“Oh, can’t I,” said Mavis. “I’ll tell you something. My mother has a

tail too.”

“I _say_!” said Francis.

But the Spangled Child understood.

“She don’t wear it every day, though,” he said; and Mavis is almost

sure that he winked. Only it is so difficult to be sure about winks in

the starlight.

“Your mother must be better born than I supposed,” said the Mermaid.

“Are you _quite_ sure about the tail?”

“I’ve trodden on it often,” said Mavis—and then Francis saw.

Wriggling and sliding and pushing herself along by her hands, and

helped now and then by the hands of the others, the Mermaid was at last

got to the edge of the water.

“How glorious! In a moment I shall be quite wet,” she cried.

In a moment everyone else was quite wet also—for with a movement that

was something between a squirm and a jump, she dropped from the edge

with a splashing flop.

And disappeared entirely.

CHAPTER FIVE

_Consequences_

THE THREE CHILDREN looked at each other.

“Well!” said Mavis.

“I do think she’s ungrateful,” said Francis.

“What did you expect?” asked the Spangled Child.

They were all wet through. It was very late—they were very tired, and

the clouds were putting the moon to bed in a very great hurry. The

Mermaid was gone; the whole adventure was ended.

There was nothing to do but to go home, and go to sleep, knowing that

when they woke the next morning it would be to a day in the course of

which they would have to explain their wet clothes to their parents.

“Even _you_’ll have to do that,” Mavis reminded the Spangled Boy.

He received her remark in what they afterward remembered to have been a

curiously deep silence.

“I don’t know how on earth we _are_ to explain,” said Francis. “I

really don’t. Come on—let’s get home. No more adventures for me, thank

you. Bernard knew what he was talking about.”

Mavis, very tired indeed, agreed.

They had got over the beach by this time, recovered the wheelbarrow,

and trundled it up and along the road. At the corner the Spangled Boy

suddenly said:

“Well then, so long, old sports,” and vanished down a side lane.

The other two went on together—with the wheelbarrow, which, I may

remind you, was as wet as any of them.

They went along by the hedge and the mill and up to the house.

Suddenly Mavis clutched at her brother’s arm.

“There’s a light,” she said, “in the house.”

There certainly was, and the children experienced that terrible

empty sensation only too well known to all of us—the feeling of the

utterly-found-out.

They could not be sure which window it was, but it was a downstairs

window, partly screened by ivy. A faint hope still buoyed up Francis

of getting up to bed unnoticed by whoever it was that had the light;

and he and his sister crept around to the window out of which they had

crept; but such a very long time ago it seemed. The window was shut.

Francis suggested hiding in the mill and trying to creep in unobserved

later on, but Mavis said:

“No. I’m too tired for anything. I’m too tired to _live_, I think.

Let’s go and get it over, and then we can go to bed and sleep, and

sleep, and sleep.”

So they went and peeped in at the kitchen window, and there was no one

but Mrs. Pearce, and she had a fire lighted and was putting a big pot

on it.

The children went to the back door and opened it.

“You’re early, for sure,” said Mrs. Pearce, not turning.

This seemed a bitter sarcasm. It was too much. Mavis answered it with

a sob. And at that Mrs. Pearce turned very quickly.

“What to gracious!” she said—“whatever to gracious is the matter?

Where’ve you been?” She took Mavis by the shoulder. “Why, you’re all

sopping wet. You naughty, naughty little gell, you. Wait till I tell

your Ma—been shrimping I lay—or trying to—never asking when the tide

was right. And not a shrimp to show for it, I know, with the tide where

it is. You wait till we hear what your Ma’s got to say about it. And

look at my clean flags and you dripping all over ’em like a fortnight’s

wash in wet weather.”

Mavis twisted a little in Mrs. Pearce’s grasp. “Oh, don’t scold us,

dear Mrs. Pearce,” she said, putting a wet arm up toward Mrs. Pearce’s

neck. “We _are_ so miserable.”

“And so you deserve to be,” said Mrs. Pearce, smartly. “Here, young

chap, you go into the washhouse and get them things off, and drop

them outside the door, and have a good rub with the jack-towel; and

little miss can undress by the fire and put hern in this clean pail—and

I’ll pop up softlike and so as your Ma don’t hear, and bring you down

something dry.”

A gleam of hope fell across the children’s hearts—a gleam wild and

watery as that which the moonlight had cast across the sea, into which

the Mermaid had disappeared. Perhaps after all Mrs. Pearce wasn’t going

to tell Mother. If she was, why should she pop up softlike? Perhaps she

would keep their secret. Perhaps she would dry their clothes. Perhaps,

after all, that impossible explanation would never have to be given.

The kitchen was a pleasant place, with bright brasses and shining

crockery, and a round three-legged table with a clean cloth and

blue-and-white teacups on it.

Mrs. Pearce came down with their nightgowns and the warm dressing gowns

that Aunt Enid had put in in spite of their expressed wishes. How glad

they were of them now!

“There, that’s a bit more like,” said Mrs. Pearce; “here, don’t look

as if I was going to eat you, you little Peter Grievouses. I’ll hot up

some milk and here’s a morsel of bread and dripping to keep the cold

out. Lucky for you I was up—getting the boys’ breakfast ready. The

boats’ll be in directly. The boys will laugh when I tell them—laugh fit

to bust their selves they will.”

“Oh, don’t tell,” said Mavis, “don’t, please don’t. Please, please

don’t.”

“Well, I like that,” said Mrs. Pearce, pouring herself some tea from

a pot which, the children learned later, stood on the hob all day and

most of the night; “it’s the funniest piece I’ve heard this many a day.

Shrimping at high tide!”

“I thought,” said Mavis, “perhaps you’d forgive us, and dry our

clothes, and not tell anybody.”

“Oh, you did, did you?” said Mrs. Pearce. “Anything else—?”

“No, nothing else, thank you,” said Mavis, “only I want to say thank

you for being so kind, and it isn’t high tide yet, and please we

haven’t done any harm to the barrow—but I’m afraid it’s rather wet, and

we oughtn’t to have taken it without asking, I know, but you were in

bed and—”

“The barrow?” Mrs. Pearce repeated. “That great hulking barrow—you

took the barrow to bring the shrimps home in? No—I can’t keep it to

myself—that really I can’t—” she lay back in the armchair and shook

with silent laughter.

The children looked at each other. It is not pleasant to be laughed at,

especially for something you have never done—but they both felt that

Mrs. Pearce would have laughed quite as much, or even more, if they had

told her what it really was they had wanted the barrow for.

“Oh, don’t go on laughing,” said Mavis, creeping close to Mrs. Pearce,

“though you are a ducky darling not to be cross any more. And you won’t

tell, will you?”

“Ah, well—I’ll let you off this time. But you’ll promise faithful never

to do it again, now, won’t you?”

“We faithfully won’t ever,” said both children, earnestly.

“Then off you go to your beds, and I’ll dry the things when your Ma’s

out. I’ll press ’em tomorrow morning while I’m waiting for the boys to

come in.”

“You _are_ an angel,” said Mavis, embracing her.

“More than you are then, you young limbs,” said Mrs. Pearce, returning

the embrace. “Now off you go, and get what sleep you can.”

It was with a feeling that Fate had not, after all, been unduly harsh

with them that Mavis and Francis came down to a very late breakfast.

“Your Ma and Pa’s gone off on their bikes,” said Mrs. Pearce, bringing

in the eggs and bacon, “won’t be back till dinner. So I let you have

your sleep out. The little ’uns had theirs three hours ago and out on

the sands. I told them to let you sleep, though I know they wanted to

hear how many shrimps you caught. I lay they expected a barrowful, same

as what you did.”

“How did you know they knew we’d been out?” Francis asked.

“Oh, the way they was being secret in corners, and looking the old

barrow all over was enough to make a cat laugh. Hurry up, now. I’ve got

the washing-up to do—and your things is well-nigh dry.”

“You _are_ a darling,” said Mavis. “Suppose you’d been different,

whatever would have become of us?”

“You’d a got your desserts—bed and bread and water, instead of this

nice egg and bacon and the sands to play on. So now you know,” said

Mrs. Pearce.

* * * * *

On the sands they found Kathleen and Bernard, and it really now, in

the bright warm sunshine, seemed almost worthwhile to have gone through

last night’s adventures, if only for the pleasure of telling the tale

of them to the two who had been safe and warm and dry in bed all the

time.

“Though really,” said Mavis, when the tale was told, “sitting here and

seeing the tents and the children digging, and the ladies knitting,

and the gentlemen smoking and throwing stones, it does hardly seem as

though there _could_ be any magic. And yet, you know, there was.”

“It’s like I told you about radium and things,” said Bernard. “Things

aren’t magic because they haven’t been found out yet. There’s always

been Mermaids, of course, only people didn’t know it.”

“But she talks,” said Francis.

“Why not?” said Bernard placidly. “Even parrots do that.”

“But she talks English,” Mavis urged.

“Well,” said Bernard, unmoved, “what would you have had her talk?”

And so, in pretty sunshine, between blue sky and good sands, the

adventure of the Mermaid seemed to come to an end, to be now only as

a tale that is told. And when the four went slowly home to dinner all

were, I think, a little sad that this should be so.

“Let’s go around and have a look at the empty barrow,” Mavis said;

“it’ll bring it all back to us, and remind us of what was in it, like

ladies’ gloves and troubadours.”

The barrow was where they had left it, but it was not empty. A very

dirty piece of folded paper lay in it, addressed in penciled and

uncertain characters

TO FRANCE

TO BE OPENED.

Francis opened it and read aloud:

“I went back and she came back and she wants you to

come back at ded of nite.

RUBE.”

“Well, I shan’t go,” said Francis.

A voice from the bush by the gate made them all start.

“Don’t let on you see me,” said the Spangled Boy, putting his head out

cautiously.

“You seem very fond of hiding in bushes,” said Francis.

