Read The Water-Babies: A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby Page 7

  CHAPTER VII

  "NOW," said Tom, "I am ready to be off, if it's to the world's end."

  "Ah!" said the fairy, "that is a brave, good boy. But you must gofarther than the world's end, if you want to find Mr. Grimes; for he isat the Other-end-of-Nowhere. You must go to Shiny Wall, and through thewhite gate that never was opened; and then you will come to Peacepool,and Mother Carey's Haven, where the good whales go when they die. Andthere Mother Carey will tell you the way to the Other-end-of-Nowhere,and there you will find Mr. Grimes."

  "Oh, dear!" said Tom. "But I do not know my way to Shiny Wall, or whereit is at all."

  "Little boys must take the trouble to find out things for themselves, orthey will never grow to be men; so that you must ask all the beasts inthe sea and the birds in the air, and if you have been good to them,some of them will tell you the way to Shiny Wall."

  "Well," said Tom, "it will be a long journey, so I had better start atonce. Good-bye, Miss Ellie; you know I am getting a big boy, and I mustgo out and see the world."

  "I know you must," said Ellie; "but you will not forget me, Tom. I shallwait here till you come."

  And she shook hands with him, and bade him good-bye. Tom longed verymuch again to kiss her; but he thought it would not be respectful,considering she was a lady born; so he promised not to forget her: buthis little whirl-about of a head was so full of the notion of going outto see the world, that it forgot her in five minutes: however, thoughhis head forgot her, I am glad to say his heart did not.

  So he asked all the beasts in the sea, and all the birds in the air, butnone of them knew the way to Shiny Wall. For why? He was still too fardown south.

  Then he met a ship, far larger than he had ever seen--a gallantocean-steamer, with a long cloud of smoke trailing behind; and hewondered how she went on without sails, and swam up to her to see. Aschool of dolphins were running races round and round her, going threefeet for her one, and Tom asked them the way to Shiny Wall: but they didnot know. Then he tried to find out how she moved, and at last he sawher screw, and was so delighted with it that he played under her quarterall day, till he nearly had his nose knocked off by the fans, andthought it time to move. Then he watched the sailors upon deck, and theladies, with their bonnets and parasols: but none of them could see him,because their eyes were not opened,--as, indeed, most people's eyes arenot.

  At last there came out into the quarter-gallery a very pretty lady, indeep black widow's weeds, and in her arms a baby. She leaned over thequarter-gallery, and looked back and back toward England far away; andas she looked she sang:

  I.

  "_Soft soft wind, from out the sweet south sliding, Waft thy silver cloud-webs athwart the summer sea; Thin thin threads of mist on dewy fingers twining Weave a veil of dappled gauze to shade my babe and me._

  II.

  "_Deep deep Love, within thine own abyss abiding, Pour Thyself abroad, O Lord, on earth and air and sea; Worn weary hearts within Thy holy temple hiding, Shield from sorrow, sin, and shame my helpless babe and me._"

  Her voice was so soft and low, and the music of the air so sweet, thatTom could have listened to it all day. But as she held the baby over thegallery rail, to show it the dolphins leaping and the water gurgling inthe ship's wake, lo! and behold, the baby saw Tom.

  He was quite sure of that; for when their eyes met, the baby smiled andheld out his hands; and Tom smiled and held out his hands too; and thebaby kicked and leaped, as if it wanted to jump overboard to him.

  "What do you see, my darling?" said the lady; and her eyes followed thebaby's till she too caught sight of Tom, swimming about among thefoam-beads below.

  She gave a little shriek and start; and then she said, quite quietly,"Babies in the sea? Well, perhaps it is the happiest place for them";and waved her hand to Tom, and cried, "Wait a little, darling, only alittle: and perhaps we shall go with you and be at rest."

  And at that an old nurse, all in black, came out and talked to her, anddrew her in. And Tom turned away northward, sad and wondering; andwatched the great steamer slide away into the dusk, and the lights onboard peep out one by one, and die out again, and the long bar of smokefade away into the evening mist, till all was out of sight.

  And he swam northward again, day after day, till at last he met the Kingof the Herrings, with a curry-comb growing out of his nose, and a spratin his mouth for a cigar, and asked him the way to Shiny Wall; so hebolted his sprat head foremost, and said:

  "If I were you, young gentleman, I should go to the Allalonestone, andask the last of the Gairfowl. She is of a very ancient clan, very nearlyas ancient as my own; and knows a good deal which these modern upstartsdon't, as ladies of old houses are likely to do."

