So the salmon went up, after Tom had warned them of the wicked old
otter; and Tom went down, but slowly and cautiously, coasting along the
shore. He was many days about it, for it was many miles down to the sea;
and perhaps he would never have found his way, if the fairies had not
guided him, without his seeing their faces, or feeling their gentle
hands.
And as he went, he had a very strange adventure. It was a clear, still
September night, and the moon shone so brightly down through the water
that he could not sleep, though he shut his eyes as tight as possible.
So at last he came up to the top, and sat upon a little point of rock,
and looked up at the broad yellow moon, and wondered what she was, and
thought that she looked at him. And he watched the moonlight on the
rippling river, and the black heads of the firs, and the silver-frosted
lawns, and listened to the owl's hoot, and the snipe's bleat, and the
fox's bark, and the otter's laugh; and smelt the soft perfume of the
birches, and the wafts of heather honey off the grouse moor far above;
and felt very happy. You, of course, would have been very cold sitting
there on a September night, without the least bit of clothes on your wet
back; but Tom was a water baby, and therefore felt cold no more than a
fish.
Suddenly he saw a beautiful sight. A bright red light moved along the
riverside, and threw down into the water a long taproot of flame. Tom,
curious little rogue that he was, must needs go and see what it was; so
he swam to the shore, and met the light as it stopped over a shallow run
at the edge of a low rock.
And there, underneath the light, lay five or six great salmon, looking
up at the flame with their great goggle eyes, and wagging their tails,
as if they were very much pleased at it.
Tom came to the top, to look at this wonderful light nearer, and made a
splash.
And he heard a voice say:
"There was a fish rose."
He did not know what the words meant; but he seemed to know the sound of
them, and to know the voice which spoke them; and he saw on the bank
three great two-legged creatures, one of whom held the light, flaring
and sputtering, and another a long pole. And he knew that they were men,
and was frightened, and crept into a hole in the rock, from which he
could see what went on.
The man with the torch bent down over the water and looked earnestly in;
and then he said:
"Tak' that muckle fellow, lad; he's ower fifteen punds; and haud your
hand steady." [Footnote: MUCKLE is an old English word meaning LARGE.]
Tom felt that there was some danger coming, and longed to warn the
foolish salmon, who kept staring up at the light as if he was bewitched.
But before he could make up his mind, down came the pole through the
water; there was a fearful splash and struggle, and Tom saw that the
poor salmon was speared right through, and was lifted out of the water.
And then, from behind, there sprang on these three men three other men;
and there were shouts, and blows, and words which Tom recollected to
have heard before; and he shuddered and turned sick at them now, for he
felt somehow that they were strange, and ugly, and wrong, and horrible.
And it all began to come back to him. They were men; and they were
fighting; savage, desperate, up-and-down fighting, such as Tom had seen
too many times before.
And he stopped his little ears, and longed to swim away; and was very
glad that he was a water baby, and had nothing to do any more with
horrid dirty men, with foul clothes on their backs, and foul words on
their lips; but he dared not stir out of his hole, while the rock shook
over his head with the trampling and struggling of the keepers and the
poachers.
All of a sudden there was a tremendous splash, and a frightful flash,
and a hissing, and all was still.
For into the water, close to Tom, fell one of the men--he who held the
light in his hand. Into the swift river he sank, and rolled over and
over in the current. Tom heard the men above run along, seemingly
looking for him; but he drifted down into the deep hole below, and there
lay quite still, and they could not find him.
Tom waited a long time, till all was quiet; and then he peeped out, and
saw the man lying. At last he screwed up his courage and swam down to
him. "Perhaps," he thought, "the water has made him fall asleep, as it
did me."
Then he went nearer. He grew more and more curious, he could not tell
why. He must go and look at him. He would go very quietly, of course; so
he swam round and round him, closer and closer; and, as he did not stir,
at last, he came quite close and looked him in the face.
The moon shone so bright that Tom could see every feature; and, as he
saw, he recollected, bit by bit; it was his old master, Grimes.
Tom turned tail, and swam away as fast as he could,
"Oh dear me!" he thought, "now he will turn into a water baby. What a
nasty, troublesome one he will be! And perhaps he will find me out, and
beat me again."