“I am,” said the boy briefly. “Ain’t you going—to see her again, I

mean?”

“No,” said Francis, “I’ve had enough dead of night to last me a long

time.”

“You a-going, miss?” the boy asked. “No? You are a half-livered crew.

It’ll be only me, I suppose.”

“You’re going, then?”

“Well,” said the boy, “what do you think?”

“I should go if I were you,” said Bernard impartially.

“No, you wouldn’t; not if you were me,” said Francis. “You don’t know

how disagreeable she was. I’m fed up with her. And besides, we simply

_can’t_ get out at dead of night now. Mrs. Pearce’ll be on the lookout.

No—it’s no go.”

“But you _must_ manage it somehow,” said Kathleen; “you can’t let it

drop like this. I shan’t believe it was magic at all if you do.”

“If you were us, you’d have had enough of magic,” said Francis. “Why

don’t you go yourselves—you and Bernard.”

“I’ve a good mind to,” said Bernard unexpectedly. “Only not in the

middle of the night, because of my being certain to drop my boots.

Would you come, Cathay?”

“You know I wanted to before,” said Kathleen reproachfully.

“But how?” the others asked.

“Oh,” said Bernard, “we must think about that. I say, you chap, we must

get to our dinner. Will you be here after?”

“Yes. I ain’t going to move from here. You might bring me a bit of grub

with you—I ain’t had a bite since yesterday teatime.”

“I say,” said Francis kindly, “did they stop your grub to punish you

for getting wet?”

“They didn’t know nothing about my getting wet,” he said darkly. “I

didn’t never go back to the tents. I’ve cut my lucky, I ’ave ’ooked it,

skedaddled, done a bunk, run away.”

“And where are you going?”

“_I_ dunno,” said the Spangled Boy. “I’m running _from_, not to.”

CHAPTER SIX

_The Mermaid’s Home_

THE PARENTS of Mavis, Francis, Kathleen and Bernard were extremely

sensible people. If they had not been, this story could never have

happened. They were as jolly as any father and mother you ever met,

but they were not always fussing and worrying about their children,

and they understood perfectly well that children do not care to be

absolutely always under the parental eye. So that, while there were

always plenty of good times in which the whole family took part, there

were also times when Father and Mother went off together and enjoyed

themselves in their own grown-up way, while the children enjoyed

themselves in theirs. It happened that on this particular afternoon

there was to be a concert at Lymington—Father and Mother were going.

The children were asked whether they would like to go, and replied with

equal courtesy and firmness.

“Very well then,” said Mother, “you do whatever you like best. I should

play on the shore, I think, if I were you. Only don’t go around the

corner of the cliff, because that’s dangerous at high tide. It’s safe

so long as you’re within sight of the coast guards. Anyone have any

more pie? No—then I think I’ll run and dress.”

“Mother,” said Kathleen suddenly, “may we take some pie and things to a

little boy who said he hadn’t had anything to eat since yesterday?”

“Where is he?” Father asked.

Kathleen blushed purple, but Mavis cautiously replied, “Outside. I’m

sure we shall be able to find him.”

“Very well,” said Mother, “and you might ask Mrs. Pearce to give you

some bread and cheese as well. Now, I must simply fly.”

“Cathay and I’ll help you, Mother,” said Mavis, and escaped the further

questioning she saw in her father’s eye. The boys had slipped away at

the first word of what seemed to be Kathleen’s amazing indiscretion

about the waiting Rube.

“It was quite all right,” Kathleen argued later, as they went up the

field, carefully carrying a plate of plum pie and the bread and cheese

with not so much care and a certain bundle not carefully at all. “I

saw flying in Mother’s eye before I spoke. And if you _can_ ask leave

before you do a thing it’s always safer.”

“And look here,” said Mavis. “If the Mermaid wants to see us we’ve only

got to go down and say ‘Sabrina fair,’ and she’s certain to turn up. If

it’s just seeing us she wants, and not another deadly night adventure.”

Reuben did not eat with such pretty manners as yours, perhaps, but

there was no doubt about his enjoyment of the food they had brought,

though he only stopped eating for half a second, to answer, “Prime.

Thank you,” to Kathleen’s earnest inquiries.

“Now,” said Francis when the last crumb of cheese had disappeared and

the last trace of plum juice had been licked from the spoon (a tin one,

because, as Mrs. Pearce very properly said, you never know)—“now, look

here. We’re going straight down to the shore to try and see her. And if

you like to come with us we can disguise you.”

“What in?” Reuben asked. “I did disguise myself once in a false beard

and a green-colored mustache, but it didn’t take no one in for a

moment, not even the dogs.”

“We thought,” said Mavis gently, “that perhaps the most complete

disguise for you would be girl’s clothes—because,” she added hastily to

dispel the thundercloud on Reuben’s brow—“because you’re such a manly

boy. Nobody would give vent to a moment’s suspicion. It would be so

very unlike _you_.”

“G’a long—” said the Spangled Child, his dignity only half soothed.

“And I’ve brought you some of my things and some sandshoes of France’s,

because, of course, mine are just kiddy shoes.”

At that Reuben burst out laughing and then hummed: “‘Go, flatterer, go,

I’ll not trust to thy vow,’” quite musically.

“Oh, do you know the ‘Gypsy Countess’? How jolly!” said Kathleen.

“Old Mother Romaine knew a power of songs,” he said, suddenly grave.

“Come on, chuck us in the togs.”

“You just take off your coat and come out and I’ll help you dress up,”

was Francis’s offer.

“Best get a skirt over my kicksies first,” said Reuben, “case anyone

comes by and recognizes the gypsy child. Hand us in the silk attire

and jewels have to spare.”

They pushed the blue serge skirt and jersey through the branches, which

he held apart.

“Now the ’at,” he said, reaching a hand for it. But the hat was too

large for the opening in the bush, and he had to come out of it. The

moment he was out the girls crowned him with the big rush-hat, around

whose crown a blue scarf was twisted, and Francis and Bernard each

seizing a leg, adorned those legs with brown stockings and white

sandshoes. Reuben, the spangled runaway from the gypsy camp, stood up

among his new friends a rather awkward and quite presentable little

girl.

“Now,” he said, looking down at his serge skirts with a queer smile,

“now we shan’t be long.”

Nor were they. Thrusting the tin spoon and the pie plate and the

discarded boots of Reuben into the kind shelter of the bush they made

straight for the sea.

When they got to that pleasant part of the shore which is smooth sand

and piled shingle, lying between low rocks and high cliffs, Bernard

stopped short.

“Now, look here,” he said, “if Sabrina fair turns up trumps I don’t

mind going on with the adventure, but I won’t do it if Kathleen’s to be

in it.”

“It’s not fair,” said Kathleen; “you said I might.”

“Did I?” Bernard most handsomely referred the matter to the others.

“Yes, you did,” said Francis shortly. Mavis said “Yes,” and Reuben

clinched the matter by saying, “Why, you up and asked her yourself if

she’d go along of you.”

“All right,” said Bernard calmly. “Then I shan’t go myself. That’s all.”

“Oh, bother,” said at least three of the five; and Kathleen said: “I

don’t see why I should always be out of everything.”

“Well,” said Mavis impatiently, “after all, there’s no danger in

just trying to _see_ the Mermaid. You promise you won’t do anything

if Bernard says not—that’ll do, I suppose? Though why you should be

a slave to him just because he chooses to say you’re his particular

sister, I don’t see. Will _that_ do, Bear?”

“I’ll promise _anything_,” said Kathleen, almost in tears, “if you’ll

only let me come with you all and see the Mermaid if she turns out to

be seeable.”

So that was settled.

Now came the question of where the magic words should be said.

Mavis and Francis voted for the edge of the rocks where the words had

once already been so successfully spoken. Bernard said, “Why not here

where we are?” Kathleen said rather sadly that any place would do as

long as the Mermaid came when she was called. But Reuben, standing

sturdily in his girl’s clothes, said:

“Look ’ere. When you’ve run away like what I have, least said soonest

mended, and out of sight’s out of mind. What about caves?”

“Caves are too dry, except at high tide,” said Francis. “And then

they’re too wet. Much.”

“Not all caves,” Reuben reminded him. “If we was to turn and go up by

the cliff path. There’s a cave up there. I hid in it t’other day. Quite

dry, except in one corner, and there it’s as wet as you want—a sort of

’orse trough in the rocks it looks like—only deep.”

“Is it seawater?” Mavis asked anxiously. And Reuben said:

“Bound to be, so near the sea and all.”

But it wasn’t. For when they had climbed the cliff path and Reuben had

shown them where to turn aside from it, and had put aside the brambles

and furze that quite hid the cave’s mouth, Francis saw at once that the

water here could not be seawater. It was too far above the line which

the waves reached, even in the stormiest weather.

“So it’s no use,” he explained.

But the others said, “Oh, do let’s try, now we _are_ here,” and they

went on into the dusky twilight of the cave.

It was a very pretty cave, not chalk, like the cliffs, but roofed and

walled with gray flints such as the houses and churches are built of

that you see on the downs near Brighton and Eastbourne.

“This isn’t an accidental cave, you know,” said Bernard importantly;

“it’s built by the hand of man in distant ages, like Stonehenge and the

Cheesewring and Kit’s Coty House.”

The cave was lighted from the entrance where the sunshine crept

faintly through the brambles. Their eyes soon grew used to the gloom

and they could see that the floor of the cave was of dry white sand,

and that along one end was a narrow dark pool of water. Ferns fringed

its edge and drooped their fronds to its smooth surface—a surface which

caught a gleam of light, and shone whitely; but the pool was very

still, and they felt somehow, without knowing why, very deep.

“It’s no good, no earthly,” said Francis.

“But it’s an awfully pretty cave,” said Mavis consolingly. “Thank you

for showing it to us, Reuben. And it’s jolly cool. Do let’s rest a

minute or two. I’m simply boiling, climbing that cliff path. We’ll go

down to the sea in a minute. Reuben could wait here if he felt safer.”