  "There he saw the last of the Gairfowl, standing up onthe Allalonestone, all alone."--_P. 201._]

  Tom asked his way to her, and the King of the Herrings told him verykindly, for he was a courteous old gentleman of the old school,though he was horribly ugly, and strangely bedizened too, like the olddandies who lounge in the club-house windows.

  But just as Tom had thanked him and set off, he called after him: "Hi! Isay, can you fly?"

  "I never tried," says Tom. "Why?"

  "Because, if you can, I should advise you to say nothing to the old ladyabout it. There; take a hint. Good-bye."

  And away Tom went for seven days and seven nights due north-west, tillhe came to a great codbank, the like of which he never saw before. Thegreat cod lay below in tens of thousands, and gobbled shell-fish all daylong; and the blue sharks roved about in hundreds, and gobbled them whenthey came up. So they ate, and ate, and ate each other, as they had donesince the making of the world; for no man had come here yet to catchthem, and find out how rich old Mother Carey is.

  And there he saw the last of the Gairfowl, standing up on theAllalonestone, all alone. And a very grand old lady she was, full threefeet high, and bolt upright, like some old Highland chieftainess. Shehad on a black velvet gown, and a white pinner and apron, and a veryhigh bridge to her nose (which is a sure mark of high breeding), and alarge pair of white spectacles on it, which made her look rather odd:but it was the ancient fashion of her house.

  And instead of wings, she had two little feathery arms, with which shefanned herself, and complained of the dreadful heat; and she kept oncrooning an old song to herself, which she learnt when she was a littlebaby-bird, long ago--

  "_Two little birds they sat on a stone, One swam away, and then there was one, With a fal-lal-la-lady._

  "_The other swam after, and then there was none, And so the poor stone was left all alone; With a fal-lal-la-lady._"

  It was "flew" away, properly, and not "swam" away: but, as she could notfly, she had a right to alter it. However, it was a very fit song forher to sing, because she was a lady herself.

  Tom came up to her very humbly, and made his bow; and the first thingshe said was--

  "Have you wings? Can you fly?"

  "Oh dear, no, ma'am; I should not think of such thing," said cunninglittle Tom.

  "Then I shall have great pleasure in talking to you, my dear. It isquite refreshing nowadays to see anything without wings. They must allhave wings, forsooth, now, every new upstart sort of bird, and fly. Whatcan they want with flying, and raising themselves above their properstation in life? In the days of my ancestors no birds ever thought ofhaving wings, and did very well without; and now they all laugh at mebecause I keep to the good old fashion. Why, the very marrocks anddovekies have got wings, the vulgar creatures, and poor little onesenough they are; and my own cousins too, the razor-bills, who aregentlefolk born, and ought to know better than to ape their inferiors."

  And so she was running on, while Tom tried to get in a word edgeways;and at last he did, when the old lady got out of breath, and beganfanning herself again; and then he asked if she knew the way to ShinyWall.

/>   "Shiny Wall? Who should know better than I? We all came from Shiny Wall,thousands of years ago, when it was decently cold, and the climate wasfit for gentlefolk; but now, what with the heat, and what with thesevulgar-winged things who fly up and down and eat everything, so thatgentlepeople's hunting is all spoilt, and one really cannot get one'sliving, or hardly venture off the rock for fear of being flown againstby some creature that would not have dared to come within a mile of onea thousand years ago--what was I saying? Why, we have quite gone down inthe world, my dear, and have nothing left but our honour. And I am thelast of my family. A friend of mine and I came and settled on this rockwhen we were young, to be out of the way of low people. Once we were agreat nation, and spread over all the Northern Isles. But men shot usso, and knocked us on the head, and took our eggs--why, if you willbelieve it, they say that on the coast of Labrador the sailors used tolay a plank from the rock on board the thing called their ship, anddrive us along the plank by hundreds, till we tumbled down into theship's waist in heaps; and then, I suppose, they ate us, the nastyfellows! Well--but--what was I saying? At last, there were none of usleft, except on the old Gairfowlskerry, just off the Iceland coast, upwhich no man could climb. Even there we had no peace; for one day, whenI was quite a young girl, the land rocked, and the sea boiled, and thesky grew dark, and all the air was filled with smoke and dust, and downtumbled the old Gairfowlskerry into the sea. The dovekies and marrocks,of course, all flew away; but we were too proud to do that. Some of uswere dashed to pieces, and some drowned; and those who were left gotaway to Eldey, and the dovekies tell me they are all dead now, and thatanother Gairfowlskerry has risen out of the sea close to the old one,but that it is such a poor flat place that it is not safe to live on:and so here I am left alone."

