“Three fathoms deep! Impossible! Leave it alone. It isn’t worth while
hauling the old lumber up again; it would cost more to repair than it’s
worth.”
The voice belonged to the master of the mine, whose piano had fallen
into the sea.
Silence followed; the huge fish with a fin like a screw swam away, and
the silence deepened.
After sunset a breeze arose; the black box in the forest of seaweed
rocked and knocked against the stones, and at every knock it played,
so that the fishes came swimming from all directions to watch and to
listen.
The eel-mother was the first to put in an appearance. And when she saw
herself reflected in the polished surface, she said: “It’s a wardrobe
with a plate-glass door.”
There was logic in her remark, and therefore all the others said: “It is
a wardrobe with a plate-glass door.”
Next a rock-fish arrived and smelt at the candlesticks, which had
not yet come off. Tiny bits of candle ends were still sticking in the
sockets. “That’s something to eat,” it said, “if only it weren’t for the
whipcord!”
Then a great bass came and lay flat on the pedal; but immediately there
arose such a rumbling in the box that all the fishes hastily swam away.
They got no further on that day.
At night it blew half a gale, and the musical box went thump, thump,
thump, like a pavier’s beetle, until sunrise. When the eel-mother
and all the rest of them returned, they found that it had undergone a
change.
The lid stood open like a shark’s mouth; they saw a row of teeth, bigger
than they had ever seen before, but every other tooth was black. The
whole machine was swollen at the sides like a seed-fish; the boards were
bent, and the pedal pointed upwards like a foot in the act of walking;
the arms of the candlesticks looked like clenched fists. It was a
dreadful sight!
“It’s falling to pieces,” screamed the bass, and spread out a fin, ready
to turn.
And now the boards fell off, the box was open, and one could see what it
was like inside; and that was the prettiest sight of all.
“It’s a trap! Don’t go too near!” said the eel-mother.
“It’s a hand-loom!” said the stickleback, who builds a nest for itself
and understands the art of weaving.
“It’s a gravel-sifter,” said a red-eye, who lived below the lime-quarry.
It may have been a gravel-sifter. But there were a great many fallals
and odds and ends which were not in the least like the sifter which they
use for riddling sand. There were little manichords which resembled toes
in white woollen stockings, and when they moved it was just as if a foot
with two hundred skeleton toes were walking; and it walked and walked
and yet never left the spot.
It was a strange thing. But the game was up, for the skeleton no longer
touched the strings; it played on the water as if it were knocking at a
door with its fingers, asking whether it might come in.
The game was up. A school of sticklebacks came and swam right through
the box, and when they trailed their spikes over the strings, the
strings sounded again; but they played in a new way, for now they were
tuned to another pitch.
***
On a rosy summer evening soon afterwards two children, a boy and a girl,
were sitting on the landing-bridge. They were not thinking of anything
in particular, unless it was a tiny piece of mischief, when all at once
they heard soft music from the bottom of the sea, which startled them.
“Do you hear it?”
“Yes, what is it? It sounds like scales.”
“No, it’s the song of the gnats.”
“No, it’s a mermaid!”
“There are no mermaids. The schoolmaster said so.”
“The schoolmaster doesn’t know.”
“Oh! do listen!”
They listened for a long time, and then they went away, home.
Presently two newly arrived summer guests sat down on the bridge; he
looked into her eyes, which reflected the golden sunset and the green
shores. Then they heard the sounds of music; it sounded as if somebody
were playing on musical glasses, but in a strange new key, only heard in
the dreams of those who dream of giving a new message to the world. But
they never thought of looking for any outside source, they believed that
it was the song which their own hearts were singing.
Next a couple of annual visitors came sauntering along; they knew the
trick and took a delight in saying in a loud voice:
“It is the submerged piano of the master of the mine.”
But whenever there were only new arrivals present, who did not know
anything about it, they were puzzled and enjoyed the music, until some
of the older ones came and enlightened them. And then they enjoyed it no
longer.
The musical box lay there all the summer. The sticklebacks taught their
art to the bass, who became much more expert. And the piano became a
regular fishing-ground for the summer guests, where they could always be
sure to catch bass; the pilots spread out their nets round about it, and
once a waiter fished there for red-eyes. But when his line with the old
bell weight had run out, and he tried to wind it up again, he heard a
run in X minor, and then the hook was caught. He pulled and pulled, and
in the end he brought up five fingers with wool at the fingertips, and
the bones cracked like the bones of a skeleton. Then he was frightened
and flung his catch back into the sea, although he knew quite well what
it was.
In the dog days, when the water is warm and all the fish retire to the
greater depths to enjoy the coolness, the music ceased. But on a moonlit
night in August, the summer guests held a regatta. The master of the
mine and his wife were present. They sat in a white boat and were slowly
rowed about by their sons. And as their boat was gliding over the black
water, the surface of which was like silver and gold in the moonlight,
they heard a sound of music just below their boat.
“Ha ha!” laughed the master of the mine, “listen to our old piano! Ha
ha!”
But he was silent when he saw that his wife hung her head, in the way
pelicans do in pictures; it looked as if she wanted to bite her own neck
and hide her face.
The old piano and its long history had awakened memories in her of the
first dining-room they furnished together, the first of their children
which had had music lessons, the boredom of the long evenings, only
to be chased away by the crashing volumes of sound which overcame the
dulness of everyday life, changed bad temper into cheerfulness, and
lent new beauty even to the old furniture .... But that is a story which
belongs elsewhere.
When it was autumn and the winter wind began to blow, the pilchards
came in their thousands and swam through the musical box. It was like a
farewell concert, and nothing else, and the seagulls and stormy petrels
came in crowds to listen to it. And in the night the musical box was
carried out to sea; that was the end of the matter.