So he went up the river again a little way, and lay there the rest of
the night under an alder root; but when morning came, he longed to go
down again to the big pool, and see whether Mr. Grimes had turned into a
water baby yet.
So he went very carefully, peeping round all the rocks, and hiding under
all the roots. Mr. Grimes lay there still; he had not turned into a
water baby. In the afternoon Tom went back again. He could not rest till
he had found out what had become of Mr. Grimes. But this time Mr. Grimes
was gone; and Tom made up his mind that he was turned into a water baby.
He might have made himself easy, poor little man; Mr. Grimes did not
turn into a water baby, or anything like one at all. But he did not make
himself easy; and a long time he was fearful lest he should meet Grimes
suddenly in some deep pool. He could not know that the fairies had
carried him away, and put him, where they put everything which falls
into the water, exactly where it ought to be.
Then Tom went on down, for he was afraid of staying near Grimes; and as
he went, all the vale looked sad. The red and yellow leaves showered
down into the river; the flies and beetles were all dead and gone; the
chill autumn fog lay low upon the hills, and sometimes spread itself so
thickly on the river that he could not see his way. But he felt his way
instead, following the flow of the stream, day after day, past great
bridges, past boats and barges, past the great town, with its wharfs,
and mills, and tall smoking chimneys, and ships which rode at anchor in
the stream; and now and then he ran against their hawsers, and wondered
what they were, and peeped out, and saw the sailors lolling on board
smoking their pipes; and ducked under again, for he was terribly afraid
of being caught by man and turned into a chimney-sweep once more. He did
not know that the fairies were close to him always, shutting the
sailors' eyes lest they should see him, and turning him aside from
millraces, and sewer mouths, and all foul and dangerous things. Poor
little fellow, it was a dreary journey for him; and more than once he
longed to be back in Vendale, playing with the trout in the bright
summer sun. But it could not be. What has been once can never come over
again. And people can be little babies, even water babies, only once in
their lives.
Besides, people who make up their minds to go and see the world, as Tom
did, must needs find it a weary journey. Lucky for them if they do not
lose heart and stop halfway, instead of going on bravely to the end as
Tom did. For then they will remain neither boys nor men, neither fish,
flesh, nor good red herring; having learnt a great deal too much, and
yet not enough; and sown their wild oats, without having the advantage
of reaping them.
But Tom was always a brave, determined little English bulldog, who never
knew when he was beaten; and on and on he held, till he saw a long way
off the red buoy through the fog. And then he found, to his surprise,
the stream turned round, and running up inland.
It was the tide, of course; but Tom knew nothing of the tide. He only
knew that in a minute more the water, which had been fresh, turned salt
all round him. And then there came a change over him. He felt as strong,
and light, and fresh, as if his veins had run champagne; and gave, he
did not know why, three skips out of the water, a yard high, and head
over heels, just as the salmon do when they first touch the noble, rich
salt water, which, as some wise men tell us, is the mother of all living
things.
He did not care now for the tide being against him. The red buoy was in
sight, dancing in the open sea; and to the buoy he would go, and to it
he went. He passed great shoals of bass and mullet, leaping and rushing
in after the shrimps, but he never heeded them, or they him; and once he
passed a great, black, shining seal, who was coming in after the mullet.
The seal put his head and shoulders out of water, and stared at him,
looking exactly like a fat old greasy negro with a gray pate. And Tom,
instead of being frightened, said, "How d'ye do, sir; what a beautiful
place the sea is!" And the old seal, instead of trying to bite him,
looked at him with his soft, sleepy, wink-eyes, and said, "Good tide to
you, my little man; are you looking for your brothers and sisters? I
passed them all at play outside."
[Illustration]
"Oh, then," said Tom, "I shall have play-fellows at last," and he swam
on to the buoy, and got upon it (for he was quite out of breath) and sat
there, and looked round for water babies; but there were none to be
seen.