  This was the Gairfowl's story, and, strange as it may seem, it is everyword of it true.

  "If you only had had wings!" said Tom; "then you might all have flownaway too."

  "Yes, young gentleman: and if people are not gentlemen and ladies, andforget that _noblesse oblige_, they will find it as easy to get on inthe world as other people who don't care what they do. Why, if I had notrecollected that _noblesse oblige_, I should not have been all alonenow." And the poor old lady sighed.

  "How was that, ma'am?"

  "Why, my dear, a gentleman came hither with me, and after we had beenhere some time, he wanted to marry--in fact, he actually proposed to me.Well, I can't blame him; I was young, and very handsome then, I don'tdeny: but you see, I could not hear of such a thing, because he was mydeceased sister's husband, you see?"

  "Of course not, ma'am," said Tom; though, of course, he knew nothingabout it. "She was very much diseased, I suppose?"

  "You do not understand me, my dear. I mean, that being a lady, and withright and honourable feelings, as our house always has had, I felt it myduty to snub him, and howk him, and peck him continually, to keep him athis proper distance; and, to tell the truth, I once pecked him a littletoo hard, poor fellow, and he tumbled backwards off the rock,and--really, it was very unfortunate, but it was not my fault--a sharkcoming by saw him flapping, and snapped him up. And since then I havelived all alone--

  _'With a fal-lal-la-lady.'_

  And soon I shall be gone, my little dear, and nobody will miss me; andthen the poor stone will be left all alone."

  "But, please, which is the way to Shiny Wall?" said Tom.

  "Oh, you must go, my little dear--you must go. Let me see--I amsure--that is--really, my poor old brains are getting quite puzzled. Doyou know, my little dear, I am afraid, if you want to know, you mustask some of these vulgar birds about, for I have quite forgotten."

  And the poor old Gairfowl began to cry tears of pure oil; and Tom wasquite sorry for her; and for himself too, for he was at his wit's endwhom to ask.

  But by there came a flock of petrels, who are Mother Carey's ownchickens; and Tom thought them much prettier than Lady Gairfowl, and soperhaps they were; for Mother Carey had had a great deal of freshexperience between the time that she invented the Gairfowl and the timethat she invented them. They flitted along like a flock of blackswallows, and hopped and skipped from wave to wave, lifting up theirlittle feet behind them so daintily, and whistling to each other sotenderly, that Tom fell in love with them at once, and called them toknow the way to Shiny Wall.

  "Shiny Wall? Do you want Shiny Wall? Then come with us, and we will showyou. We are Mother Carey's own chickens, and she sends us out over allthe seas, to show the good birds the way home."

  Tom was delighted, and swam off to them, after he had made his bow tothe Gairfowl. But she would not return his bow: but held herself boltupright, and wept tears of oil as she sang:

  "_And so the poor stone was left all alone; With a fal-lal-la-lady._"

  But she was wrong there; for the stone was not left all alone: and thenext time that Tom goes by it, he will see a sight worth seeing.

  The old Gairfowl is gone already: but there are better things come inher place; and when Tom comes he will see the fishing-smacks anchoredthere in hundreds, from Scotland, and from Ireland, and from theOrkneys, and the Shetlands, and from all the Northern ports, full of thechildren of the old Norse Vikings, the masters of the sea. And the menwill be hauling in the great cod by thousands, till their hands are sorefrom the lines; and they will be making cod-liver oil and guano, andsalting down the fish; and there will be a man-of-war steamer there toprotect them, and a lighthouse to show them the way; and you and I,perhaps, shall go some day to the Allalonestone to the great summersea-fair, and dredge strange creatures such as man never saw before; andwe shall hear the sailors boast that it is not the worst jewel in QueenVictoria's crown, for there are eighty miles of codbank, and food forall the poor folk in the land. That is what Tom will see, and perhapsyou and I shall see it too. And then we shall not be sorry because wecannot get a Gairfowl to stuff, much less find gairfowl enough to drivethem into stone pens and slaughter them, as the old Norsemen did, ordrive them on board along a plank till the ship was victualled withthem, as the old English and French rovers used to do, of whom dear oldHakluyt tells: but we shall remember what Mr. Tennyson says: how

