The wind was screaming over the marsh. It shook the shutters and rattled
the windows, and the little boy lay awake in the bare attic. His mother
came softly up the ladder stairs shading the flame of the tallow candle
with her hand.
'I'm not asleep, mother,' said he. And she heard the tears in his voice.
'Why, silly lad,' she said, sitting down on the straw-bed beside him and
putting the candle on the floor, 'what are you crying for?'
'It's the wind keeps calling me, mother,' he said. 'It won't let me
alone. It never has since I put up the little weather-cock for it to
play with. It keeps saying, "Wake up, Septimus Septimusson, wake up,
you're the seventh son of a seventh son. You can see the fairies and
hear the beasts speak, and you must go out and seek your fortune." And
I'm afraid, and I don't want to go.'
'I should think not indeed,' said his mother. 'The wind doesn't talk,
Sep, not really. You just go to sleep like a good boy, and I'll get
father to bring you a gingerbread pig from the fair to-morrow.'
But Sep lay awake a long time listening to what the wind really did keep
on saying, and feeling ashamed to think how frightened he was of going
out all alone to seek his fortune--a thing all the boys in books were
only too happy to do.
Next evening father brought home the loveliest gingerbread pig with
currant eyes. Sep ate it, and it made him less anxious than ever to go
out into the world where, perhaps, no one would give him gingerbread
pigs ever any more.
Before he went to bed he ran down to the shore where a great new harbour
was being made. The workmen had been blasting the big rocks, and on one
of the rocks a lot of mussels were sticking. He stood looking at them,
and then suddenly he heard a lot of little voices crying, 'Oh Sep, we're
so frightened, we're choking.'
The voices were thin and sharp as the edges of mussel shells. They were
indeed the voices of the mussels themselves.
'Oh dear,' said Sep, 'I'm so sorry, but I can't move the rock back into
the sea, you know. Can I now?'
'No,' said the mussels, 'but if you speak to the wind,--you know his
language and he's very fond of you since you made that toy for
him,--he'll blow the sea up till the waves wash us back into deep
water.'
'But I'm afraid of the wind,' said Sep, 'it says things that frighten
me.'
'Oh very well,' said the mussels, 'we don't want you to be afraid. We
can die all right if necessary.'
Then Sep shivered and trembled.
'Go away,' said the thin sharp voices. 'We'll die--but we'd rather die
in our own brave company.'
'I know I'm a coward,' said Sep. 'Oh, wait a minute.'
'Death won't wait,' said the little voices.
'I can't speak to the wind, I won't,' said Sep, and almost at the same
moment he heard himself call out, 'Oh wind, please come and blow up the
waves to save the poor mussels.'