The sea breeze came in freshly with the tide and blew the fog away; and
the little waves danced for joy around the buoy, and the old buoy danced
with them. The shadows of the clouds ran races over the bright blue sky,
and yet never caught each other up; and the breakers plunged merrily
upon the wide white sands, and jumped up over the rocks, to see what the
green fields inside were like, and tumbled down and broke themselves all
to pieces, and never minded it a bit, but mended themselves and jumped
up again. And the terns hovered over Tom like huge white dragon flies
with black heads, and the gulls laughed like girls at play, and the sea
pies, with their red bills and legs, flew to and fro from shore to
shore, and whistled sweet and wild. And Tom looked and looked, and
listened; and he would have been very happy, if he could only have seen
the water babies. Then when the tide turned, he left the buoy, and swam
round and round in search of them; but in vain. Sometimes he thought he
heard them laughing, but it was only the laughter of the ripples. And
sometimes he thought he saw them at the bottom, but it was only white
and pink shells. And once he was sure he had found one, for he saw two
bright eyes peeping out of the sand. So he dived down, and began
scraping the sand away, and cried, "Don't hide; I do want some one to
play with so much!" And out jumped a great turbot with his ugly eyes and
mouth all awry, and flopped away along the bottom, knocking poor Tom
over. And he sat down at the bottom of the sea, and cried salt tears
from sheer disappointment.
To have come all this way, and faced so many dangers, and yet to find no
water babies! How hard! Well, it did seem hard; but people, even little
babies, cannot have all they want without waiting for it, and working
for it too.
And Tom sat upon the buoy long days, long weeks, looking out to sea, and
wondering when the water babies would come back; and yet they never
came.
Then he began to ask all the strange things which came in out of the sea
if they had seen any; and some said "Yes," and some said nothing at all.
He asked the bass and the pollock; but they were so greedy after the
shrimps that they did not care to answer him a word.
Then there came in a whole fleet of purple sea snails, floating along,
each on a sponge full of foam; and Tom said, "Where do you come from,
you pretty creatures? and have you seen the water babies?"
And the sea snails answered, "Whence we come we know not; and whither we
are going, who can tell? We float out our life in the mid-ocean, with
the warm sunshine above our heads, and the warm gulf stream below; and
that is enough for us. Yes; perhaps we have seen the water babies. We
have seen many strange things as we sailed along." And they floated
away, the happy, stupid things, and all went ashore upon the sands.
Then there came by a shoal of porpoises, rolling as they went--papas,
and mammas, and little children--and all quite smooth and shiny, because
the fairies French-polish them every morning; and they sighed so softly
as they came by, that Tom took courage to speak to them; but all they
answered was, "Hush, hush, hush;" for that was all they had learnt to
say.
[Illustration: PORPOISES]
And then there came by a beautiful creature, like a ribbon of pure
silver, with a sharp head and very long teeth; but it seemed very sick
and sad. Sometimes it rolled helpless on its side; and then it
dashed away, glittering like white fire; and then it lay sick again, and
motionless.
"Where do you come from?" asked Tom. "And why are YOU so sick and sad?"
"I come from the warm Carolinas, and the sand-banks fringed with pines;
where the great owl-rays leap and flap, like giant bats, upon the tide.
But I wandered north and north, upon the treacherous warm gulf stream,
till I met with the cold icebergs, afloat in the mid-ocean. So I got
tangled among the icebergs, and chilled with the frozen breath. But the
water babies helped me from among them, and set me free again. And now I
am mending every day; but I am very sick and sad; and perhaps I shall
never get home again to play with the owl-rays any more."
"Oh!" cried Tom. "And you have seen water babies! Have you seen any near
here?"
"Yes; they helped me again last night, or I should have been eaten by a
great black porpoise."
How vexatious! The water babies close to him, and yet he could not find
one.
And then he left the buoy, and used to go along the sands and round the
rocks, and come out in the night--like the forsaken Merman [Footnote:
This beautiful poem which Kingsley speaks of here is Matthew Arnold's
The Forsaken Merman, which you will find in Volume VII of these books.]
in Mr. Arnold's beautiful, beautiful poem, which you must learn by heart
some day--and sit upon a point of rock, among the shining sea weeds, in
the low October tides, and cry and call for the water babies; but he
never heard a voice call in return. And at last, with his fretting and
crying, he grew quite lean and thin.
But one day among the rocks he found a playfellow. It was not a water
baby, alas! but it was a lobster; and a very distinguished lobster he
was; for he had live barnacles on his claws, which is a great mark of
distinction in lobsterdom, and no more to be bought for money than a
good conscience or the Victoria Cross. [Footnote: The Victoria Cross is
a decoration awarded British soldiers or sailors for distinguished
bravery. The crosses are made from cannon captured in the Crimean War,
and bear, under the crowned lion which is the British royal crest, the
words "For Valour". No other military decoration is so prized.]