“All right, squattez-vous,” said Bernard, and the children sat down at

the water’s edge, Reuben still very awkward in his girl’s clothes.

It was very, very quiet. Only now and then one fat drop of water would

fall from the cave’s roof into that quiet pool and just move its

surface in a spreading circle.

“It’s a ripping place for a hidey-hole,” said Bernard, “better than

that old bush of yours, anyhow. I don’t believe anybody knows of the

way in.”

“_I_ don’t think anyone does, either,” said Reuben, “because there

wasn’t any way in till it fell in two days ago, when I was trying to

dig up a furze root.”

“I should hide here if you want to hide,” said Bernard.

“I mean to,” said Reuben.

“Well, if you’re rested, let’s get on,” Francis said; but Kathleen

urged:

“Do let’s say ‘Sabrina fair,’ first—just to try!” So they said it—all

but the Spangled Child who did not know it—

“‘_Sabrina fair

Listen where thou art sitting

Under the glassie, cool...._’”

There was a splash and a swirl in the pool, and there was the Mermaid

herself, sure enough. Their eyes had grown used to the dusk and they

could see her quite plainly, could see too that she was holding out her

arms to them and smiling so sweetly that it almost took their breath

away.

“My cherished preservers,” she cried, “my dear, darling, kind, brave,

noble, unselfish dears!”

“You’re talking to Reuben, in the plural, by mistake, I suppose,” said

Francis, a little bitterly.

“To him, too, of course. But you two most of all,” she said, swishing

her tail around and leaning her hands on the edge of the pool. “I

_am_ so sorry I was so ungrateful the other night. I’ll tell you how

it was. It’s in your air. You see, coming out of the water we’re very

susceptible to aerial influences—and that sort of ungratefulness and,

what’s the word—?”

“Snobbishness,” said Francis firmly.

“Is that what you call it?—is most frightfully infectious, and your

air’s absolutely crammed with the germs of it. That’s why I was so

horrid. You do forgive me, don’t you, dears? And I was so selfish,

too—oh, horrid. But it’s all washed off now, in the nice clean sea,

and I’m as sorry as if it had been my fault, which it really and truly

wasn’t.”

The children said all right, and she wasn’t to mind, and it didn’t

matter, and all the things you say when people say they are sorry, and

you cannot kiss them and say, “Right oh,” which is the natural answer

to such confessions.

“It was very curious,” she said thoughtfully, “a most odd experience,

that little boy ... his having been born of people who had always been

rich, really seemed to me to be important. I assure you it did. Funny,

wasn’t it? And now I want you all to come home with me, and see where I

live.”

She smiled radiantly at them, and they all said, “Thank you,” and

looked at each other rather blankly.

“All our people will be unspeakably pleased to see you. We Mer-people

are not really ungrateful. You mustn’t think that,” she said pleadingly.

She looked very kind, very friendly. But Francis thought of the

Lorelei. Just so kind and friendly must the Lady of the Rhine have

looked to the “sailor in a little skiff” whom he had disentangled

from Heine’s poem, last term, with the aid of the German dicker. By a

curious coincidence and the same hard means, Mavis had, only last term,

read of Undine, and she tried not to think that there was any lack of

soul in the Mermaid’s kind eyes. Kathleen who, by another coincidence,

had fed her fancy in English literature on the “Forsaken Merman” was

more at ease.

“Do you mean down with you under the sea?” she asked—

“‘_Where the sea snakes coil and twine,

Dry their mail and bask in the brine,

Where great whales go sailing by,

Sail and sail with unshut eye

Round the world for ever and aye?_’”

“Well, it’s not exactly like that, really,” said the Mermaid; “but

you’ll see soon enough.”

This had, in Bernard’s ears, a sinister ring.

“Why,” he asked suddenly, “did you say you wanted to see us at dead of

night?”

“It’s the usual time, isn’t it?” she asked, looking at him with

innocent surprise. “It is in all the stories. You know we have air

stories just as you have fairy stories and water stories—and the

rescuer almost always comes to the castle gate at dead of night, on a

coal-black steed or a dapple-gray, you know, or a red-roan steed of

might; but as there were four of you, besides me and my tail, I thought

it more considerate to suggest a chariot. Now, we really ought to be

going.”

“Which way?” asked Bernard, and everyone held their breath to hear the

answer.

“The way I came, of course,” she answered, “down here,” and she pointed

to the water that rippled around her.

“Thank you so very, _very_ much,” said Mavis, in a voice which trembled

a little; “but I don’t know whether you’ve heard that people who

go down into the water like that—people like us—without tails, you

know—they get drowned.”

“Not if they’re personally conducted,” said the Mermaid. “Of course we

can’t be responsible for trespassers, though even with them I don’t

think anything very dreadful has ever happened. Someone once told me a

story about Water Babies. Did you ever hear of that?”

“Yes, but that was a made-up story,” said Bernard stolidly.

“Yes, of course,” she agreed, “but a great deal of it’s quite true, all

the same. But you won’t grow fins and gills or anything like that. You

needn’t be afraid.”

The children looked at each other, and then all looked at Francis. He

spoke.

“Thank you,” he said. “Thank you very much, but we would rather

not—much rather.”

“Oh, nonsense,” said the lady kindly. “Look here, it’s as easy as easy.

I give you each a lock of my hair,” she cut off the locks with her

shell knife as she spoke, long locks they were and soft. “Look here,

tie these round your necks—if I’d had a lock of human hair round my

neck I should never have suffered from the dryness as I did. And then

just jump in. Keep your eyes shut. It’s rather confusing if you don’t;

but there’s no danger.”

The children took the locks of hair, but no one regarded them with any

confidence at all as lifesaving apparatus. They still hung back.

“You really are silly,” said the sea lady indulgently. “Why did you

meddle with magic at all if you weren’t prepared to go through with

it? Why, this is one of the simplest forms of magic, and the safest.

Whatever would you have done if you had happened to call up a fire

spirit and had had to go down Vesuvius with a Salamander round your

little necks?”

She laughed merrily at the thought. But her laugh sounded a little

angry too.

“Come, don’t be foolish,” she said. “You’ll never have such a

chance again. And I feel that this air is full of your horrid human

microbes—distrust, suspicion, fear, anger, resentment—horrid little

germs. I don’t want to risk catching them. Come.”

“No,” said Francis, and held out to her the lock of her hair; so did

Mavis and Bernard. But Kathleen had tied the lock of hair round her

neck, and she said:

“I _should_ have liked to, but I promised Bernard I would not do

anything unless he said I might.” It was toward Kathleen that the

Mermaid turned, holding out a white hand for the lock.

Kathleen bent over the water trying to untie it, and in one awful

instant the Mermaid had reared herself up in the water, caught Kathleen

in her long white arms, pulled her over the edge of the pool, and with

a bubbling splash disappeared with her beneath the dark water.

[Illustration: _She caught Kathleen in her arms._]

Mavis screamed and knew it; Francis and Bernard thought they did not

scream. It was the Spangled Child alone who said nothing. He had not

offered to give back the lock of soft hair. He, like Kathleen, had

knotted it round his neck; he now tied a further knot, stepped

forward, and spoke in tones which the other three thought the most

noble they had ever heard.

“She give me the plum pie,” he said, and leaped into the water.

He sank at once. And this, curiously enough, gave the others

confidence. If he had struggled—but no—he sank like a stone, or like a

diver who means diving and diving to the very bottom.

“She’s my special sister,” said Bernard, and leaped.

“If it’s magic it’s all right—and if it isn’t we couldn’t go back home

without her,” said Mavis hoarsely. And she and Francis took hands and

jumped together.

It was not so difficult as it sounds. From the moment of Kathleen’s

disappearance the sense of magic—which is rather like very sleepy

comfort and sweet scent and sweet music that you just can’t hear the

tune of—had been growing stronger and stronger. And there are some

things so horrible that if you can bring yourself to face them you

simply _can’t_ believe that they’re true. It did not seem possible—when

they came quite close to the idea—that a Mermaid could really come and

talk so kindly and then drown the five children who had rescued her.

“It’s all right,” Francis cried as they jumped.

“I ...” He shut his mouth just in time, and down they went.

You have probably dreamed that you were a perfect swimmer? You know

the delight of that dream-swimming, which is no effort at all, and yet

carries you as far and as fast as you choose. It was like that with

the children. The moment they touched the water they felt that they

belonged in it—that they were as much at home in water as in air. As

they sank beneath the water their feet went up and their heads went

down, and there they were swimming downward with long, steady, easy

strokes. It was like swimming down a well that presently widened to a

cavern. Suddenly Francis found that his head was above water. So was

Mavis’s.

“All right so far,” she said, “but how are we going to get back?”

“Oh, the magic will do that,” he answered, and swam faster.

The cave was lighted by bars of phosphorescence placed like pillars

against the walls. The water was clear and deeply green and along

the sides of the stream were sea anemones and starfish of the most

beautiful forms and the most dazzling colors. The walls were of dark

squarish shapes, and here and there a white oblong, or a blue and a

red, and the roof was of mother-of-pearl which gleamed and glistened

in the pale golden radiance of the phosphorescent pillars. It was very

beautiful, and the mere pleasure of swimming so finely and easily swept

away almost their last fear. This, too, went when a voice far ahead

called: “Hurry up, France—Come on, Mavis,”—and the voice was the voice

of Kathleen.

They hurried up, and they came on; and the gleaming soft light grew

brighter and brighter. It shone all along the way they had to go,

making a path of glory such as the moon makes across the sea on a

summer night. And presently they saw that this growing light was from

a great gate that barred the waterway in front of them. Five steps led

up to this gate, and sitting on it, waiting for them, were Kathleen,

Reuben, Bernard and the Mermaid. Only now she had no tail. It lay

beside her on the marble steps, just as your stockings lie when you

have taken them off; and there were her white feet sticking out from

under a dress of soft feathery red seaweed.

