people
would only be tolerably brave and honest and good
in it; and then she told him not to be afraid of
anything he met, for nothing would harm him if
he remembered all his lessons, and did what he
knew was right. And at last she comforted poor[186]
little Tom so much that he was quite eager to go,
and wanted to set out that minute. “Only,”
he said, “if I might see Ellie once before I
went!”

“Why do you want that?”

“Because—because I should be so much happier
if I thought she had forgiven me.”

And in the twinkling of an eye there stood
Ellie, smiling, and looking so happy that Tom
longed to kiss her; but was still afraid it would
not be respectful, because she was a lady born.

“I am going, Ellie!” said Tom. “I am
going, if it is to the world’s end. But I don’t
like going at all, and that’s the truth.”

“Pooh! pooh! pooh!” said the fairy. “You
will like it very well indeed, you little rogue, and
you know that at the bottom of your heart. But
if you don’t, I will make you like it. Come here,
and see what happens to people who do only what
is pleasant.”

And she took out of one of her cupboards (she
had all sorts of mysterious cupboards in the cracks
of the rocks) the most wonderful waterproof book,
full of such photographs as never were seen. For she
had found out photography (and this is a fact) more
than 13,598,000 years before anybody was born;
and, what is more, her photographs did not merely
represent light and shade, as ours do, but colour
also, and all colours, as you may see if you look at
a blackcock’s tail, or a butterfly’s wing, or indeed
most things that are or can be, so to speak. And
therefore her photographs were very curious and[187]
famous, and the children looked with great delight
for the opening of the book.

And on the title-page was written, “The
History of the great and famous nation of the
Doasyoulikes, who came away from the country of
Hardwork, because they wanted to play on the
Jews’ harp all day long.”

In the first picture they saw these Doasyoulikes
living in the land of Readymade, at the foot of
the Happy-go-lucky Mountains, where flapdoodle
grows wild; and if you want to know what that
is, you must read Peter Simple.

They lived very much such a life as those jolly
old Greeks in Sicily, whom you may see painted
on the ancient vases, and really there seemed to be
great excuses for them, for they had no need to
work.

Instead of houses they lived in the beautiful
caves of tufa, and bathed in the warm springs three
times a day; and, as for clothes, it was so warm
there that the gentlemen walked about in little beside
a cocked hat and a pair of straps, or some light
summer tackle of that kind; and the ladies all
gathered gossamer in autumn (when they were not
too lazy) to make their winter dresses.

They were very fond of music, but it was too
much trouble to learn the piano or the violin; and
as for dancing, that would have been too great an
exertion. So they sat on ant-hills all day long, and
played on the Jews’ harp; and, if the ants bit them,
why they just got up and went to the next ant-hill,
till they were bitten there likewise.[188]

And they sat under the flapdoodle-trees, and
let the flapdoodle drop into their mouths; and
under the vines, and squeezed the grape-juice
down their throats; and, if any little pigs ran about
ready roasted, crying, “Come and eat me,” as was
their fashion in that country, they waited till the
pigs ran against their mouths, and then took a bite,
and were content, just as so many oysters would
have been.

They needed no weapons, for no enemies ever
came near their land; and no tools, for everything
was readymade to their hand; and the stern old
fairy Necessity never came near them to hunt them
up, and make them use their wits, or die.

And so on, and so on, and so on, till there were
never such comfortable, easy-going, happy-go-lucky
people in the world.

“Well, that is a jolly life,” said Tom.

“You think so?” said the fairy. “Do you
see that great peaked mountain there behind,”
said the fairy, “with smoke coming out of
its top?”

“Yes.”

“And do you see all those ashes, and slag, and
cinders lying about?”

“Yes.”

“Then turn over the next five hundred years,
and you will see what happens next.”

And behold the mountain had blown up like a
barrel of gunpowder, and then boiled over like a
kettle; whereby one-third of the Doasyoulikes
were blown into the air, and another third were[189]
smothered in ashes; so that there was only one-third
left.

“You see,” said the fairy, “what comes of
living on a burning mountain.”

“Oh, why did you not warn them?” said little
Ellie.

“I did warn them all that I could. I let the
smoke come out of the mountain; and wherever
there is smoke there is fire. And I laid the ashes
and cinders all about; and wherever there are
cinders, cinders may be again. But they did not
like to face facts, my dears, as very few people do;
and so they invented a cock-and-bull story, which,
I am sure, I never told them, that the smoke was
the breath of a giant, whom some gods or other
had buried under the mountain; and that the
cinders were what the dwarfs roasted the little
pigs whole with; and other nonsense of that kind.
And, when folks are in that humour, I cannot
teach them, save by the good old birch-rod.”

