LITTLE SWORD AND THE INKMAKER
Out across the shining expanse of Silverwater, now lying unruffled by
any breath of wind, went flickering a little blue butterfly, as blue as
if a gentian blossom had taken to itself wings or a speck of sky had
fluttered down to meet its bright reflection in the lake. It was a
foolish expedition for the little explorer, so far from shore, and over
that lonely, treacherous element which has such scant mercy for
butterflies. The turquoise wings dipped and rose, sometimes coming so
close to the water that the Babe caught his breath, thinking the frail
voyager's eyes were unable to distinguish between the crystal purity of
the water and that of the air. At last a wing tip, or more likely the
tip of the velvet tail, brushed the surface. It was only the lightest
touch; and instantly, suddenly, as if startled by the chill contact,
the azure flutterer rose again. In the same instant the water swirled
heavily beneath her, a little sucking whirlpool appeared shattering the
mirror, and circular ripples began to widen quickly and smoothly from
the break.
"That was a big fellow!" exclaimed Uncle Andy. But the Babe said
nothing, being too intent upon the aerial voyager's career.
For two or three moments the flake of sky fluttered higher. Then, as
the ripples smoothed themselves out, she seemed to forget, and began to
descend again as if lured downward by her own dainty reflection. Yet
she had not quite forgotten, for now she only came within six or seven
inches of the traitorous surface. Now her heavenly wings supported her
for a moment almost motionless.
In that moment a splendid shape, gleaming like a bolt of silver, shot a
clear foot into the air and fell back with a massive splash. The
turquoise butterfly was gone.
"Oh--h!" cried the Babe, almost with a sob in his voice. He loved the
blue butterflies as he loved no others of their brilliant and perishing
kindred.
"_Gee_!" exclaimed Uncle Andy. "But he's a _whale_!"
The Babe, in his surprise at this remarkable statement, forgot to mourn
for the fate of the blue butterfly.
"Why, Uncle Andy," he protested. "I didn't know whales could live here
in this little lake."
Uncle Andy made a despairing gesture. "Oh," he murmured wearily, "a
fellow has to be _so_ careful what he says to you! The next time I
make a metaphorical remark in your presence, I'll draw a diagram to go
with it!"
The Babe looked puzzled. He was on the point of asking what "a
metaphorical" was, and also "a diagram"; but he inferred that there
were no whales, after all, in Silverwater. He had misunderstood Uncle
Andy's apparently simple statement of fact. And he felt convicted of
foolishness. Anxious to reinstate himself in his uncle's approval by
an unexpected display of knowledge he waived "metaphorical" aside, let
"diagram" remain a mystery, and remarked disinterestedly:
"Well, I'm glad there ain't any _swordfish_ in Silverwater."
"Bless the child!" cried Uncle Andy. "Whatever has been putting
swordfish into your head?"
"Bill!" replied the Babe truthfully.
"And what do you know about swordfish, then?" proceeded his uncle.
The Babe was much flattered at the unusual favor of being allowed to
air his information.
"They're awful!" he explained. "They're as big as a canoe. And
they've got a sword as long as your leg, Uncle Andy, right in their
tail, so they can stab whales and porpoises with it, just carelessly,
without looking round, so as to make pretend it was an accident. And
they're quicker than greased lightning, Bill says. So you see, if
there was one here in the lake, we couldn't ever go in swimming."
Uncle Andy refrained from smiling. He puffed thoughtfully at his pipe
for half a minute, while the Babe waited for his verdict. At length he
said, between puffs:
"Well, now, there's quite a lot of truth in that, considering that it's
one of Bill's yarns. The swordfish does carry a sword. And he does
jab it into things, whales, sharks, boats, seals, anything whatever
that he thinks might be good to eat or that he does not like the looks
of. And _you_ are quite correct in thinking that the lake would not be
a health-resort for us if it was occupied by a healthy swordfish. But
in one particular Bill has got you badly mixed up. The swordfish
carries his sword not in his tail, but on the tip of his snout more
like a bayonet than a sword. I don't think Bill has ever been at all
intimate with swordfish--eh, what?"
The Babe shook his blonde head sadly over this instance of Bill's
inaccuracy.
"And are they as big as Bill says?" he inquired.
"Oh, yes! He's all right _there_!" assented Uncle Andy. "When they
are quite grown up they are sometimes as long as a canoe, a seventeen
or eighteen foot canoe. And they _are_ quick as 'greased lightning'
all right!"
"But how big are they when they're little?" pursued the Babe, getting
around to his favorite line of investigation.