Tom had never seen a lobster before; and he was mightily taken with this
one; for he thought him the most curious, odd, ridiculous creature he
had ever seen; and there he was not far wrong; for all the ingenious
men, and all the scientific men, and all the fanciful men in the world,
with all the old German bogy-painters into the bargain, could never
invent, if all their wits were boiled into one, anything so curious, and
so ridiculous, as a lobster.
[Illustration: A LOBSTER]
He had one claw knobbed and the other jagged; and Tom delighted in
watching him hold on to the seaweed with his knobbed claw, while he cut
up salads with his jagged one, and then put them into his mouth, after
smelling at them, like a monkey. And always the little barnacles threw
out their casting-nets and swept the water, and came in for their share
of whatever there was for dinner.
But Tom was most astonished to see how he fired himself off--snap! like
the leapfrogs which you make out of a goose's breastbone. Certainly he
took the most wonderful shots, and backwards, too. For, if he wanted to
go into a narrow crack ten yards off, what do you think he did? If he
had gone in head foremost, of course he could not have turned round. So
he used to turn his tail to it, and lay his long horns, which carry his
sixth sense in their tips (and nobody knows what that sixth sense is),
straight down his back to guide him, and twist his eyes back till they
almost came out of their sockets, and then made ready, present, fire,
snap!--and away he went, pop into the hole; and peeped out and twiddled
his whiskers, as much as to say, "You couldn't do that."
Tom asked him about water babies. "Yes," he said. He had seen them
often. But he did not think much of them. They were meddlesome little
creatures, and went about helping fish and shells which got into
scrapes. Well, for his part, he should be ashamed to be helped by little
soft creatures that had not even a shell on their backs. He had lived
quite long enough in the world to take care of himself.
He was a conceited fellow, the old lobster, and not very civil to Tom;
and you will hear how he had to alter his mind before he was done, as
conceited people generally have. But he was so funny, and Tom so lonely,
that he could not quarrel with him; and they used to sit in holes in the
rocks, and chat for hours.
And about this time there happened to Tom a very strange and important
adventure--so important, indeed, that he was very near never finding the
water babies at all; and I am sure you would have been sorry for that.
I hope that you have not forgotten the little white lady all this while.
At least, here she comes, looking like a clean, white, good little
darling, as she always was and always will be. For it befell in the
pleasant short December days, when the wind always blows from the
southwest, till Old Father Christmas comes and spreads the great white
tablecloth, ready for little boys and girls to give the birds their
Christmas dinner of crumbs--it befell (to go on) in the pleasant
December days, that Sir John was so busy hunting that nobody at home
could get a word out of him. Four days a week he hunted, and very good
sport he had; and the other two he went to the bench and the board of
guardians, and very good justice he did; and when he got home in time,
he dined at five.
It befell (to go on a second time), that Sir John, hunting all day and
dining at five, fell asleep every evening, and snored so terribly that
all the windows in Harthover shook, and the soot fell down the chimneys.
Whereon my Lady, being no more able to get conversation out of him than
a song out of a dead nightingale, determined to go off and leave him and
the doctor and Captain Swinger, the agent, to snore in concert every
evening to their hearts' content. So she started for the seaside with
all the children, in order to put herself and them into condition by
mild applications of iodine.
Now, it befell that, on the very shore and over the very rocks where Tom
was sitting with his friend the lobster, there walked one day the little
white lady, Ellie herself, and with her a very wise man indeed--
Professor Ptthmllnsprts.
He was a very worthy, kind, good-natured little old gentleman; and very
fond of children, and very good to all the world as long as it was good
to him. Only one fault he had, which cock-robins have likewise, as you
may see if you look out of the nursery window--that when any one else
found a curious worm, he would hop round them, and peck them, and
bristle up his feathers, just as a cock-robin would; and declare that he
found the worm first; and that it was his worm; and, if not, that then
it was not a worm at all.
So Ellie and he were walking on the rocks, and he was showing her about
one in ten thousand of all the beautiful and curious things which are to
be seen there. But little Ellie was not satisfied with them at all. She
liked much better to play with live children, or even with dolls, which
she could pretend were alive; and at last she said honestly, "I don't
care about all these things, because they can't play with me, or talk
with me. If there were little children now in the water, as there used
to be, and I could see them, I should like that."