And then she turned over the next five hundred
years: and there were the remnant of the Doasyoulikes,
doing as they liked, as before. They
were too lazy to move away from the mountain;
so they said, If it has blown up once, that is all the
more reason that it should not blow up again.
And they were few in number: but they only
said, The more the merrier, but the fewer the
better fare. However, that was not quite true;
for all the flapdoodle-trees were killed by the
volcano, and they had eaten all the roast pigs,
who, of course, could not be expected to have little[190]
ones. So they had to live very hard, on nuts and
roots which they scratched out of the ground with
sticks. Some of them talked of sowing corn, as
their ancestors used to do, before they came into
the land of Readymade; but they had forgotten
how to make ploughs (they had forgotten even
how to make Jews’ harps by this time), and had
eaten all the seed-corn which they brought out of
the land of Hardwork years since; and of course it
was too much trouble to go away and find more.
So they lived miserably on roots and nuts, and all
the weakly little children had great stomachs, and
then died.

“Why,” said Tom, “they are growing no better
than savages.”

“And look how ugly they are all getting,”
said Ellie.

“Yes; when people live on poor vegetables
instead of roast beef and plum-pudding, their jaws
grow large, and their lips grow coarse, like the
poor Paddies who eat potatoes.”

And she turned over the next five hundred
years. And there they were all living up in trees,
and making nests to keep off the rain. And underneath
the trees lions were prowling about.

“Why,” said Ellie, “the lions seem to have
eaten a good many of them, for there are very few
left now.”

“Yes,” said the fairy; “you see it was only
the strongest and most active ones who could
climb the trees, and so escape.”

“But what great, hulking, broad-shouldered[191]
chaps they are,” said Tom; “they are a rough lot
as ever I saw.”

“Yes, they are getting very strong now; for
the ladies will not marry any but the very strongest
and fiercest gentlemen, who can help them up the
trees out of the lions’ way.”

And she turned over the next five hundred years.
And in that they were fewer still, and stronger, and
fiercer; but their feet had changed shape very
oddly, for they laid hold of the branches with
their great toes, as if they had been thumbs, just
as a Hindoo tailor uses his toes to thread his needle.

The children were very much surprised, and
asked the fairy whether that was her doing.

“Yes, and no,” she said, smiling. “It was only
those who could use their feet as well as their hands
who could get a good living: or, indeed, get
married; so that they got the best of everything,
and starved out all the rest; and those who are
left keep up a regular breed of toe-thumb-men, as
a breed of short-horns, or skye-terriers, or fancy
pigeons is kept up.”

“But there is a hairy one among them,” said
Ellie.

“Ah!” said the fairy, “that will be a great
man in his time, and chief of all the tribe.”

And, when she turned over the next five hundred
years, it was true.

For this hairy chief had had hairy children, and
they hairier children still; and every one wished
to marry hairy husbands, and have hairy children
too; for the climate was growing so damp that[192]
none but the hairy ones could live: all the rest
coughed and sneezed, and had sore throats, and
went into consumptions, before they could grow
up to be men and women.

Then the fairy turned over the next five hundred
years. And they were fewer still.

“Why, there is one on the ground picking up
roots,” said Ellie, “and he cannot walk upright.”

No more he could; for in the same way that
the shape of their feet had altered, the shape of
their backs had altered also.

“Why,” cried Tom, “I declare they are all
apes.”

“Something fearfully like it, poor foolish
creatures,” said the fairy. “They are grown so
stupid now, that they can hardly think: for none
of them have used their wits for many hundred
years. They have almost forgotten, too, how to
talk. For each stupid child forgot some of the
words it heard from its stupid parents, and had not
wits enough to make fresh words for itself. Beside,
they are grown so fierce and suspicious and brutal
that they keep out of each other’s way, and mope
and sulk in the dark forests, never hearing each
other’s voice, till they have forgotten almost what
speech is like. I am afraid they will all be apes
very soon, and all by doing only what they liked.”

And in the next five hundred years they were
all dead and gone, by bad food and wild beasts and
hunters; all except one tremendous old fellow with
jaws like a jack, who stood full seven feet high;
and M. Du Chaillu came up to him, and shot him,[193]
as he stood roaring and thumping his breast. And
he remembered that his ancestors had once been
men, and tried to say, “Am I not a man and a
brother?” but had forgotten how to use his
tongue; and then he had tried to call for a doctor,
but he had forgotten the word for one. So all he
said was “Ubboboo!” and died.

And that was the end of the great and jolly
nation of the Doasyoulikes. And, when Tom and
Ellie came to the end of the book, they looked
very sad and solemn; and they had good reason so
to do, for they really fancied that the men were
apes, and never thought, in their simplicity, of
asking whether the creatures had hippopotamus
majors in their brains or not; in which case, as
you have been told already, they could not possibly
have been apes, though they were more apish than
the apes of all aperies.

“But could you not have saved them from
becoming apes?” said little Ellie, at last.

“At first, my dear; if only they would have
behaved like men, and set to work to do what they
did not like. But the longer they waited, and
behaved like the dumb beasts, who only do what
they like, the stupider and clumsier they grew;
till at last they were past all cure, for they had
thrown their own wits away. It is such things as
this that help to make me so ugly, that I know
not when I shall grow fair.”