"Well now, that depends on how little you take them!" answered Uncle
Andy. "As they are hatched out of tiny, pearly eggs no bigger than a
white currant, which the little silver crabs can play marbles with on
the white sand of the sea-bottom till they get tired of the game and
eat them up, you've got a lot of sizes to choose from in a growing
sword-fish."
"I don't mean when they're so very little," answered the Babe, who did
not find things just hatched very interesting.
"I see," said Uncle Andy, understandingly. "Of course when they are
first hatched, and for a long time afterwards, they are kept so busy
trying to avoid getting eaten up by their enemies that I don't suppose
one in ten thousand or so ever manages to survive to the stage where he
begins to make things interesting for his enemies in turn. But _then_
things begin to hum."
"Tell me how they hum!" said the Babe eagerly, his eyes round with
anticipation.
"Well," began Uncle Andy slowly, looking far across the lake as if he
saw things that the Babe could not see, "in one way and another, partly
by good luck and partly by good management, Little Sword succeeded in
dodging his enemies till he had grown to be about two feet in length,
without counting the six inches or so of sharp, tapering blade that
stood straight out from the tip of his nose. He was as handsome a
youngster as you would wish to see, slender, gracefully tapering to the
base of the broad, powerful tail, wide-finned, radiant in silver and
blue-green, and with a splendid crest-like dorsal fin of vivid
ultramarine extending almost the whole length of his back. His eyes
were large, and blazed with a savage fire. Hanging poised a few feet
above the tops of the waving, rose-and-purple sea-anemones and the
bottle-green trailers of seaweed, every fin tense and quivering, he was
ready to dart in any direction where a feast or a fight might seem to
be waiting for him.
"You see, the mere fact that he was alive at all was proof that he had
come triumphantly through many terrible dangers, so it was no wonder he
had a good deal of confidence in himself. And his shapely little body
was so packed full of energy, so thrilling with vitality, that he felt
himself already a sort of lord in those shoal-water domains.
"But with all his lively experiences, there were things, lots of
things, which Little Sword didn't know even yet."
"I _guess_ so!" murmured the Babe, suddenly impressed with the extent
of his own ignorance.
"For instance," Uncle Andy went on, ignoring the interruption, "he had
not yet learned anything about the Inkmaker."
Here he paused impressively, as if to lure the Babe on. But into the
latter's head popped so many questions all together, at the mention of
a creature with so strange a name, that for the moment he could not for
the life of him get any one of them into words. He merely gasped. And
Uncle Andy, delighted with this apparent self-restraint, went on
graciously.
"You're improving a lot," said he. "You're getting quite a knack of
holding your tongue. Well, you're going to know all about it in half a
minute.
"Little Sword caught sight of a queer, watery-pinkish, speckled
creature on the bottom, just crossing a space of clear sand. It was
about twice as long as himself, with a pair of terrible big, ink-black
eyes, and a long bunch of squirming feelers growing out of its head
like leaf-stalks out of the head of a beet. He noticed that two of
these feelers were twice as long as the rest, which did not seem to him
a matter of the least importance. But he noticed at the same time that
the creature looked soft and good to eat. The next instant, like a ray
of light flashed suddenly, he darted at it.
"But swift as he was, the pale creature's inky eyes had noted him in
time. His feelers bunched suddenly tight and straight, and he shot
backwards, at the same moment spouting a jet of black fluid from
beneath his beaked mouth. The black jet spread instantly in a thick
cloud, staining the clear, green water so deeply that Little Sword
could not see through it at all. Instead of the soft flesh he had
expected it to pierce, his sword met nothing but a mass of sticky
anemones, shearing them from their base.
"In a fury, Little Sword dashed this way and that, trusting to luck
that he would strike his elusive enemy in the darkness. But that
enemy's eyes, with their enormous bulging surface and the jetty
background to their lenses, could see clearly where the jewel-like eyes
of the young swordfish could make out nothing. Little Sword, emerging
into the half light at the edge of the cloud, was just about to give up
the idle search, when something small but firm fastened itself upon his
side, so sharply that it seemed to bite into the flesh.
"Little Sword's tense muscles quivered at the shock, and he gave a
mighty leap which should, by all his customary reckoning, have carried
him fifty feet from the spot. To his horrified amazement he did not go
as many inches, nor the half of it! And then another something, small
but terrible, fastened itself upon his shoulder.
"Then the black, murky cloud thinned quite away; and Little Sword saw
what had happened. The pale creature, having reached a rock to which
he could anchor himself with a couple of his feelers, had turned
savagely upon his rash assailant. Little Sword was the prisoner of
those two longer tentacles. They were trying to drag him down within
reach of the other feelers, which writhed up at him like a lot of
hideous snakes."