"Children in the water, you strange little duck?" said the professor.
"Yes," said Ellie. "I know there used to be children in the water, and
mermaids too, and mermen. I saw them all in a picture at home, of a
beautiful lady sailing in a car drawn by dolphins, and babies flying
round her, and one sitting in her lap; and the mermaids swimming and
playing, and the mermen trumpeting on conch-shells; and it is called
'The Triumph of Galatea;' [Footnote: This picture which little Ellie
loved so was a copy of a famous painting by the great Raphael.] and
there is a burning mountain in the picture behind. It hangs on the great
staircase, and I have looked at it ever since I was a baby, and dreamt
about it a hundred times; and it is so beautiful that it must be true."
The professor, however, was not the least of little Ellie's opinion.
"But why are there not water babies?" asked Ellie.
I trust and hope that it was because the professor trod at that moment
on the edge of a very sharp mussel, and hurt one of his corns sadly,
that he answered quite sharply, forgetting that he was a scientific man,
"Because there ain't."
Which was not even good English, my dear little boy; for, as you must
know, the professor ought to have said, if he was so angry as to say
anything of the kind--Because there are not: or are none: or are none of
them. And he groped with his net under the weeds so violently, that he
caught poor little Tom. He felt the net very heavy; lifted it out
quickly, with Tom all entangled in the meshes.
"Dear me!" he cried. "What a large pink Holothurian; [Footnote: The
Holothurians are curious creatures, such as the sea cucumbers or the sea
slugs. One genus or class of them is known as the Synapta. These
creatures are quite rudimentary, and have, as the professor's next
remark will tell you, no eyes. A Cephalopod is higher in the scale, and
has well-developed eyes.] with hands, too! It must be connected with
Synapta." And he took him out.
"It has actually eyes;" he cried. "Why, it must be a Cephalopod! This is
most extraordinary!"
"No, I ain't," cried Tom, as loud as he could; for he did not like to be
called bad names.
"It is a water baby!" cried Ellie; and of course it was.
"Water-fiddlesticks, my dear!" said the professor; and he turned away
sharply.
Now, if the professor had said to Ellie, "Yes, my darling, it is a water
baby, and a very wonderful thing it is; and it shows how little I know
of the wonders of nature in spite of forty years of honest labour;"--I
think that, if the professor had said that, little Ellie would have
believed him more firmly, and respected him more deeply, and loved him
better, than ever she had done before. But he was of a different
opinion. He hesitated a moment. He longed to keep Tom, and yet he half
wished he never had caught him; and at last he quite longed to get rid
of him. So he turned away and poked Tom with his finger, for want of
anything better to do; and said carelessly, "My dear little maid, you
must have dreamt of water babies last night, your head is so full of
them."
[Illustration: ELLIE AND THE PROFESSOR]
Now Tom had been in the most horrible and unspeakable fright all the
while; for it was fixed in his little head that if a man with clothes on
caught him, he might put clothes on him too, and make a dirty black
chimney-sweep of him again. But when the professor poked him, it was
more than he could bear; and, between fright and rage, he turned to bay
valiantly, and bit the professor's finger till it bled.
"Oh! ah! yah!" cried he; and glad of an excuse to be rid of Tom, dropped
him on to the seaweed, and thence he dived into the water and was gone
in a moment. "But it was a water baby, and I heard it speak!" cried
Ellie. "Ah, it is gone!" And she jumped off the rock to try and catch
Tom.
Too late! and what was worse, as she sprang down, she slipped, and fell
some six feet with her head on a sharp rock, and lay quite still. The
professor picked her up, and tried to waken her, and called to her, and
cried over her, for he loved her very much; but she would not waken at
all. So he took her up in his arms and carried her to her governess, and
they all went home; and little Ellie was put to bed, and lay there quite
still; only now and then she woke up and called out about the water
baby; but no one knew what she meant, and the professor did not tell,
for he was ashamed to tell.
And after a week, one moonlight night, the fairies came flying in at the
window and brought her such a pretty pair of wings that she could not
help putting them on; and she flew with them out of the window, and over
the land, and over the sea, and up through the clouds, and nobody heard
or saw anything of her for a very long while.