“And where are they all now?” asked Ellie.

“Exactly where they ought to be, my dear.”

“Yes!” said the fairy, solemnly, half to herself,[194]
as she closed the wonderful book. “Folks say
now that I can make beasts into men; by circumstance,
and selection, and competition, and so forth.
Well, perhaps they are right; and perhaps, again,
they are wrong. That is one of the seven things
which I am forbidden to tell, till the coming of
the Cocqcigrues; and, at all events, it is no concern
of theirs. Whatever their ancestors were,
men they are; and I advise them to behave as
such, and act accordingly. But let them recollect
this, that there are two sides to every question, and
a downhill as well as an uphill road; and, if I can
turn beasts into men, I can, by the same laws of
circumstance, and selection, and competition, turn
men into beasts. You were very near being turned
into a beast once or twice, little Tom. Indeed, if
you had not made up your mind to go on this
journey, and see the world, like an Englishman, I
am not sure but that you would have ended as an
eft in a pond.”

“Oh, dear me!” said Tom; “sooner than
that, and be all over slime, I’ll go this minute, if
it is to the world’s end.”

[196]

[197]

CHAPTER VII

“Ah!” said the fairy, “that is a brave, good
boy. But you must go farther than the world’s
end, if you want to find Mr. Grimes; for he is at
the Other-end-of-Nowhere. You must go to Shiny
Wall, and through the white 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. And there 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 where it 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 beasts in 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 at once. Good-bye, Miss
Ellie; you know I am getting a big boy, and I
must go out and see the world.”[198]

“I know you must,” said Ellie; “but you will
not forget me, Tom. I shall wait here till you
come.”

And she shook hands with him, and bade him
good-bye. Tom longed very much 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: but his little whirl-about of a
head was so full of the notion of going out to see
the world, that it forgot her in five minutes: however,
though his 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, but none of them knew the way to
Shiny Wall. For why? He was still too far
down south.

Then he met a ship, far larger than he had
ever seen—a gallant ocean-steamer, with a long
cloud of smoke trailing behind; and he wondered
how she went on without sails, and swam up to
her to see. A school of dolphins were running
races round and round her, going three feet for her
one, and Tom asked them the way to Shiny Wall:
but they did not know. Then he tried to find out
how she moved, and at last he saw her screw, and
was so delighted with it that he played under her
quarter all day, till he nearly had his nose knocked
off by the fans, and thought it time to move.
Then he watched the sailors upon deck, and the
ladies, with their bonnets and parasols: but none
of them could see him, because their eyes were not
opened,—as, indeed, most people’s eyes are not.[199]

At last there came out into the quarter-gallery a
very pretty lady, in deep black widow’s weeds, and
in her arms a baby. She leaned over the quarter-gallery,
and looked back and back toward England
far away; and as she looked she sang:

I.

II.

Her voice was so soft and low, and the music
of the air so sweet, that Tom could have listened
to it all day. But as she held the baby over the
gallery rail, to show it the dolphins leaping and
the water gurgling in the ship’s wake, lo! and
behold, the baby saw Tom.

He was quite sure of that; for when their eyes
met, the baby smiled and held out his hands; and
Tom smiled and held out his hands too; and the
baby kicked and leaped, as if it wanted to jump
overboard to him.[200]

“What do you see, my darling?” said the
lady; and her eyes followed the baby’s till she too
caught sight of Tom, swimming about among the
foam-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 a little: 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, and drew her in. And Tom
turned away northward, sad and wondering; and
watched the great steamer slide away into the
dusk, and the lights on board peep out one by one,
and die out again, and the long bar of smoke fade
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 King of the Herrings, with
a curry-comb growing out of his nose, and a sprat
in his mouth for a cigar, and asked him the way
to Shiny Wall; so he bolted his sprat head foremost,
and said:

“If I were you, young gentleman, I should go
to the Allalonestone, and ask the last of the Gairfowl.
She is of a very ancient clan, very nearly as
ancient as my own; and knows a good deal which
these modern upstarts don’t, as ladies of old houses
are likely to do.”

“There he saw the last of the Gairfowl, standing up on the Allalonestone, all alone.”—P. 201.

Tom asked his way to her, and the King of
the Herrings told him very kindly, for he was a[201]
courteous old gentleman of the old school, though
he was horribly ugly, and strangely bedizened too,
like the old dandies who lounge in the club-house
windows.

But just as Tom had thanked him and set off,
he called after him: “Hi! I say, can you fly?”

“I never tried,” says Tom. “Why?”

“Because, if you can, I should advise you to
say nothing to the old lady about it. There; take
a hint. Good-bye.”

And away Tom went for seven days and seven
nights due north-west, till he came to a great codbank,
the like of which he never saw before. The
great cod lay below in tens of thousands, and
gobbled shell-fish all day long; and the blue
sharks roved about in hundreds, and gobbled them
when they came up. So they ate, and ate, and ate
each other, as they had done since the making of
the world; for no man had come here yet to catch
them, and find out how rich old Mother Carey is.