They could see it was seaweed though it was woven into a wonderful

fabric. Bernard and Kathleen and the Spangled Boy had somehow got

seaweed dresses too, and the Spangled Boy was no longer dressed as a

girl; and looking down as they scrambled up the steps Mavis and Francis

saw that they, too, wore seaweed suits—“Very pretty, but how awkward to

go home in,” Mavis thought.

[Illustration: _The golden door._]

“Now,” said the Mer-lady, “forgive me for taking the plunge. I knew

you’d hesitate forever, and I was beginning to feel so cross! That’s

your dreadful atmosphere! Now, here we are at the door of our kingdom.

You do want to come in, don’t you? I can bring you as far as this

against your will, but not any farther. And you can’t come any farther

unless you trust me absolutely. Do you? Will you? Try!”

“Yes,” said the children, all but Bernard, who said stoutly:

“I don’t; but I’ll try to. I want to.”

“If you want to, I think you _do_,” said she very kindly. “And now

I will tell you one thing. What you’re breathing isn’t air, and it

isn’t water. It’s something that both water people and air people can

breathe.”

“The greatest common measure,” said Bernard.

“A simple equation,” said Mavis.

“Things which are equal to the same thing are equal to each other,”

said Francis; and the three looked at each other and wondered why they

had said such things.

“Don’t worry,” said the lady, “it’s only the influence of the place.

This is the Cave of Learning, you know, very dark at the beginning and

getting lighter and lighter as you get nearer to the golden door. All

these rocks are made of books really, and they exude learning from

every crack. We cover them up with anemones and seaweed and pretty

things as well as we can, but the learning will leak out. Let us go

through the gate or you’ll all be talking Sanskrit before we know where

we are.”

She opened the gate. A great flood of glorious sunlight met them, the

solace of green trees and the jeweled grace of bright blossoms. She

pulled them through the door, and shut it.

“This is where we live,” she said. “Aren’t you glad you came?”

CHAPTER SEVEN

_The Skies Are Falling_

AS THE CHILDREN passed through the golden doors a sort of swollen

feeling which was beginning to make their heads quite uncomfortable

passed away, and left them with a curiously clear and comfortable

certainty that they were much cleverer than usual.

“I _could_ do sums now, and no mistake,” Bernard whispered to Kathleen,

who replied to the effect that dates no longer presented the slightest

difficulty to her.

Mavis and Francis felt as though they had never before known what it

was to have a clear brain. They followed the others through the golden

door, and then came Reuben, and the Mermaid came last. She had picked

up her discarded tail and was carrying it over her arm as you might a

shawl. She shut the gate, and its lock clicked sharply.

“We have to be careful, you know,” she said, “because of the people in

the books. They are always trying to get out of the books that the cave

is made of; and some of them are very undesirable characters. There’s a

Mrs. Fairchild—we’ve had a great deal of trouble with her, and a person

called Mrs. Markham who makes everybody miserable, and a lot of people

who think they are being funny when they aren’t—dreadful.”

The party was now walking along a smooth grassy path, between tall,

clipped box hedges—at least they looked like box hedges, but when Mavis

stroked the close face of one she found that it was not stiff box, but

soft seaweed.

“Are we in the water or not?” said she, stopping suddenly.

“That depends on what you mean by water. Water’s a thing human beings

can’t breathe, isn’t it? Well, you are breathing. So this can’t be

water.”

“I see that,” said Mavis, “but the soft seaweed won’t stand up in air,

and it does in water.”

“Oh, you’ve found out, have you?” said the Mermaid. “Well, then,

perhaps it is water. Only you see it can’t be. Everything’s like that

down here.”

“Once you said you lived in water, and you wanted to be wet,” said

Mavis.

“Mer-people aren’t responsible for what they say in your world. I told

you that, you know,” the Mermaid reminded them.

Presently they came to a little coral bridge over a stream that flowed

still and deep. “But if what we’re in is water, what’s that?” said

Bernard, pointing down.

“Ah, now you’re going too deep for me,” said the Mermaid, “at least if

I were to answer I should go too deep for you. Come on—we shall be too

late for the banquet.”

“What do you have for the banquet?” Bernard asked; and the Mermaid

answered sweetly: “Things to eat.”

“And to drink?”

“It’s no use,” said she; “you can’t get at it that way. We drink—but

you wouldn’t understand.”

Here the grassy road widened, and they came onto a terrace of

mother-of-pearl, very smooth and shining. Pearly steps led down from

it into the most beautiful garden you could invent if you tried for a

year and a day with all the loveliest pictures and the most learned

books on gardening to help you. But the odd thing about it was that

when they came to talk it over afterward they never could agree about

the shape of the beds, the direction of the walks, the kinds and colors

of the flowers, or indeed any single thing about it. But to each it

seemed and will always seem the most beautiful garden ever imagined or

invented. And everyone saw, beyond a distant belt of trees the shining

domes and minarets of very beautiful buildings, and far, far away there

was a sound of music, so far away that at first they could only hear

the music and not the tune. But soon that too was plain, and it was the

most beautiful tune in the world.

“Crikey,” said Reuben, speaking suddenly and for the first time, “ain’t

it ’evingly neither. Not arf,” he added with decision.

“Now,” said the Mermaid, as they neared the belt of trees, “you are

going to receive something.”

“Oh, thank you,” said everybody, and no one liked to add:

“What?”—though that simple word trembled on every tongue. It slipped

off the tip of Reuben’s, indeed, at last, and the Mermaid answered:

“An ovation.”

“That’s something to do with eggs, I know,” said Kathleen. “Father was

saying so only the other day.”

“There will be no eggs in this,” said the Mermaid, “and you may find

it a trifle heavy. But when it is over the fun begins. Don’t be

frightened, Kathleen—Mavis, don’t smooth your hair. Ugly untidiness is

impossible here. You are about to be publicly thanked by our Queen.

You’d rather not? You should have thought of that before. If you will

go about doing these noble deeds of rescue you must expect to be

thanked. Now, don’t forget to bow. And there’s nothing to be frightened

of.”

They passed through the trees and came on a sort of open courtyard in

front of a palace of gleaming pearl and gold. There on a silver throne

sat the loveliest lady in the world. She wore a starry crown and a

gown of green, and golden shoes, and she smiled at them so kindly that

they forgot any fear they may have felt. The music ended on a note of

piercing sweetness and in the great hush that followed the children

felt themselves gently pushed forward to the foot of the throne. All

around was a great crowd, forming a circle about the pearly pavement on

which they stood.

The Queen rose up in her place and reached toward them the end of her

scepter where shone a star like those that crowned her.

“Welcome,” she said in a voice far sweeter than the music, “Welcome

to our Home. You have been kind, you have been brave, you have been

unselfish, and all my subjects do homage to you.”

At the word the whole of that great crowd bent toward them like

bulrushes in the wind, and the Queen herself came down the steps of her

throne and held out her hands to the children.

A choking feeling in their throats became almost unbearable as those

kind hands rested on one head after another.

Then the crowd raised itself and stood upright, and someone called out

in a voice like a trumpet:

“The children saved one of us—_We die in captivity_. Shout for the

children. Shout!”

And a roar like the roar of wild waves breaking on rocks went up from

the great crowd that stood all about them. There was a fluttering of

flags or handkerchiefs—the children could not tell which—and then the

voice of their own Mermaid, saying: “There—that’s over. And now we

shall have the banquet. Shan’t we, Mamma?”

“Yes, my daughter,” said the Queen.

So the Mermaid they had rescued was a Queen’s daughter!

“I didn’t know you were a Princess,” said Mavis, as they followed the

Queen along a corridor.

“That’s why they have made such a fuss, I suppose,” said Bernard.

“Oh, no, we should have given the ovation to anyone who had saved any

of us from captivity. We love giving ovations. Only we so seldom get

the chance, and even ordinary entertaining is difficult. People are

so prejudiced. We can hardly ever get anyone to come and visit us. I

shouldn’t have got you if you hadn’t happened to find that cave. It

would have been quite impossible for me to give Kathleen that clinging

embrace from shallow water. The cave water is so much more buoyant than

the sea. I daresay you noticed that.”

Yes—they had.

“May we sit next you at the banquet?” Kathleen asked suddenly,

“because, you know, it’s all rather strange to us.”

“Of course, dear,” said the sea lady.

“But,” said Bernard, “I’m awfully sorry, but I think we ought to go

home.”

“Oh, don’t talk of it,” said the Mermaid. “Why, you’ve only just come.”

Bernard muttered something about getting home in time to wash for tea.

“There’ll be heaps of time,” said Francis impatiently; “don’t fuss and

spoil everything.”

“I’m not fussing,” said Bernard, stolid as ever. “I never fuss. But I

think we ought to be thinking of getting home.”

“Well, think about it then,” said Francis impatiently, and turned to

admire the clusters of scarlet flowers that hung from the pillars of

the gallery.

The banquet was very magnificent, but they never could remember

afterward what it was that they ate out of the silver dishes and drank

out of the golden cups. They none of them forgot the footmen, however,

who were dressed in tight-fitting suits of silver scales, with silver

fingerless gloves, and a sort of helmet on that made them look less

like people than like fish, as Kathleen said.

“But they _are_ fish,” said the Princess, opening her beautiful eyes;

“they’re the Salmoners, and the one behind Mother’s chair is the Grand

Salmoner. In your country I have heard there are Grand Almoners. We

have Grand Salmoners.”

“Are all your servants fish?” Mavis asked.

“Of course,” said the Princess, “but we don’t use servants much

except for state occasions. Most of our work is done by the lower

orders—electric eels, most of them. We get all the power for our

machinery from them.”

“How do you do it?” Bernard asked, with a fleeting vision of being some

day known as the great man who discovered the commercial value of the

electricity obtainable from eels.

“We keep a tank of them,” said she, “and you just turn a tap—they’re

connected up to people’s houses—and you connect them with your looms or

lathes or whatever you’re working. That sets up a continuous current

and the eels swim around and around in the current till the work’s

done. It’s beautifully simple.”

