WHY THE SEA IS SALTY
Once upon a time, and long, long ago, there was a pair of brothers, and one of them was rich while the other one was poor. One Christmas Eve, the poor one found himself with nothing at all in the house to eat. So he went to his brother, and he begged him to give him something for Christmas Day. The wealthy brother frowned and pursed his lips, because, as he had so often said, he didn’t get rich by giving things away, and this was hardly the first time that his brother was counting on his charity.
“If you do what I tell you to do, I will give you an entire roast of ham,” he said. His brother gave his word at once.
“Good,” he said. “Let me give you the ham.” He tossed the piece of meat to his brother. “Now, here’s what I want you to do. Take that ham, and then go straight to Dead Man’s Hall.”
“A promise is a promise,” said the other, and took the ham and set off on his way. He traveled all day long and then at night he came to a place that was brightly lit.
“This must be the place,” he thought to himself.
An old, old man with a long white beard was standing on the veranda chopping wood.
“Good evening,” said the penniless brother.
“Good evening to you as well,” said the man. “And where are you going at such a late hour?”
“I’m going to Dead Man’s Hall,” he said. “At least, that’s where I’m going if I’m on the right road.”
“This is the road, all right,” the man replied. “This building behind me is Dead Man’s Hall.”
“Oh,” said the brother. “Here I am, then.” He looked at the door and hesitated.
“Were you just going to the hall, or did you plan to go in as well? If you go in, everyone there will want to buy that ham. There’s never much meat in the hall, you know. But don’t you sell it unless they give you the pepper mill that sits on the table behind the door. When you come out again, I’ll teach you how to use the mill, which grinds up pepper very nicely, and also anything else you might happen to want.”
The brother thanked the man and went inside, and everything was just as he had said. The inmates flocked around like frenzied dogs, each one screaming out his bid for the ham.
“It’s my Christmas dinner!” said the brother. “My wife would be very disappointed if I sold the ham to anyone here! But if I were to sell it, in return I’d want that pepper mill behind the door.”
At first they said no, not now, not ever, it was utterly impossible, not for love or money, not in a month of Sundays, not in a thousand thousand years. But the brother was firm and wouldn’t budge, and they saw that they had no choice: in order to get their hands on the ham, they would have to give up their precious pepper mill.
When he went outside again, the old man instructed him on how to work the mill. “Turn it once and then watch it go,” he said. He gave the top a quarter-turn and right away it started grinding pepper while the men stood back and watched. “Now, let me show you how to turn it off,” the old man said. When the brother had learned how to turn the mill off, he thanked the man profusely and made his way home as quickly as he could. But even so, he didn’t reach his house until well past midnight on Christmas Eve.
“Where in the world have you been?” said his wife. “I’ve been waiting for you the whole night long, and there’s not even wood for a fire!”
“Well,” he said, “I came as soon as I could. I had a very important errand to run and I had to travel quite far. But look! Look what I brought home with me!” He put the mill on the table, and turned the top a quarter-turn and straightaway it started grinding pepper. Then he said, “Grind me meat, and grind me the best there is!” It ground not only a ham but also a big roast beef and a turkey as well.
That was plenty of meat, and so he said, “Grind me bread, and grind me the best there is!” The pepper mill immediately obliged, and so it wasn’t long before there was a roaring fire, a checkered tablecloth, and sweet potatoes and asparagus, and everything a person could ask for to make a happy feast on Christmas Eve.
When he finally made it stop, his wife was beside herself to know where he’d found the mill, but he didn’t want to tell her. Instead, he said, “Never mind about that. The main thing is it’s a wonderful mill.” And so it was, because whatever he asked for, the mill would grind in abundance. He ground enough to last for twelve whole days, and on the third day he invited all his friends to a banquet fit for a king.
His brother came to the banquet as well, and when he saw how lavish it was, he was very jealous and angry because he liked being the richer of the two and was happy that his brother was poor.
“On Christmas Eve, he came begging for food, and now he has money to waste,” he thought to himself. But to his brother, he said, “And where did you get the money for this?”
“I found it behind the door,” his brother replied, not wanting to share his secret. But later on, he took the pepper mill and put it on the table, saying, “There! There is the reason I’ve become so rich!”
To show what a marvel it was, he turned the top a quarter-turn and then he said, “Grind me cake, and grind me the best there is!” and cake after cake after cake appeared, until the whole table was full. Then he picked up the mill from the table and turned it off, but no one saw how he did it.