"Ugh!" cried the Babe with a shudder. "But how did they hold on to
him?"
"You see," said Uncle Andy, "every feeler, long or short, had a row of
saucer-shaped suckers along its underside, like the heads of those
rubber-tipped arrows which I've seen you shooting at the wall, and
which stick where they strike. Only _these_ suckers could _hold on_, I
can tell you, so fast that _you_ could never have pulled off even the
littlest of them.
"Little Sword looked down into the awful eyes of the Inkmaker, and
realized that he had made a great mistake. But he was game all
through. It was not for a swordfish, however young, to give in to any
odds. Besides, just below those two great eyes, which stared up at him
without ever a wink, he saw a terrible beak of a mouth, which opened
and shut as if impatient to get hold of him. This sight was calculated
to encourage him to exert himself, if he had needed any more
encouragement than the grip of those two, pale, writhing feelers on his
flesh.
"Now, for his size, Little Sword was putting up a tremendous fight.
His broad, fluked tail and immense fins churned the water amazingly,
and enabled him to spring this way and that in spite of all the efforts
of the two long tentacles to hold him still. Nevertheless, he was
slowly drawn downwards, till one of the shorter feelers reached for a
hold upon him. He darted at it, and by a lucky plunge of his sword cut
its snaky tip clean off. It twisted back out of the way, like a
startled worm; and Little Sword lunged at the next one. He pierced it
all right, but at a point where it was so thick that the stroke did not
sever it, and the tip, curling over, fastened upon him. At the same
moment another feeler fixed itself upon the base of his tail, half
paralyzing his struggles.
"Little Sword was now being drawn implacably downwards. In his fierce
rage he struck at everything in reach, but he was too closely held to
inflict any serious wounds. He was within eight or nine inches of
those awful, unwinking, ink-black eyes. The great beak opened upwards
at him eagerly. It looked as if his career was at an end--when the
Fates of the Deep Sea decided otherwise. Apparently they had more use
for Little Sword than they had for the Inkmaker. A long shadow dropped
straight downward. It missed Little Sword by an inch or two. And the
gaping, long-toothed jaws of an immense barracouta closed upon the head
of the Inkmaker, biting him clean in halves. The blind body curled
backwards spasmodically; and the tentacles, shorn off at the roots,
fell aimlessly and helplessly apart. Little Sword flashed away,
trailing his limp captors behind him till they dropped off. And the
barracouta ate the remains of the Inkmaker at his leisure. He had no
concern to those swordfish when there was tender and delicious squid to
be had; for the Inkmaker, you know, was just a kind of big squid, or
cuttlefish."
"But what's a barracouta?" demanded the Babe hurriedly.
"Well, he's just a fish!" said Uncle Andy. "But he's a very savage and
hungry fish, some three or four feet long, with tremendous jaws like a
pickerel's. And he lives only in the salt water, fortunately. _He's_
not a nice fellow, either, to have around when you're swimming, I can
tell you!"
"Why?" queried the Babe.
But Uncle Andy ignored the question firmly, and went on with his story.
"After this adventure Little Sword kept a very sharp look-out for the
pallid, squirming tentacles, sometimes reaching out from a dark hole in
the rocks or from under a mantle of seaweed, which he knew to belong to
one of the Inkmakers. He hated the whole tribe with bitter hatred; but
at the same time his caution was unsleeping. He bided his time for
vengeance, and used his sword on crabs and flatfish and fat groupers.
And so he grew at a great rate, till in the swelling sense of his power
and swiftness his caution began to fade away. Even the incident itself
faded from his memory, but not the hatred which had sprung from it, or
the knowledge which it had taught him.
"When Little Sword was about five feet in length he carried a weapon on
his snout not far from a foot long. By this time he was a great rover,
hunting in the deep seas or the inshore tides as the whim of the chase
might lead him, and always spoiling for a fight. He would jab his
sword into the belly of a twenty-foot grampus just to relieve his
feelings, and be off again before the outraged monster, bleeding
through his six inches of blubber, had time to even make a pretense of
charging him. And he was already a terror to the seals, who, for all
their speed and dexterity, could neither catch him nor escape him.
"But he was getting a little careless. And one day, as he was
sleeping, or basking, some ten feet below the surface, the broad, dark
form of a sawfish arose beneath him and thrust at him with his dreadful
saw. The pleasant idea of the sawfish was to rip up the sleeper's
silver belly. But Little Sword awoke in time to just escape the horrid
attack. He swept off in a short circle, came back with a lightning
rush, and drove his sword full length into the stealthy enemy's
shoulder just behind the gills. The great sawfish, heavy muscled and
slow of movement, made no attempt to defend himself, but plunged
suddenly downward into the gloomy depths where he loved to lie in wait.