“It’s simply beautiful,” said Mavis warmly. “I mean all this.” She

waved her hand to the row of white arches through which the green of

the garden and the blue of what looked like the sky showed plainly.

“And you live down here and do nothing but play all day long? How

lovely.”

“You’d soon get tired of play if you did nothing else,” said Bernard

wisely. “At least I know I should. Did you ever make a steam engine?”

he asked the Princess. “That’s what I call work.”

“It would be, to me,” she said, “but don’t you know that work is what

you have to do and don’t like doing? And play’s whatever you want to

do. Have some more Andrew Aromaticus.”

She made a sign to a Salmoner, who approached with a great salver

of fruit. The company were seated by fours and fives and sixes at

little tables, such as you see in the dining rooms of the big hotels

where people feed who have motors. These little tables are good for

conversation.

“Then what _do_ you do?” Kathleen asked.

“Well, we have to keep all the rivers flowing, for one thing—the

earthly rivers, I mean—and to see to the rain and snow taps, and to

attend to the tides and whirlpools, and open the cages where the winds

are kept. Oh, it’s no easy business being a Princess in our country, I

can tell you, whatever it may be in yours. What do your Princesses do?

Do they open the wind cages?”

“I ... I don’t know,” said the children. “I think they only open

bazaars.”

“Mother says they work awfully hard, and they go and see people who are

ill in hospitals,” Kathleen was beginning, but at this moment the Queen

rose and so did everyone else.

“Come,” said the Princess, “I must go and take my turn at

river-filling. Only Princesses can do the finest sort of work.”

“What is the hardest thing you have to do?” Francis asked as they

walked out into the garden.

“Keeping the sea out of our kingdom,” was the answer, “and fighting the

Under Folk. We kept the sea out by trying very hard with both hands,

inside our minds. And, of course, the sky helps.”

“And how do you fight the Under Folk—and who are they?” Bernard wanted

to know.

“Why, the thick-headed, heavy people who live in the deep sea.”

“Different from you?” Kathleen asked.

“My dear child!”

“She means,” explained Mavis, “that we didn’t know there were any

other kind of people in the sea except your kind.”

“You know much less about us than we do about you,” said the Princess.

“Of course there are different nations and tribes, and different

customs and dresses and everything. But there are two great divisions

down here besides us, the Thick-Heads and the Thin-Skins, and we have

to fight both of them. The Thin-Skins live near the surface of the

water, frivolous, silly things like nautiluses and flying fish, very

pleasant, but deceitful and light-minded. They are very treacherous.

The Thick-Heads live in the cold deep dark waters. They are desperate

people.”

“Do you ever go down there?”

The Princess shuddered.

“No,” she said, “but we might have to. If the water ever came into our

kingdom they would attack us, and we should have to drive them out;

and then we should have to drive them right down to their own kingdom

again. It happened once, in my grandfather’s time.”

“But how on earth,” asked Bernard, “did you ever get the water out

again?”

“It wasn’t on earth, you know,” said the Princess, “and the Whales blew

a good deal of it out—the Grampuses did their best, but they don’t blow

hard enough. And the Octopuses finished the work by sucking the water

out with their suckers.”

“Do you have cats here then?” asked Kathleen, whose attention had

wandered, and had only caught a word that sounded like Pussies.

“Only Octopussies,” said the Princess, “but then they’re eight times as

pussy as your dry-land cats.”

What Kathleen’s attention had wandered to was a tall lady standing on a

marble pedestal in the middle of a pool. She held a big vase over her

head, and from it poured a thin stream of water. This stream fell in

an arch right across the pool into a narrow channel cut in the marble

of the square in which they now stood, ran across the square, and

disappeared under a dark arch in the face of the rock.

“There,” said the Princess, stopping.

“What is it?” asked Reuben, who had been singularly silent.

“This,” she said simply, “is the source of the Nile. And of all other

rivers. And it’s my turn now. I must not speak again till my term of

source-service is at an end. Do what you will. Go where you will. All

is yours. Only beware that you do not touch the sky. If once profane

hands touch the sky the whole heaven is overwhelmed.”

She ran a few steps, jumped, and landed on the marble pedestal without

touching the lady who stood there already. Then, with the utmost

care, so that the curved arc of the water should not be slackened or

diverted, she took the vase in her hands and the other lady in her turn

leaped across the pool and stood beside the children and greeted them

kindly.

“I am Maia. My sister has told me all you did for her,” she said; “it

was I who pinched your foot,” and as she spoke they knew the voice that

had said, among the seaweed-covered rocks at Beachfield: “Save her. We

die in captivity.”

“What will you do?” she asked, “while my sister performs her

source-service?”

“Wait, I suppose,” said Bernard. “You see we want to know about going

home.”

“Didn’t you fix a time to be recalled?” asked Maia. And when they said

no, her beautiful smiling face suddenly looked grave.

“With whom have you left the charge of speaking the spell of recall?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Bernard. “What spell?”

“The one which enabled me to speak to you that day in the shallows,”

said Maia. “Of course my sister explained to you that the spell which

enables us to come at your call is the only one by which you can

yourselves return.”

“She didn’t,” said Mavis.

“Ah, she is young and impulsive. But no doubt she arranged with someone

to speak the spell and recall you?”

“No, she didn’t. She doesn’t know any land people except us. She told

me so,” said Kathleen.

“Well, is the spell written anywhere?” Maia asked.

“Under a picture” they told her, not knowing that it was also written

in the works of Mr. John Milton.

“Then I’m afraid you’ll have to wait ’til someone happens to read what

is under the picture,” said Maia kindly.

“But the house is locked up; there’s no one there to read anything,”

Bernard reminded them.

There was a dismal silence. Then:

“Perhaps burglars will break in and read it,” suggested Reuben kindly.

“Anyhow, what’s the use of kicking up a shine about it? _I_ can’t see

what you want to go back for. It’s a little bit of all right here, so

it is—I _don’t_ think. Plucky sight better than anything _I_ ever come

across. I’m a-goin’ to enjoy myself I am, and see all the sights. Miss,

there, said we might.”

“Well spoken indeed,” said Maia, smiling at his earnest face. “That is

the true spirit of the explorer.”

“But we’re not explorers,” said Mavis, a little crossly, for her; “and

we’re not so selfish as you think, either. Mother will be awfully

frightened if we’re not home to tea. She’ll think we’re drowned.”

“Well, you _are_ drowned,” said Maia brightly. “At least that’s what I

believe you land people call it when you come down to us and neglect to

arrange to have the spell of return said for you.”

“How horrible,” said Mavis. “Oh, Cathay,” and she clutched her sister

tightly.

“But you needn’t _stay_ drowned,” said the Princess. “Someone’s sure

to say the spell somehow or other. I assure you that this is true; and

then you will go home with the speed of an eel.”

They felt, somehow, in their bones that this was true, and it consoled

them a little. Things which you feel in your bones are most convincing.

“But Mother,” said Mavis.

“You don’t seem to know much about magic,” said Maia pityingly: “the

first principle of magic is that time spent in other worlds doesn’t

count in your own home. No, I see you don’t understand. In your home

it’s still the same time as it was when you dived into the well in the

cave.”

“But that’s hours ago,” said Bernard; and she answered:

“I know. But your time is not like our time at all.”

“What’s the difference?”

“I can’t explain,” said the Princess. “You can’t compare them any more

than you can compare a starlight and a starfish. They’re quite, quite

different. But the really important thing is that your Mother won’t be

anxious. So now why not enjoy yourselves?”

And all this time the other Princess had been holding up the jar which

was the source of all the rivers in all the world.

“Won’t she be very tired?” asked Reuben.

“Yes, but suppose all the rivers dried up—and she had to know how

people were suffering—that would be something much harder to bear than

tiredness. Look in the pool and see what she is doing for the world.”

They looked, and it was like a colored cinematograph; and the pictures

melted into one another like the old dissolving views that children

used to love so before cinematographs were thought of.

They saw the Red Indians building their wigwams by the great rivers—and

the beavers building their dams across the little rivers; they saw

brown men setting their fish traps by the Nile, and brown girls sending

out little golden-lighted love-ships on the Ganges. They saw the

stormy splendor of the St. Lawrence, and the Medway’s pastoral peace.

Little streams dappled with sunlight and the shadow of green leaves,

and the dark and secret torrents that tear through the underworld

in caverns and hidden places. They saw women washing clothes in the

Seine, and boys sailing boats on the Serpentine. Naked savages dancing

in masks beside tropical streams overshadowed by strange trees and

flowers that we do not know—and men in flannels and girls in pink and

blue, punting in the backwaters of the Thames. They saw Niagara and the

Zambesi Falls; and all the time the surface of the pool was smooth as a

mirror and the arched stream that was the source of all they saw poured

ceaselessly over their heads and fell splashing softly into its little

marble channel.

I don’t know how long they would have stayed leaning their elbows

on the cool parapet and looking down on the changing pictures, but

suddenly a trumpet sounded, drums beat, and everyone looked up.

“It’s for the review,” said Maia, through the rattle of the drums. “Do

you care for soldiers?”

“Rather,” said Bernard, “but I didn’t know you had soldiers.”

“We’re very proud of our troops,” said the Princess. “I am Colonel of

the Lobster Battalion, and my sister commands the Crustacean Brigade;

but we’re not going on parade today.”

The sound of drums was drawing nearer. “This way to the parade ground,”

said the Princess, leading the way. They looked at the review through a

big arch, and it was like looking into a very big aquarium.

The first regiment they saw was, as it happened, the 23rd Lobsters.

If you can imagine a Lobster as big as a Guardsman, and rather stouter,

you will have some idea of the splendid appearance of this regiment.

Only don’t forget that Lobsters in their natural regimentals are not

red. They wear a sort of steel-blue armor, and carry arms of dreadful

precision. They are terrible fellows, the 23rd, and they marched with

an air at once proud and confident.