When his brother saw what the mill could do, he resolved to make it his own. He asked if his brother was not ashamed to be so rich and not share with his family. He then insisted on having the mill and after much persuasion, he got it. But he had to pay three hundred dollars for it, and he couldn’t have it until the harvest was over. “If I keep it till then,” thought the one who had walked to Dead Man’s Hall and back, “I can make it grind enough meat and drink for years and years to come.”
During the harvest, the pepper mill was rarely idle, and when harvest was done, the brother who once was poor gave up the mill to the one who had always been rich. But he gave him only the mill, and no instructions of any kind about how to turn it off.
It was evening by the time the man got home with the mill. The next morning, he sent his wife to work in the fields, saying that he would stay at home that day and prepare both lunch and dinner. When it was almost time for lunch, he got the mill and gave the top a quarter-turn, and said, “Grind me soup and grind me fish, and grind me the best there are!”
At once, the mill began to churn out trout and turbot fillets, and halibut steaks, as well as a creamy potato soup that smelled of nutmeg. At first he put the fish on serving-plates, and the soup in a large tureen. But both were full in a minute. So he took out all the cookie sheets there were and some roasting pans as well to pile the fish on. Meanwhile, all the pots and pans were filling rapidly with soup. He had no choice but to stack the fish on the counter and pour the soup in the sink. But soon, things were out of control. The soup splashed onto the floor and so did the fish. The man took hold of the mill and twisted frantically this way and that, but nothing made even the slightest bit of difference. He simply couldn’t get the mill to stop.
By now, the kitchen was so full of soup that the man was in danger of drowning. He swam across the kitchen to the door and threw it open, but the living room had soon filled up as well. So he struggled towards the entrance of the house, where at last he managed to open the front door. Then he ran outside and raced down the road with the soup and the fish hot on his heels. It covered everything; it was roaring like a tidal wave over the whole farm.
Meanwhile, his wife was toiling in the fields, and had been waiting for the call to lunch.
“My husband hasn’t rung the bell, but it’s lunchtime just the same. Let’s go see what he’s up to. Perhaps he’s not as good a cook as he thought, and could use a little help.”
So they started home. But suddenly, her husband appeared at the top of the hill and raced towards them, barely outrunning the flood of soup and fish. “I wish you each had a hundred stomachs,” he cried. “But run for your
lives, or else you will all be drowned!”
Then he ran as fast as he could to his brother’s house, where he begged him on his knees to take the wicked pepper mill away.
“If it grinds out soup for another hour,” he said, “the whole country will be covered!”
At first, the brother refused. Then, he said he would take it back if his brother would give him another three hundred dollars, which his brother, of course, was forced to do.
Now, the brother who once was poor had both the money and the mill, and before long his house was such a palace of riches that his brother lived the rest of his life in a state of perpetual envy.
Indeed, he ground out so much money that he covered the whole house with plates of gold, and as the house was on a hill and by the shore, it could be seen far out to sea. All the boats would put ashore to visit the man and his amazing mill. Its fame had spread far and wide, and there was no one who hadn’t heard the story of the mill.
Many years came and went, and then one day, the skipper of a ship came by to see the mill. “Can it make salt?” the skipper asked.
“Can it make salt?” the man replied. “Of course it can make salt! It can make anything!”
When the skipper heard that, he said he had to have the mill no matter what the cost. For he had to make long and dangerous trips across the sea to load his ship with salt, and if he had the mill, he would never have to set sail again. At first the man refused, but the skipper begged and pleaded until at last the man sold him the mill, but it cost him every nickel he had.
The skipper hurried away with the mill as soon as he had paid for it, because he was afraid the man would change his mind. So although he won what he had come for, and knew, of course, how to turn the mill on, he left without another vital piece of information: he left before he discovered how to turn the machine off.
The skipper got on board his ship and sailed away as fast as he could. When he could no longer see the shore, he placed the mill on deck. Then the captain smiled, and said, “Grind me salt, and grind me the best there is!”
And then the mill began to grind, and it spouted salt like water. Before long, the ship was full and so the skipper tried to stop the mill. But nothing that he did had any effect at all. The mill kept right on grinding salt until the ship was so heavy it sank like a stone to the bottom of the sea. The ship was destroyed–but not the mill. It kept on grinding salt, and it’s still grinding salt, and will grind salt forever at the bottom of the sea, because no one will ever turn it off. And now, you know why the sea is salty.