  "_The old order changeth, giving place to the new, And God fulfils himself in many ways._"

  And now Tom was all agog to start for Shiny Wall; but the petrels saidno. They must go first to Allfowlsness, and wait there for the greatgathering of all the sea-birds, before they start for their summerbreeding-places far away in the Northern Isles; and there they would besure to find some birds which were going to Shiny Wall: but whereAllfowlsness was, he must promise never to tell, lest men should gothere and shoot the birds, and stuff them, and put them into stupidmuseums, instead of leaving them to play and breed and work in MotherCarey's water-garden, where they ought to be.

  So where Allfowlsness is nobody must know; and all that is to be saidabout it is, that Tom waited there many days; and as he waited, he saw avery curious sight. On the rabbit burrows on the shore there gatheredhundreds and hundreds of hoodie-crows, such as you see inCambridgeshire. And they made such a noise, that Tom came on shore andwent up to see what was the matter.

  And there he found them holding their great caucus, which they holdevery year in the North; and all their stump-orators were speechifying;and for a tribune, the speaker stood on an old sheep's skull.

  And they cawed and cawed, and boasted of all the clever things they haddone; how many lambs' eyes they had picked out, and how many deadbullocks they had eaten, and how many young grouse they had swallowedwhole, and how many grouse-eggs they had flown away with, stuck on thepoint of their bills, which is the hoodie-crow's particularly cleverfeat, of which he is as proud as a gipsy is of doing the hokanybaro; andwhat that is, I won't tell you.

  And at last they brought out the prettiest, neatest young lady-crow thatever was seen, and set her in the middle, and all began abusing andvilifying, and rating, and bullyragging at her, because she had stolenno
grouse-eggs, and had actually dared to say that she would not stealany. So she was to be tried publicly by their laws (for the hoodiesalways try some offenders in their great yearly parliament). And thereshe stood in the middle, in her black gown and grey hood, looking asmeek and as neat as a Quakeress, and they all bawled at her at once--

  And it was in vain that she pleaded--

  _That she did not like grouse-eggs;_

  _That she could get her living very well without them;_

  _That she was afraid to eat them, for fear of the gamekeepers;_

  _That she had not the heart to eat them, because the grouse were such pretty, kind, jolly birds;_

  _And a dozen reasons more._

  For all the other scaul-crows set upon her, and pecked her to deaththere and then, before Tom could come to help her; and then flew away,very proud of what they had done.

  "The most beautiful bird of paradise."--_P. 210._]

  Now, was not this a scandalous transaction?

  But they are true republicans, these hoodies, who do every one just whathe likes, and make other people do so too; so that, for any freedom ofspeech, thought, or action, which is allowed among them, they might aswell be American citizens of the new school.

  But the fairies took the good crow, and gave her nine new sets offeathers running, and turned her at last into the most beautiful bird ofparadise with a green velvet suit and a long tail, and sent her to eatfruit in the Spice Islands, where cloves and nutmegs grow.

  And Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid settled her account with the wicked hoodies.For, as they flew away, what should they find but a nasty dead dog?--onwhich they all set to work, pecking and gobbling and cawing andquarrelling to their hearts' content. But the moment afterwards, theyall threw up their bills into the air, and gave one screech; and thenturned head over heels backward, and fell down dead, one hundred andtwenty-three of them at once. For why? The fairy had told the gamekeeperin a dream, to fill the dead dog full of strychnine; and so he did.

  And after a while the birds began to gather at Allfowlsness, inthousands and tens of thousands, blackening all the air; swans and brantgeese, harlequins and eiders, harolds and garganeys, smews andgoosanders, divers and loons, grebes and dovekies, auks andrazor-bills, gannets and petrels, skuas and terns, with gulls beyond allnaming or numbering; and they paddled and washed and splashed and combedand brushed themselves on the sand, till the shore was white withfeathers; and they quacked and clucked and gabbled and chattered andscreamed and whooped as they talked over matters with their friends, andsettled where they were to go and breed that summer, till you might haveheard them ten miles off; and lucky it was for them that there was noone to hear them but the old keeper, who lived all alone upon the Ness,in a turf hut thatched with heather and fringed round with great stonesslung across the roof by bent-ropes, lest the winter gales should blowthe hut right away. But he never minded the birds nor hurt them, becausethey were not in season; indeed, he minded but two things in the wholeworld, and those were, his Bible and his grouse; for he was as good anold Scotchman as ever knit stockings on a winter's night: only, when allthe birds were going, he toddled out, and took off his cap to them, andwished them a merry journey and a safe return; and then gathered up allthe feathers which they had left, and cleaned them to sell down south,and make feather-beds for stuffy people to lie on.