Then came the 16th Swordfish—in uniform of delicate silver, their drawn

swords displayed.

The Queen’s Own Gurnards were magnificent in pink and silver, with real

helmets and spiked collars; and the Boy Scouts—“The Sea Urchins” as

they were familiarly called—were the last of the infantry.

Then came Mer-men, mounted on Dolphins and Sea Horses, and the Cetacean

Regiments, riding on their whales. Each whale carried a squadron.

“They look like great trams going by,” said Francis. And so they did.

The children remarked that while the infantry walked upright like

any other foot soldiers, the cavalry troops seemed to be, with their

mounts, suspended in the air about a foot from the ground.

“And that shows it’s water,” said Bernard.

“No, it doesn’t,” said Francis.

“Well, a whale’s not a bird,” said Bernard.

“And there are other things besides air and water,” said Francis.

The Household Brigade was perhaps the handsomest. The Grand Salmoner

led his silvery soldiers, and the 100th Halibuts were evidently the

sort of troops to make the foes of anywhere “feel sorry they were born.”

It was a glorious review, and when it was over the children found that

they had been quite forgetting their desire to get home.

But as the back of the last Halibut vanished behind the seaweed trees

the desire came back with full force. Princess Maia had disappeared.

Their own Princess was, they supposed, still performing her

source-service.

Suddenly everything seemed to have grown tiresome.

“Oh, I do wish we could go home,” said Kathleen. “Couldn’t we just find

the door and go out?”

“We might _look_ for the door,” said Bernard cautiously, “but I don’t

see how we could get up into the cave again.”

“We can swim all right, you know,” Mavis reminded them.

“I think it would be pretty low down to go without saying good-bye to

the Princesses,” said Francis. “Still, there’s no harm in _looking_ for

the door.”

They did look for the door. And they did not find it. What they did

find was a wall—a great gray wall built of solid stones—above it

nothing could be seen but blue sky.

“I do wonder what’s on the other side,” said Bernard; and someone, I

will not say which, said: “Let’s climb up and see.”

It was easy to climb up, for the big stones had rough edges and so did

not fit very closely, and there was room for a toe here and a hand

there. In a minute or two they were all up, but they could not see down

on the other side because the wall was about eight feet thick. They

walked toward the other edge, and still they could not see down; quite

close to the edge, and still no seeing.

“It isn’t sky at all,” said Bernard suddenly. “It’s a sort of dome—tin

I shouldn’t wonder, painted to look like sky.”

“It can’t be,” said someone.

“It is though,” said Bernard.

“There couldn’t be one so big,” said someone else.

“But there _is_,” said Bernard.

And then someone—I will not tell you who—put out a hand, and, quite

forgetting the Princess’s warning, touched the sky. That hand felt

something as faint and thin as a bubble—and instantly this something

broke, and the sea came pouring into the Mer-people’s country.

“Now you’ve done it,” said one of those whose hand it wasn’t. And

there was no doubt about it; the person who owned the hand _had_ done

it—and done it very thoroughly. It was plain enough now that what they

had been living in was not water, and that this was. The first rush

of it was terrible—but in less than a moment the whole kingdom was

flooded, and then the water became clear and quiet.

The children found no difficulty in breathing, and it was as easy to

walk as it is on land in a high wind. They could not run, but they

walked as fast as they could to the place where they had left the

Princess pouring out the water for all the rivers in all the world.

And as they went, one of them said, “Oh don’t, don’t tell it was me.

You don’t know what punishments they may have here.”

The others said of course they wouldn’t tell. But the one who had

touched the sky felt that it was despised and disgraced.

They found the pedestal, but what had been the pool was only part of

the enormous sea, and so was the little marble channel.

The Princess was not there, and they began to look for her, more and

more anxious and wretched.

“It’s all your fault,” said Francis to the guilty one who had broken

the sky by touching it; and Bernard said, “You shut up, can’t you?”

It was a long time before they found their Princess, and when they did

find her they hardly knew her. She came swimming toward them, and she

was wearing her tail, and a cuirass and helmet of the most beautiful

mother-of-pearl—thin scales of it overlapping; and the crest on her

helmet was one great pearl, as big as a billiard ball. She carried

something over her arm.

“Here you are,” she said. “I’ve been looking for you. The future is

full of danger. The water has got in.”

“Yes, we noticed that,” said Bernard.

And Mavis said: “Please, it was us. We touched the sky.”

“Will they punish us?” asked Cathay.

“There are no punishments here,” said the pearly Princess gravely,

“only the consequences of your action. Our great defense against the

Under Folk is that thin blue dome which you have broken. It can only be

broken from the inside. Our enemies were powerless to destroy it. But

now they may attack us at any moment. I am going to command my troops.

Will you come too?”

“Rather,” said Reuben, and the others, somewhat less cordially, agreed.

They cheered up a little when the Princess went on.

“It’s the only way to make you safe. There are four posts vacant

on my staff, and I have brought you the uniforms that go with the

appointments.” She unfolded five tails, and four little pearly coats

like her own, with round pearls for buttons, pearls as big as marbles.

“Put these on quickly,” she said, “they are enchanted coats, given by

Neptune himself to an ancestor of ours. By pressing the third button

from the top you can render yourself invisible. The third button below

that will make you visible again when you wish it, and the last button

of all will enable you to become intangible as well as invisible.”

“Intangible?” said Cathay.

“Unfeelable, so you’re quite safe.”

“But there are only four coats,” said Francis. “That is so,” said the

Princess. “One of you will have to take its chance with the Boy Scouts.

Which is it to be?”

Each of the children always said, and thought that it meant to say “I

will,” but somehow or other the person who spoke first was Reuben.

The instant the Princess had said “be,” Reuben shouted: “Me,” adding

however almost at once, “please.”

“Right,” said the Princess kindly, “off with you! The Sea Urchins’

barracks are behind that rock. Off with you! Here, don’t forget your

tail. It enables you to be as comfortable in the water as any fish.”

Reuben took the tail and hastened away.

“Now,” said the Princess. And they all began putting on their tails. It

was like putting both your feet into a very large stocking. Then came

the mail coats.

“Don’t we have swords?” Francis asked, looking down at his slim and

silvery extremity.

“Swords? In the Crustacean Brigade? Never forget, children, that you

belong to the Princess’s Own Oysters. Here are your weapons.” She

pointed to a heap of large oyster shells, as big as Roman shields.

“See,” she said, “you hold them this way as a rule. A very powerful

spring is released when you hold them _that_ way.”

“But what do you do with it?” Mavis asked.

“Nip the feet of the enemy,” said the Princess, “and it holds on. Under

Folk have no tails. You wait till they are near a rock; then nip a

foe-man’s foot with your good weapon, laying the other end on the rock.

The oyster shell will at once attach itself to the rock and....”

A terrible shout rang out, and the Princess stopped.

“What is it; oh, what is it?” said the children. And the Princess

shuddered.

Again that shout—the most terrible sound the children had ever heard.

“What is it?” they said again.

The Princess drew herself up, as if ashamed of her momentary weakness,

and said:

“It is the war cry of the Under Folk.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

_The Water-War_

AFTER THE SOUND of that terrible shouting there came silence—that is,

there was silence where the children were, but all above they could

hear the rush and rustle of a quick arming.

“The war cry of the People of the Depths,” said the Princess.

“I suppose,” said Kathleen forlornly, “that if they’re so near as that

all is lost.”

“Lost? No, indeed,” cried the Princess. “The People of the Depths are

very strong, but they are very heavy. They cannot rise up and come to

us from the water above. Before they can get in they must scale the

wall.”

“But they will get over the wall—won’t they?”

“Not while one of the Royal Halibuts still lives. The Halibuts have

manned the wall; they will keep back the foe. But they won’t attack

yet. They’ll send out their scouts and skirmishers. Till they approach,

the Crustacean Brigade can do nothing. It is a hard thing to watch a

fight in which you may not share. I must apologize for appointing you

to such an unsatisfactory position.”

“Thank you, _we_ don’t mind,” said Cathay hastily. “What’s that?”

It was a solid, gleaming sheet of silver that rose above them like a

great carpet—which split and tore itself into silver threads.

“It is the Swordfish Brigade,” said the Princess. “We could swim up a

little and watch them, if you’re not afraid. You see, the first attack

will probably be delivered by one of their Shark regiments. The 7th

Sharks have a horrible reputation. But our brave Swordfish are a match

for them,” she added proudly.

The Swordfish, who were slowly swimming to and fro above, seemed to

stiffen as though to meet some danger at present unseen by the others.

Then, with a swift, silent, terrible movement, the Sharks rushed on the

noble defenders of Merland.

The Swordfish with their deadly weapons were ready—and next moment all

the water was a wild whirl of confused conflict. The Sharks fought with

a sort of harsh, rough courage, and the children, who had drawn away to

a little distance, could not help admiring their desperate onslaught.

But the Swordfish were more than their match. With more skill, and an

equally desperate gallantry, they met and repulsed the savage onslaught

of the Sharks.

Shoals of large, calm Cod swept up from the depths, and began to

shoulder the dead Sharks sideways toward the water above the walls—the

dead Sharks and, alas! many a brave, dead Swordfish, too. For the

victory had not been a cheap one.

The children could not help cheering as the victorious Swordfish

re-formed.

“Pursuit is unnecessary,” said the Princess. “The Sharks have lost too

heavily to resume the attack.”

A Shark in terror-stricken retreat passed close by her, and she clipped

its tail with her oyster shell.

The Shark turned savagely, but the Princess with one tail-swish was

out of danger, pushing the children before her outspread arms, and the

Shark began to sink, still making vain efforts to pursue them.

[Illustration: _The Swordfish Brigade._]

“The shell will drag him down,” said the Princess; “and now I must go

and get a fresh shield. I wish I knew where the next attack would be

delivered.”

They sank slowly through the water.

“I wonder where Reuben is?” said Bernard.