And there he saw the last of the Gairfowl,
standing up on the Allalonestone, all alone. And
a very grand old lady she was, full three feet high,
and bolt upright, like some old Highland chieftainess.
She had on a black velvet gown, and a
white pinner and apron, and a very high bridge to
her nose (which is a sure mark of high breeding),
and a large 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 she fanned herself, and complained[202]
of the dreadful heat; and she kept on crooning an
old song to herself, which she learnt when she was
a little baby-bird, long ago—

It was “flew” away, properly, and not
“swam” away: but, as she could not fly, she had
a right to alter it. However, it was a very fit
song for her to sing, because she was a lady
herself.

Tom came up to her very humbly, and made
his bow; and the first thing she said was—

“Have you wings? Can you fly?”

“Oh dear, no, ma’am; I should not think of
such thing,” said cunning little Tom.

“Then I shall have great pleasure in talking to
you, my dear. It is quite refreshing nowadays to
see anything without wings. They must all have
wings, forsooth, now, every new upstart sort of
bird, and fly. What can they want with flying,
and raising themselves above their proper station
in life? In the days of my ancestors no birds ever
thought of having wings, and did very well without;
and now they all laugh at me because I keep
to the good old fashion. Why, the very marrocks
and dovekies have got wings, the vulgar creatures,[203]
and poor little ones enough they are; and my own
cousins too, the razor-bills, who are gentlefolk
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 began
fanning herself again; and then he asked if she
knew the way to Shiny Wall.

“Shiny Wall? Who should know better than
I? We all came from Shiny Wall, thousands of
years ago, when it was decently cold, and the
climate was fit for gentlefolk; but now, what with
the heat, and what with these vulgar-winged things
who fly up and down and eat everything, so that
gentlepeople’s hunting is all spoilt, and one really
cannot get one’s living, or hardly venture off the
rock for fear of being flown against by some creature
that would not have dared to come within a mile
of one a thousand years ago—what was I saying?
Why, we have quite gone down in the world, my
dear, and have nothing left but our honour. And
I am the last of my family. A friend of mine and
I came and settled on this rock when we were
young, to be out of the way of low people. Once
we were a great nation, and spread over all the
Northern Isles. But men shot us so, and knocked
us on the head, and took our eggs—why, if you
will believe it, they say that on the coast of
Labrador the sailors used to lay a plank from the
rock on board the thing called their ship, and drive
us along the plank by hundreds, till we tumbled[204]
down into the ship’s waist in heaps; and then, I
suppose, they ate us, the nasty fellows! Well—but—what
was I saying? At last, there were
none of us left, except on the old Gairfowlskerry,
just off the Iceland coast, up which no man could
climb. Even there we had no peace; for one day,
when I was quite a young girl, the land rocked,
and the sea boiled, and the sky grew dark, and all
the air was filled with smoke and dust, and down
tumbled 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 us
were dashed to pieces, and some drowned; and
those who were left got away to Eldey, and the
dovekies tell me they are all dead now, and that
another 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 every word of it true.

“If you only had had wings!” said Tom;
“then you might all have flown away too.”

“Yes, young gentleman: and if people are not
gentlemen and ladies, and forget that noblesse oblige,
they will find it as easy to get on in the world as
other people who don’t care what they do. Why,
if I had not recollected that noblesse oblige, I should
not have been all alone now.” And the poor old
lady sighed.

“How was that, ma’am?”

“Why, my dear, a gentleman came hither with[205]
me, and after we had been here 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’t deny: but you see, I
could not hear of such a thing, because he was my
deceased sister’s husband, you see?”

“Of course not, ma’am,” said Tom; though,
of course, he knew nothing about it. “She was
very much diseased, I suppose?”

“You do not understand me, my dear. I
mean, that being a lady, and with right and
honourable feelings, as our house always has had,
I felt it my duty to snub him, and howk him, and
peck him continually, to keep him at his proper
distance; and, to tell the truth, I once pecked him
a little too hard, poor fellow, and he tumbled
backwards off the rock, and—really, it was very
unfortunate, but it was not my fault—a shark
coming by saw him flapping, and snapped him up.
And since then I have lived 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 am sure—that is—really, my
poor old brains are getting quite puzzled. Do
you know, my little dear, I am afraid, if you want[206]
to know, you must ask some of these vulgar birds
about, for I have quite forgotten.”

And the poor old Gairfowl began to cry tears
of pure oil; and Tom was quite sorry for her; and
for himself too, for he was at his wit’s end whom
to ask.

But by there came a flock of petrels, who are
Mother Carey’s own chickens; and Tom thought
them much prettier than Lady Gairfowl, and so
perhaps they were; for Mother Carey had had a
great deal of fresh experience between the time
that she invented the Gairfowl and the time that
she invented them. They flitted along like a flock
of black swallows, and hopped and skipped from
wave to wave, lifting up their little feet behind
them so daintily, and whistling to each other so
tenderly, that Tom fell in love with them at once,
and called them to know the way to Shiny Wall.