After relieving his indignation by a couple more vicious thrusts.
Little Sword realized that he was too small to accomplish anything
against this sneaking and prowling bulk, and shot off to look for a
less dangerous basking place.
"It was soon after this close shave with the sawfish that Little Sword
came once more across the path of the Inkmaker. He--"
But the Babe could contain himself no longer. He had been bursting
with questions for the last ten minutes, and had heroically restrained
himself. But this was too much for him.
"Why, Uncle Andy," he cried. "I thought the Inkmaker was dead. I
thought the barracouta had eaten him up, feelers and eyes and all."
"Oh, you're a lot too particular!" grumbled Uncle Andy. "This was
_another_ Inkmaker, of course. And a very much bigger and more
dangerous one, moreover, as you'll see presently. It was little _he_
had to fear from the barracoutas. In fact, he had just fixed one of
his longer tentacles on a vigorous four-foot barracouta, and was slowly
drawing him down within reach of the rest of the feelers, when Little
Sword's shining eyes alighted upon the struggle.
"This particular Inkmaker was crouching in a sort of shallow basin
between rocks which were densely fringed with bright-striped weeds,
starry madrepores, and sea-anemones of every lovely color. Disturbed
by the struggle, however, the madrepores and anemones were nervously
closing up their living blooms. The Inkmaker, who always managed
somehow to have his own colors match his surroundings, so that his
hideous form would not show too plainly and frighten his victims away,
was now of a dirty pinkish-yellow, blotched and striped with
purplish-brown; and his tentacles were like a bunch of striped snakes.
Only his eyes never changed. They lay unwinking, two huge round lenses
of terrible and intense blackness, staring upwards from the base of the
writhing tentacles."
The Babe shuddered again, and wished that the beautiful swordfish would
swim away as quickly as possible from the slimy horror. But he
refrained interrupting. It would be dreadful if Uncle Andy should get
annoyed and stop at this critical point!
"When Little Sword saw those long feelers dragging the barracouta
down," went on Uncle Andy, after relighting his pipe, "he darted
forward like a blue flame and jabbed his sword right through the
nearest one."
"Oh, ho!" cried the Babe, forgetting caution. "He remembered how the
barracouta had saved _him_!"
"Not much!" grunted Uncle Andy. "There's no sentiment about a
swordfish, I can tell you. He'd have jabbed the barracouta, and eaten
him, too, just as quick as look, but he hated the Inkmaker, and could
not think of anything else. With a screwing backward pull he wrenched
his sword out of the feeler, which seemed hardly to notice the wound.
In the same instant another feeler snatched at him, for Mr. Inkmaker,
you know, had ten tentacles, every one of them spoiling for a fight.
It got only a slight hold, however, and Little Sword, whose strength
was now something amazing, tore himself clear with a great livid,
bleeding, burning patch on his side.
"And now, raging mad though he was, a gleam of sense flashed into his
brain. He saw that it was not much use stabbing those tough tentacles.
Lurching forward as if to stand on his head he shot straight downward,
and drove his sword full length into one of those dreadful eyes.
"In an instant three or four feelers closed upon him. But they were
now thrashing a little aimlessly, so that they did not work well
together. The monster was confused by that terrible, searching trust.
Little Sword was hampered by the feelers clutching at him, but he still
had room to use his weapon. With all his weight and quivering strength
he drove his sword again deep into the Inkmaker's head, twisting and
wrenching it sideways as he drew it out. Other tentacles closed over
him, but seemed to have lost their clutching power through the attack
upon the source of their nervous energy. The struggling barracouta was
drawn down with them, but blindly; and the water was now utterly black
with the rank ink which the monster was pumping forth.
"For a few moments all was one boiling convulsion of fish and tentacles
and ink, Little Sword simply stabbing and stabbing at the soft mass
under his weapon. Then, all at once, the tentacles relaxed, falling
away as slack as seaweed. The barracouta, nearly spent, swam off
without even waiting to say 'Thank you.' And Little Sword coming to
his senses as he realized his victory, rose slowly out of the area of
the ink cloud. He knew that the Inkmaker's flesh was very good to eat,
and he merely waited for the cloud to settle before making a meal which
would completely satisfy his vengeance."
The Babe was thoughtful for a few moments after Uncle Andy stopped
speaking. At length he said positively:
"I'm glad we don't have any Inkmakers, either, in the lake."
"Umph!" grunted Uncle Andy, "there are lots of things we don't have
that we can very well do without."