“Oh, he’s quite safe,” said the Princess. “The Boy Scouts don’t go

outside the walls—they just do a good turn for anybody who wants it,

you know—and help the kind Soles to look after the wounded.”

They had reached the great flooded garden again and turned toward the

Palace, and as they went a Sea Urchin shell suddenly rose from behind

one of the clipped hedges—a Sea Urchin shell and behind it a long tail.

The shell was raised, and the face under it was Reuben’s.

“Hi, Princess!” he shouted. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere.

We’ve been scouting. I got a lot of seaweed, and they thought I was

nothing _but_ seaweed; and so I got quite close to the enemy.”

“It was very rash,” said the Princess severely.

“The others don’t think so,” he said, a little hurt. “They began by

saying I was only an irregular Sea Urchin, because I’ve got this jolly

tail”—he gave it a merry wag—“and they called me Spatangus, and names

like that. But they’ve made me their General now—General Echinus. I’m a

regular now, and no mistake, and what I was going to say is the enemy

is going to attack the North Tower in force in half an hour.”

“You good boy,” said the Princess. I do believe if it hadn’t been for

his Sea Urchin’s uniform she would have kissed him. “You’re splendid.

You’re a hero. If you could do it safely—there’s heaps of seaweed—could

you find out if there’s any danger from the Book People? You know—the

ones in the cave. It’s always been our fear that they might attack,

_too_: and if they did—well, I’d rather be the slave of a Shark than

of Mrs. Fairchild.” She gathered an armful of seaweed from the nearest

tree, and Reuben wrapped himself in it and drifted off—looking less

like a live Boy Scout than you could believe possible.

The defenders of Merland, now acting on Reuben’s information, began to

mass themselves near the North Wall.

“Now is our time,” said the Princess. “We must go along the tunnel, and

when we hear the sound of their heavy feet shaking the flow of ocean

we must make sallies, and fix our shell shields in their feet. Major,

rally your men.”

A tall Merchild in the Crustacean uniform blew a clear note, and the

soldiers of the Crustacean Brigade, who having nothing particular to do

had been helping anyone and everyone as best they could, which is the

way in Merland, though not in Europe, gathered about their officers.

When they were all drawn up before her, the Princess addressed her

troops.

“My men,” she said, “we have been suddenly plunged into war. But it

has not found us unprepared. I am proud to think that my regiments are

ready to the last pearl button. And I know that every man among you

will be as proud as I am that our post is, as tradition tells us it has

always been, the post of danger. We shall go out into the depths of

the sea to fight the enemies of our dear country, and to lay down our

lives, if need be, for that country’s sake.”

The soldiers answered by cheers, and the Princess led the way to one of

those little buildings, like Temples of Flora in old pictures, which

the children had noticed in the gardens. At the order given a sergeant

raised a great stone by a golden ring embedded in it and disclosed a

dark passage leading underground.

A splendid captain of Cockles, six feet high if he was an inch, with a

sergeant and six men, led the way. Three Oyster officers followed, then

a company of Oysters, the advance guard. At the head of the main body

following were the Princess and her Staff. As they went the Princess

explained why the tunnel was so long and sloped so steeply.

“You see,” she said, “the inside of our wall is only about ten feet

high, but it goes down on the other side for forty feet or more. It

is built on a hill. Now, I don’t want you to feel obliged to come out

and fight. You can stay inside and get the shields ready for us to

take. We shall keep on rushing back for fresh weapons. Of course the

tunnel’s much too narrow for the Under Folk to get in, but they have

their regiment of highly trained Sea Serpents, who, of course, can make

themselves thin and worm through anything.”

“Cathay doesn’t like serpents,” said Mavis anxiously.

“You needn’t be afraid,” said the Princess. “They’re dreadful cowards.

They know the passage is guarded by our Lobsters. They won’t come

within a mile of the entrance. But the main body of the enemy will have

to pass quite close. There’s a great sea mountain, and the only way

to our North Tower is in the narrow ravine between that mountain and

Merland.”

The tunnel ended in a large rocky hall with the armory, hung with ten

thousand gleaming shields, on the one side, and the guardroom crowded

with enthusiastic Lobsters on the other. The entrance from the sea was

a short, narrow passage, in which stood two Lobsters in their beautiful

dark coats of mail.

Since the moment when the blue sky that looked first so like sky

and then so like painted tin had, touched, confessed itself to be a

bubble—confessed, too, in the most practical way, by bursting and

letting the water into Merland—the children had been carried along by

the breathless rush of preparations for the invasion, and the world

they were now in had rapidly increased in reality, while their own

world, in which till today they had always lived, had been losing

reality at exactly the same rate as that by which the new world gained

it. So it was that when the Princess said:

“You needn’t go out and attack the enemy unless you like,” they all

answered, in some astonishment:

“But we _want_ to.”

“That’s all right,” said the Princess. “I only wanted to see if they

were in working order.”

“If what were?”

“Your coats. They’re coats of valor, of course.”

“I think I could be brave without a coat,” said Bernard, and began to

undo his pearl buttons.

“Of course you could,” said the Princess. “In fact, you must be brave

to begin with, or the coat couldn’t work. It would be no good to a

coward. It just keeps your natural valor warm and your wits cool.”

“It makes you braver,” said Kathleen suddenly. “At least I hope it’s

me—but I expect it’s the coat. Anyhow, I’m glad it does. Because I do

want to be brave. Oh, Princess!”

“Well?” said the Princess, gravely, but not unkindly, “what is it?”

Kathleen stood a moment, her hands twisting in each other and her eyes

downcast. Then in an instant she had unbuttoned and pulled off her coat

of pearly mail and thrown it at the Princess’s feet.

“I’ll do it without the coat,” she said, and drew a long breath.

The others looked on in silence, longing to help her, but knowing that

no one could help her now but herself.

“It was me,” said Kathleen suddenly, and let go a deep breath of

relief. “It was me that touched the sky and let in the water; and I am

most frightfully sorry, and I know you’ll never forgive me. But—”

“Quick,” said the Princess, picking up the coat, “get into your armor;

it’ll prevent your crying.” She hustled Kathleen into the coat and kept

her arms around her. “Brave girl,” she whispered. “I’m glad you did it

without the coat.” The other three thought it polite to turn away. “Of

course,” the Princess added, “I knew—but you didn’t know I knew.”

“How did you know?” said Kathleen.

“By your eyes,” said the Princess, with one last hug; “they’re quite

different now. Come, let us go to the gate and see if any of our Scouts

are signaling.”

The two Lobster sentries presented claws as the Princess passed with

her Staff through the narrow arch and onto the sandy plain of the sea

bottom. The children were astonished to find that they could see quite

plain a long way through the water—as far as they could have seen in

air, and the view was very like one kind of land view. First, the

smooth flat sand dotted with copses of branching seaweed—then woods of

taller treelike weeds with rocks shelving up and up to a tall, rocky

mountain. This mountain sent out a spur, then ran along beside the

Merkingdom and joined the rock behind it; and it was along the narrow

gorge so formed that the Under Folk were expected to advance. There

were balls of seaweed floating in the air—at least, it really now had

grown to seem like air, though, of course, it was water—but no signs of

Scouts.

Suddenly the balls of seaweed drew together and the Princess murmured,

“I thought so,” as they formed into orderly lines, sank to the ground,

and remained motionless for a moment, while one ball of seaweed stood

in front of them.

“It’s the Boy Scouts,” she said. “Your Reuben is giving them their

orders.”

It seemed that she was right, for next moment the balls of seaweed

drifted away in different directions, and the one who had stood before

them drifted straight to the arch where the Princess and the children

stood. It drifted in, pulled off its seaweed disguise, and was, in

effect, Reuben.

“We’ve found out something more, your Highness,” he said, saluting the

Princess. “The vanguard are to be Sea Horses; you know, not the little

ones, but the great things they have in the depths.”

“No use our attacking the horses,” said the Princess. “They’re as hard

as ice. Who rides them?”

“The First Dipsys,” said Reuben. “They’re the young Under Folk who want

to cut a dash. They call them the Forlorn Hopers, for short.”

“Have they got armor?”

“No—that’s their swank. They’ve no armor but their natural scales.

Those look thick enough, though. I say, Princess, I suppose we Sea

Urchins are free to do exactly as we choose?”

“Yes,” said the Princess, “unless orders are given.”

“Well, then—my idea is that the Lobsters are the fellows to tackle the

Sea Horses. Hold on to their tails, see? They can’t hurt the Lobsters

because they can’t get at their own tails.”

“But when the Lobsters let go?” said the Princess.

“The Lobsters wouldn’t let go till they had driven back the enemy,”

said the Lobster Captain, saluting. “Your Highness, may I ask if you

propose to take this Urchin’s advice?”

“Isn’t it good?” she asked.

“Yes, your Highness,” the Lobster Captain answered, “but it’s

impertinent.”

[Illustration: _The First Dipsys._]

“I am the best judge of that,” said the Princess gently; “remember that

these are noble volunteers, who are fighting for us of their own free

will.”

The Lobster saluted and was silent.

“I cannot send the Lobsters,” said the Princess, “we need them to

protect the gate. But the Crabs—”

“Ah, Highness, let us go,” pleaded the Lobster Captain.

“The Crabs cannot keep the gate,” said the Princess kindly. “You know

they are not narrow enough. Francis, will you be my aide-de-camp and

take a message to the Queen?”

“May I go, too?” asked Mavis.

“Yes. But we must deliver a double assault. If the Crabs attack the

Horses, who will deal with the riders?”

“I have an idea about that, too,” said Reuben.

“If we could have some good heavy shoving regiment—and someone sharp to

finish them off. The Swordfish, perhaps?”