“Shiny Wall? Do you want Shiny Wall?
Then come with us, and we will show you. We
are Mother Carey’s own chickens, and she sends
us out over all the seas, to show the good birds
the way home.”

Tom was delighted, and swam off to them,
after he had made his bow to the Gairfowl. But
she would not return his bow: but held herself
bolt upright, and wept tears of oil as she sang:

But she was wrong there; for the stone was[207]
not left all alone: and the next 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 in her place; and when
Tom comes he will see the fishing-smacks anchored
there in hundreds, from Scotland, and from Ireland,
and from the Orkneys, and the Shetlands, and from
all the Northern ports, full of the children of the
old Norse Vikings, the masters of the sea. And
the men will be hauling in the great cod by
thousands, till their hands are sore 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 there to 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 summer sea-fair, and dredge strange
creatures such as man never saw before; and we
shall hear the sailors boast that it is not the worst
jewel in Queen Victoria’s crown, for there are
eighty miles of codbank, and food for all the poor
folk in the land. That is what Tom will see, and
perhaps you and I shall see it too. And then we
shall not be sorry because we cannot get a Gairfowl
to stuff, much less find gairfowl enough to
drive them into stone pens and slaughter them, as
the old Norsemen did, or drive them on board
along a plank till the ship was victualled with
them, as the old English and French rovers used
to do, of whom dear old Hakluyt tells: but
we shall remember what Mr. Tennyson says:
how[208]

And now Tom was all agog to start for Shiny
Wall; but the petrels said no. They must go
first to Allfowlsness, and wait there for the great
gathering of all the sea-birds, before they start for
their summer breeding-places far away in the
Northern Isles; and there they would be sure to
find some birds which were going to Shiny Wall:
but where Allfowlsness was, he must promise never
to tell, lest men should go there and shoot the
birds, and stuff them, and put them into stupid
museums, instead of leaving them to play and
breed and work in Mother Carey’s water-garden,
where they ought to be.

So where Allfowlsness is nobody must know;
and all that is to be said about it is, that Tom
waited there many days; and as he waited, he saw
a very curious sight. On the rabbit burrows on
the shore there gathered hundreds and hundreds
of hoodie-crows, such as you see in Cambridgeshire.
And they made such a noise, that Tom
came on shore and went up to see what was the
matter.

And there he found them holding their great
caucus, which they hold every 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 had done; how many lambs’[209]
eyes they had picked out, and how many dead
bullocks they had eaten, and how many young
grouse they had swallowed whole, and how many
grouse-eggs they had flown away with, stuck on
the point of their bills, which is the hoodie-crow’s
particularly clever feat, of which he is as proud as
a gipsy is of doing the hokanybaro; and what that
is, I won’t tell you.

And at last they brought out the prettiest,
neatest young lady-crow that ever was seen, and
set her in the middle, and all began abusing and
vilifying, and rating, and bullyragging at her,
because she had stolen no grouse-eggs, and had
actually dared to say that she would not steal any.
So she was to be tried publicly by their laws (for
the hoodies always try some offenders in their
great yearly parliament). And there she stood in
the middle, in her black gown and grey hood,
looking as meek and as neat as a Quakeress, and
they all bawled at her at once—

And it was in vain that she pleaded—

For all the other scaul-crows set upon her, and
pecked her to death there and then, before Tom[210]
could come to help her; and then flew away, very
proud of what they had done.

“The most beautiful bird of paradise.”—P. 210.

Now, was not this a scandalous transaction?

But they are true republicans, these hoodies,
who do every one just what he likes, and make
other people do so too; so that, for any freedom
of speech, thought, or action, which is allowed
among them, they might as well be American
citizens of the new school.

But the fairies took the good crow, and gave
her nine new sets of feathers running, and turned
her at last into the most beautiful bird of paradise
with a green velvet suit and a long tail, and sent
her to eat fruit 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?—on
which they all set to work, pecking and gobbling
and cawing and quarrelling to their hearts’ content.
But the moment afterwards, they all threw up
their bills into the air, and gave one screech; and
then turned head over heels backward, and fell
down dead, one hundred and twenty-three of them
at once. For why? The fairy had told the
gamekeeper in 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, in thousands and tens of thousands,
blackening all the air; swans and brant geese,
harlequins and eiders, harolds and garganeys,
smews and goosanders, divers and loons, grebes[211]
and dovekies, auks and razor-bills, gannets and
petrels, skuas and terns, with gulls beyond all
naming or numbering; and they paddled and
washed and splashed and combed and brushed
themselves on the sand, till the shore was white
with feathers; and they quacked and clucked and
gabbled and chattered and screamed and whooped
as they talked over matters with their friends, and
settled where they were to go and breed that
summer, till you might have heard them ten miles
off; and lucky it was for them that there was no
one to hear them but the old keeper, who lived
all alone upon the Ness, in a turf hut thatched
with heather and fringed round with great stones
slung across the roof by bent-ropes, lest the winter
gales should blow the hut right away. But he
never minded the birds nor hurt them, because
they were not in season; indeed, he minded but
two things in the whole world, and those were,
his Bible and his grouse; for he was as good an
old Scotchman as ever knit stockings on a winter’s
night: only, when all the birds were going, he
toddled out, and took off his cap to them, and
wished them a merry journey and a safe return;
and then gathered up all the 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 to Shiny Wall:
but one set was going to Sutherland, and one
to the Shetlands, and one to Norway, and one
to Spitzbergen, and one to Iceland, and one to[212]
Greenland: but none would go to Shiny Wall.
So the good-natured petrels said that they would
show him part of the way themselves, but they
were only going as far as Jan Mayen’s Land; and
after 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 summer
sky; and their cry was like ten thousand packs of
hounds, and ten thousand peals of bells. Only the
puffins stayed behind, and killed the young rabbits,
and laid their eggs in the rabbit-burrows; which
was rough practice, certainly; but a man must see
to his own family.

And, as Tom and the petrels went north-eastward,
it began to blow right hard; for the old
gentleman in the grey great-coat, who looks after
the big copper boiler, in the gulf of Mexico, had
got behindhand with his work; so Mother Carey
had sent an electric message to him for more
steam; and now the steam was coming, as much
in an hour as ought to have come in a week,
puffing and roaring and swishing and swirling, till
you could not see where the sky ended and the sea
began. But Tom and the petrels never cared, for
the gale was right abaft, and away they went over
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 were overboard,
and swayed and surged under her lee; her decks[213]
were swept as clean 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 very sorry indeed, and also
they expected to find some salt pork; and Tom
scrambled on board of her and looked round,
frightened and sad.

And there, in a little cot, lashed tight under
the bulwark, lay a baby fast asleep; the very same
baby, Tom saw at once, which he had seen in the
singing lady’s arms.

He went up to it, and wanted to wake it; but
behold, from under the cot out jumped a little
black and tan terrier dog, and began barking and
snapping 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 shove him away, and did;
and he and the dog fought and struggled, for he
wanted to help the baby, and did not want to
throw the poor dog overboard: but as they were
struggling, there came a tall green sea, and walked
in over the weather side of the ship, and swept
them all into the waves.

“Oh, the baby, the baby!” screamed Tom:
but the next moment he did not scream 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 come up 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 new water-baby in St. Brandan’s Isle.[214]

And the poor little dog?

Why, after he had kicked and coughed a little,
he sneezed so hard, that he 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 the whole
way to the Other-end-of-Nowhere.

Then they went on again, till they began to
see the peak of Jan Mayen’s Land, standing up
like a white sugar-loaf, two miles above the
clouds.

And there they fell in with a whole flock of
mollymocks, who were feeding on a dead whale.

“These are the fellows to show you the way,”
said Mother Carey’s chickens; “we cannot help
you farther north. We don’t like to get among
the ice pack, for fear it should nip our toes: but
the mollys dare fly anywhere.”

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 young gentleman is going to
Mother Carey, and if you don’t attend on him,
you won’t earn your discharge from her, you
know.”

“Greedy we are,” says a great fat old molly,
“but lazy we ain’t; and, as for lubbers, we’re
no more lubbers than you. Let’s have a look at
the lad.”[215]

And he flapped right into Tom’s face, and
stared at him in the most impudent way (for the
mollys are audacious fellows, as all whalers know),
and then asked him where he hailed from, and
what land he sighted last.

And, when Tom told him, he seemed pleased,
and said he was a good plucked one to have got
so far.

“Come along, lads,” he said to the rest, “and
give this little chap a cast over the pack, for
Mother Carey’s sake. We’ve eaten blubber
enough for to-day, and we’ll e’en work out a
bit of our time by helping the lad.”

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 sailor knows), who hunted here,
right whales and horse-whales, full hundreds of
years agone. But, because we were saucy and
greedy, we were all turned into mollys, to eat
whale’s blubber all our days. But lubbers we are
none, 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 of those
black imps of petrels to call us so; but because
they’re her grace’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 of all the birds.

“My name is Hendrick Hudson, and a right[216]
good skipper was I; and my name will last to
the world’s end, in spite of all the wrong I did.
For I discovered Hudson River, and I named
Hudson’s Bay; and many have come in my wake
that dared not have shown me the way. But I
was a hard man in my time, 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 to my sailors, here in these very
seas, that they set me adrift in an open boat, 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 see Shiny Wall looming,
through mist, and snow, and storm. But the pack
rolled horribly upon the swell, and the ice giants
fought and roared, and leapt upon each other’s
backs, and ground each other to powder, so that
Tom was afraid to venture among them, lest he
should be ground to powder too. And he was
the more afraid, when he saw lying among the
ice pack the wrecks of many a gallant ship; some
with masts and yards all standing, some with the
seamen frozen fast on board. Alas, alas, for them!
They were all true English hearts; and they came
to their end like good knights-errant, in searching
for the white gate that never was opened yet.