“You are a born general,” the Princess said; “but you don’t quite

know our resources. The United Narwhals can do the shoving, as you

call it—and their horns are sharp and heavy. Now”—she took a smooth

white chalkstone from the seafloor, and a ready Lobster brought her a

sharpened haddock bone. She wrote quickly, scratching the letters deep

on the chalk. “Here,” she said, “take this to the Queen. You will find

her at Headquarters at the Palace yard. Tell her everything. I have

only asked for the two regiments; you must explain the rest. I don’t

suppose there’ll be any difficulty in getting through our lines, but,

if there should be, the password is ‘Glory’ and the countersign is ‘or

Death.’ And hurry, hurry, hurry for your lives!”

Never before had Mavis and Francis felt anything like the glow of

excitement and importance which warmed them as they went up the long

tunnel to take the message to the Queen.

“But where is the Palace?” Mavis said, and they stopped, looking at

each other.

“I’ll show you, please,” said a little voice behind them. They turned

quickly to find a small, spruce, gentlemanly Mackerel at their heels.

“I’m one of the Guides,” it said. “I felt sure you’d need me. This

way, sir, please,” and it led the way across the gardens in and out

of the clumps of trees and between the seaweed hedges till they came

to the Palace. Rows and rows of soldiers surrounded it, all waiting

impatiently for the word of command that should send them to meet the

enemies of their country.

“Glory,” said the gentlemanly Mackerel, as he passed the outposts.

“Or Death,” replied the sentinel Sea Bream.

The Queen was in the courtyard, in which the children had received

their ovation—so short a time ago, and yet how long it seemed. Then

the courtyard had been a scene of the calm and charming gaiety of a

nation at peace; now it was full of the ardent, intense inactivity of

waiting warriors. The Queen in her gleaming coral armor met them as

the password opened a way to her through the close-packed ranks of the

soldiers. She took the stone and read it, and with true royal kindness

she found time, even at such a moment, for a word of thanks to the

messengers.

“See the Narwhals start,” she added, “and then back to your posts with

all speed. Tell your commanding officer that so far the Book People

have made no sign, but the golden gate is strongly defended by the

King’s Own Cod, and—”

“I didn’t know there was a King,” said Francis.

The Queen looked stern, and the Mackerel guide jerked Francis’s magic

coattail warningly and whispered “Hush!”

“The King,” said the Queen quietly, “is no more. He was lost at sea.”

When the splendid steady column of Narwhals had marched off to its

appointed place the children bowed to the Queen and went back to their

posts.

“I’m sorry I said anything,” said Francis to the Mackerel, “but I

didn’t know. Besides, how can a Mer-king be lost at sea?”

“Aren’t your Kings lost on land?” asked the Mackerel, “or if not Kings,

men quite as good? What about explorers?”

“I see,” said Mavis; “and doesn’t anyone know what has become of him?”

“No,” said the Mackerel; “he has been lost for a very long time. We

fear the worst. If he were alive he would have come back. We think the

Under Folk have him. They bewitch prisoners so that they forget who

they are. Of course, there’s the antidote. Every uniform is made with

a little antidote pocket just over the heart.” He put his fin inside

his scales and produced a little golden case, just like a skate’s egg.

“You’ve got them, too, of course,” he added. “If you are taken prisoner

swallow the contents at once.”

“But if you forget who you are,” said Francis, “don’t you forget the

antidote?”

“No charm,” the Mackerel assured him, “is strong enough to make one

forget one’s counter-charm.”

And now they were back at the Lobster-guarded gate. The Princess ran to

meet them.

“What a time you’ve been,” she said. “Is all well? Have the Narwhals

taken up their position?”

Satisfied on this point, she led the children up a way long and steep

to a window in the wall whence they could look down on the ravine and

see the advance of the foe. The Narwhals were halted about halfway up

the ravine, where it widened to a sort of amphitheater. Here, among the

rocks, they lay in ambush, waiting for the advance of the foe.

“If it hadn’t been for you, Reuben,” said the Princess, as they leaned

their elbows on the broad rocky ledge of the window, “they might easily

have stormed the North Tower—we should not have been ready—all our

strongest defenses were massed on the south side. It was there they

attacked last time, so the history books tell us.”

And now a heavy, thundering sound, faint yet terrible, announced the

approach of the enemy—and far away across the sea plain something could

be seen moving. A ball of seaweed seemed to drift up the ravine.

“A Sea Urchin gone to give the alarm,” said the Princess; “what

splendid things Boy Scouts are. We didn’t have them in the last war.

My dear father only invented them just before—” She paused and sighed.

“Look,” she said.

The enemy’s heavy cavalry were moving in a solid mass toward

Merland—the great Sea Horses, twenty feet long, and their great riders,

who must have been eight or ten feet high, came more and more quickly,

heading to the ravine. The riders were the most terrible beings the

children had ever seen. Clothed from head to feet in closely fitting

scales, with large heads, large ears, large mouths and blunt noses and

large, blind-looking eyes, they sat each erect on his armored steed,

the long harpoons swaying lightly in their enormous hands.

The Sea Horses quickened their pace—and a noise like a hoarse trumpet

rang out.

“They are sounding the charge,” said the Princess; and as she spoke the

Under Folk charged at the ravine, in a determined, furious onrush.

“Oh, no one can stand up against that—they can’t,” said Cathay, in

despair.

From the window they could see right down onto the amphitheater, where

the Narwhals were concealed.

On came the Sea Cavalry—so far unresisted—but as they neared the ambush

bunches of seaweed drifted in the faces of the riders. They floundered

and strove to push away the clinging stuff—and as they strove the

Narwhals made their sortie—drove their weight against the riders and

hurled them from their horses, and from the covers of the rocks the

Crabs advanced with an incredible speed and caught the tails of the

Sea Horses in their inexorable claws. The riders lay on the ground.

The horses were rearing and prancing with fear and pain as the clouds

of seaweed, each with a prickly Sea Urchin in it, flung themselves

against their faces. The riders stood up, fighting to the last; but the

harpoons were no match for the Narwhal’s horns.

“Come away,” said the Princess.

Already the Sea Horses, urged by the enormous Crabs, were retreating in

the wildest disorder, pursued by Narwhals and harassed by Sea Urchins.

The Princess and the children went back to the Lobster sentries.

“Repulsed,” said the Princess, “with heavy loss”—and the Lobsters

cheered.

“How’s that, Princess?” said a ball of seaweed, uncurling itself at the

gate and presenting the familiar features of Reuben.

“How is it?” she said. “It is Victory. And we owe it to you. But you’re

wounded?”

“Only a scratch,” said Reuben; “harpoon just missed me.”

“Oh, Reuben, you are a hero,” said Cathay.

“Get along, you silly,” he answered gracefully.

CHAPTER NINE

_The Book People_

EVEN IN THE MIDST OF WAR there are intervals for refreshments. Our

own soldiers, no matter how fierce, must eat to live, and the same is

the case with the submarine regiments. The Crustacean Brigade took

advantage of the lull in hostilities which followed the defeat of the

Sea Horses to march back to the Palace and have a meal. A very plain

meal it was, too, and very different from the “Banquet of Ovations,”

as Cathay pointed out afterward. There were no prettily spread tables

decorated with bunches of seaweed, no plates or knives or forks. The

food was passed around by hand, and there was one drinking horn (a sea

cow’s horn) to every six soldiers. They all sat on the ground as you do

at a picnic, and the Queen came and spoke a few hurried words to them

when on her way to strengthen the defenses of the golden gate. And,

as I said, the food was plain. However, everyone had enough to eat,

which was the main thing. Baskets of provisions were sent down to the

Lobsters’ guardroom.

“It is important,” said Princess Freia, “that our men should be on the

spot in case they are needed, and the same with the dinner. I shall go

down with the provisions and keep their hearts up.”

“Yes, dear, do,” said the Princess Maia; “but don’t do anything rash.

No sorties now. You Lobsters are so terribly brave. But you know Mother

said you weren’t to. Ah me! War is a terrible thing! What a state the

rivers will get into with all this water going on, and the winds all

loose and doing as they like. It’s horrible to think about. It will

take ages to get things straight again.”

(Her fears were only too well founded. All this happened last year—and

you know what a wet summer that was.)

“I know, dear,” said Freia; “but I know now who broke the sky, and it

is very, very sorry—so we won’t rub it in, will we?”

“I didn’t mean to,” said Maia, smiling kindly at the children, and went

off to encourage her Lobsters.

“And now,” said Francis, when the meal was over, “what are we going to

do next?”

“We can’t do anything but wait for news,” said the Princess. “Our

Scouts will let us know soon enough. I only hope the Book People won’t

attack us at the same time as the Under Folk. That’s always the danger.”

“How could they get in?” Mavis asked.

“Through the golden door,” said the Princess. “Of course they couldn’t

do anything if we hadn’t read the books they’re in. That’s the worst

of Education. We’ve all read such an awful lot, and that unlocks the

books and they can come out if anyone calls them. Even our fish are

intolerably well read—except the Porpoises, dear things, who never

could read anything. That’s why the golden door is guarded by them, of

course.”

“If not having read things is useful,” said Mavis, “we’ve read almost

nothing. Couldn’t we help guard the door?”

“The very thing,” said the Princess joyously; “for you possess the only

weapon that can be used against these people or against the authors

who created them. If you can truthfully say to them, ‘I never heard

of you,’ your words become a deadly sword that strikes at their most

sensitive spot.”

“What spot?” asked Bernard. And the Princess answered, “Their vanity.”

So the little party went toward the golden door and found it behind a

thick wall of Porpoises. Incessant cries came from beyond the gates,

and to every cry they answered like one Porpoise, “We never heard of

you. You can’t come in. You can’t come in. We never heard of you.”

“We shan’t be any good here,” said Bernard, among the thick, rich

voices of the Porpoises. “They can keep anyone back.”

“Yes,” said the Princess; “but if the Book Folk look through the gate

and see that they’re only Porpoises their wounded vanity will heal, and

they’ll come on as strongly as ever. Whereas if they did find human

beings who have never heard of them the wounds ought to be mortal. As

long as you are able truthfully to say that you don’t know them they

can’t get in.”