But the good mollys took Tom and his dog up,
and flew with them safe over the pack and the
roaring ice giants, and set them down at the foot
of Shiny Wall.

“And where is the gate?” asked Tom.[217]

“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, as better fellows, lad, than you
have found to their cost; and if there had been,
they’d have killed by now every right whale that
swims the sea.”

“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 a header.”

“A lucky voyage to you, lad,” said the mollys;
“we knew you were one of the 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, and went on in
black darkness, at the bottom of the sea, for seven
days and seven nights. And yet he was not a bit
frightened. Why should he be? He was a brave
English lad, whose business is to go out and see
all the world.

And at last he saw the light, and clear clear
water overhead; and up he came a thousand
fathoms, among clouds of sea-moths, which fluttered
round his head. There were moths with
pink heads and wings and opal bodies, that flapped
about slowly; moths with brown wings that[218]
flapped about quickly; yellow shrimps that hopped
and skipped most quickly of all; and jellies of
all the colours in the world, that neither hopped
nor skipped, but only dawdled and yawned, and
would not get out of his way. The dog snapped
at them till his jaws were tired; but Tom hardly
minded them at all, he was so eager to get to the
top of the water, and see the pool where the good
whales go.

And a very large pool it was, miles and miles
across, though the air was so clear that the ice
cliffs on the opposite side looked as if they were
close at hand. All round it the ice cliffs rose, in
walls and spires and battlements, and caves and
bridges, and stories and galleries, in which the
ice-fairies live, and drive away the storms and
clouds, that Mother Carey’s pool may lie calm
from year’s end to year’s end. And the sun acted
policeman, and walked round outside every day,
peeping just over the top of the ice wall, to see
that all went right; and now and then he played
conjuring tricks, or had an exhibition of fireworks,
to amuse the ice-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,
and stick himself in the middle of them, and wink
at the fairies; and I daresay they were very much
amused; for anything’s fun in the country.

“That’s Mother Carey.”—P. 219.

And there the good whales lay, the happy
sleepy beasts, upon the still oily sea. They were
all right whales, you must know, and finners, and
razor-backs, and bottle-noses, and spotted sea-unicorns[219]
with long ivory horns. But the sperm
whales are such raging, ramping, roaring, rumbustious
fellows, that, if Mother Carey let them
in, there would be no more peace in Peacepool.
So she packs them away in a great pond by themselves
at the South Pole, two hundred and sixty-three
miles south-south-east of Mount Erebus, the
great volcano in the ice; and there they butt each
other with their ugly noses, day and night from
year’s end to year’s end.

But here there were only good quiet beasts,
lying about like the black hulls of sloops, and
blowing every now and then jets of white steam,
or sculling round with their huge mouths open,
for the sea-moths to swim down their throats.
There were no threshers there to thresh their
poor old backs, or sword-fish to stab their
stomachs, or saw-fish to rip them up, or ice-sharks
to bite lumps out of their sides, or whalers
to harpoon and lance them. They were quite safe
and happy there; and all they had to do was to
wait quietly in Peacepool, till Mother Carey sent
for 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 one peaked iceberg: and
he said so.

“That’s Mother Carey,” said the whale, “as
you will find when you get to her. There she sits
making old beasts into new all the year round.”[220]

“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 salpæ nine yards long, and forty-three
little ice-crabs, who gave each other a parting
pinch all round, tucked their legs under their
stomachs, and determined to die decently, like
Julius Cæsar.

“I suppose,” said Tom, “she cuts up a great
whale like you into a whole shoal of porpoises?”

At which the old whale laughed so violently
that he coughed up all the creatures; who swam
away again very thankful at having escaped out of
that terrible whalebone net of his, from which
bourne no traveller returns; and Tom went on to
the iceberg, wondering.

And, when he came near it, it took the form of
the grandest old lady he had 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 the sea, millions of new-born
creatures, of more shapes and colours than
man ever dreamed. And they were Mother
Carey’s children, whom she makes out of the
sea-water all day long.

He expected, of course—like some grown
people who ought to know better—to find her
snipping, piecing, fitting, stitching, cobbling,
basting, filing, planing, hammering, turning,
polishing, moulding, measuring, chiselling,[221]
clipping, and so forth, as men do when they
go to work 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 the sea
itself. Her hair was as white as the snow—for
she was very very old—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 a water-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,
he recollected the way perfectly.

Now, was not that strange?

“Thank you, ma’am,” said Tom. “Then I
won’t trouble your ladyship any more; I hear you
are very busy.”

“I am never more busy than I am now,” she
said, without stirring a finger.

“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.”[222]

“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 found out how to make butterflies.
I don’t mean sham ones; no: but real live
ones, which would fly, and eat, and lay eggs, and
do everything that they ought; and she was so
proud of her skill that she went flying straight off
to the North Pole, to boast to Mother Carey how
she could make butterflies.

But Mother Carey laughed.

“Know, silly child,” she said, “that any one
can make things, if they will 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 that comes to; and they
will not till they, too, go the journey to the Other-end-of-Nowhere.

“And now, my pretty little man,” said Mother
Carey, “you are sure you know 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, and forgot in an instant.

“But what am I to do, ma’am? For I can’t[223]
keep looking at you when I am somewhere
else.”

“You must do without me, as most people
have to do, for nine hundred and ninety-nine
thousandths of their lives; and look at the dog
instead; for he knows the way well enough, and
will not forget it. Besides, you may meet some
very queer-tempered people there, who will not
let you pass without this passport of mine, which
you must hang round your neck and take care of;
and, of course, as the dog will always go behind
you, you must 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 before you, and be certain to
go wrong; but, if you look behind you, and watch
carefully whatever you have passed, and especially
keep your eye on the dog, who goes by instinct,
and therefore can’t go wrong, then you will know
what is coming next, as plainly as if you saw it in
a looking-glass.”

Tom was very much astonished: but he obeyed
her, for he had learnt always to believe what the
fairies told him.

“So it is, my dear child,” said Mother Carey;
“and I will tell you a story, which will show you
that I am perfectly right, as it is my custom to be.

“Once on a time, there were two brothers.
One was called Prometheus, because he always
looked before him, and boasted that he was wise
beforehand. The other was called Epimetheus,[224]
because he always looked behind him, and did not
boast at all; but said humbly, like the Irishman,
that he had sooner prophesy after the event.

“Pandora and her box.”—P. 224.

“Well, Prometheus was a very clever fellow,
of course, and invented all sorts of wonderful things.
But, unfortunately, when they were set to work, to
work was just what they would not do: wherefore
very little has come of them, and very little is left
of them; and now nobody knows what they were,
save a few archæological old gentlemen who scratch
in queer corners, and find little there save Ptinum
Furem, Blaptem Mortisagam, Acarum Horridum,
and Tineam Laciniarum.

“But Epimetheus was a very slow fellow,
certainly, and went among men for a clod, and a
muff, and a milksop, and a slowcoach, and a bloke,
and a boodle, and so forth. And very little he did,
for many years: but what he did, he never had to
do over again.

“And what happened at last? There came
to the two brothers the most beautiful creature that
ever was seen, Pandora by name; which means,
All the gifts of the Gods. But because she had a
strange box in her hand, this fanciful, forecasting,
suspicious, prudential, theoretical, deductive,
prophesying Prometheus, who was always settling
what was going to happen, would have nothing to
do with pretty Pandora and her box.

“But Epimetheus took her and it, as he took
everything that came; and married her for better
for worse, as every man ought, whenever he has
even the chance of a good wife. And they opened[225]
the box between them, of course, to see what was
inside: for, else, of what possible use could it have
been to them?

“And out flew all the ills which flesh is heir
to; all the children of the four great bogies, Self-will,
Ignorance, Fear, and Dirt—for instance:

“So Epimetheus got a great deal of trouble, as
most men do in this world: but he got the three
best things in the world into the bargain—a good
wife, and experience, and hope: while Prometheus
had just as much trouble, and a great deal more
(as you will hear), of his own making; with
nothing beside, save fancies spun out of his own
brain, as a spider spins her web out of her
stomach.

“And Prometheus kept on looking before him
so far ahead, that as he was running about with a
box of lucifers (which were the only useful things
he ever invented, and do as much harm as good),
he trod on his own nose, and tumbled down (as[226]
most deductive philosophers do), whereby he set
the Thames on fire; and they have hardly put it
out again yet. So he had to be chained to the top
of a mountain, with a vulture by him to give him
a peck whenever he stirred, lest he should turn the
whole world upside down with his prophecies and
his theories.

“But stupid old Epimetheus went working
and grubbing on, with the help of his wife Pandora,
always looking behind him to see what had
happened, till he really learnt to know now and
then what would happen next; and understood
so well which side his bread was buttered, and
which way the cat jumped, that he began to make
things which would work, and go on working,
too; to till and drain the ground, and to make
looms, and ships, and railroads, and steam ploughs,
and electric telegraphs, and all the things which
you see in the Great Exhibition; and to foretell
famine, and bad weather, and the price of stocks and
(what is hardest of all) the next vagary of the great
idol Whirligig, which some call Public Opinion;
till at last he grew as rich as a Jew, and as fat as
a farmer, and people thought twice before they
meddled with him, but only once before they
asked him to help them; for, because he earned
his money well, he could afford to spend it well
likewise.

“And his children are the men of science, who
get good lasting work done in the world; but the
children of Prometheus are the fanatics, and the
theorists, and the bigots, and the bores, and the[227]
noisy windy people, who go telling silly folk what
will happen, instead of looking to see what has
happened already.”