  Then the petrels asked this bird and that whether they would take Tom toShiny Wall: but one set was going to Sutherland, and one to theShetlands, and one to Norway, and one to Spitzbergen, and one toIceland, and one to Greenland: but none would go to Shiny Wall. So thegood-natured petrels said that they would show him part of the waythemselves, but they were only going as far as Jan Mayen's Land; andafter that he must shift for himself.

  And then all the birds rose up, and streamed away in long black lines,north, and north-east, and north-west, across the bright blue summersky; and their cry was like ten thousand packs of hounds, and tenthousand peals of bells. Only the puffins stayed behind, and killed theyoung rabbits, and laid their eggs in the rabbit-burrows; which wasrough practice, certainly; but a man must see to his own family.

  And, as Tom and the petrels went north-eastward, it began to blow righthard; for the old gentleman in the grey great-coat, who looks after thebig copper boiler, in the gulf of Mexico, had got behindhand with hiswork; so Mother Carey had sent an electric message to him for moresteam; and now the steam was coming, as much in an hour as ought to havecome in a week, puffing and roaring and swishing and swirling, till youcould not see where the sky ended and the sea began. But Tom and thepetrels never cared, for the gale was right abaft, and away they wentover the crests of the billows, as merry as so many flying-fish.

  And at last they saw an ugly sight--the black side of a great ship,water-logged in the trough of the sea. Her funnel and her masts wereoverboard, and swayed and surged under her lee; her decks were swept asclean as a barn floor, and there was no living soul on board.

  The petrels flew up to her, and wailed round her; for they were verysorry indeed, and also they expected to find some salt pork; and Tomscrambled on board of her and looked round, frightened and sad.

  And there, in a little cot, lashed tight under the bulwark, lay a babyfast asleep; the very same baby, Tom saw at once, which he had seen inthe singing lady's arms.

  He went up to it, and wanted to wake it; but behold, from under the cotout jumped a little black and tan terrier dog, and began barking andsnapping at Tom, and would not let him touch the cot.

  Tom knew the dog's teeth could not hurt him: but at least it could shovehim away, and did; and he and the dog fought and struggled, for hewanted to help the baby, and did not want to throw the poor dogoverboard: but as they were struggling, there came a tall green sea, andwalked in over the weather side of the ship, and swept them all into thewaves.

  "Oh, the baby, the baby!" screamed Tom: but the next moment he did notscream at all; for he saw the cot settling down through the green water,with the baby, smiling in it, fast asleep; and he saw the fairies comeup from below, and carry baby and cradle gently down in their soft arms;and then he knew it was all right, and that there would be a newwater-baby in St. Brandan's Isle.

  And the poor little dog?

  Why, after he had kicked and coughed a little, he sneezed so hard, thathe sneezed himself clean out of his skin, and turned into a water-dog,and jumped and danced round Tom, and ran over the crests of the waves,and snapped at the jelly-fish and the mackerel, and followed Tom thewhole way to the Other-end-of-Nowhere.

  Then they went on again, till they began to see the peak of Jan Mayen'sLand, standing up like a white sugar-loaf, two miles above the clouds.

  And there they fell in with a whole flock of mollymocks, who werefeeding on a dead whale.

  "These are the fellows to show you the way," said Mother Carey'schickens; "we cannot help you farther north. We don't like to get amongthe ice pack, for fear it should nip our toes: but the mollys dare flyanywhere."

  So the petrels called to the mollys: but they were so busy and greedy,gobbling and pecking and spluttering and fighting over the blubber, thatthey did not take the least notice.

  "Come, come," said the petrels, "you lazy greedy lubbers, this younggentleman is going to Mother Carey, and if you don't attend on him, youwon't earn your discharge from her, you know."

  "Greedy we are," says a great fat old molly, "but lazy we ain't; and, asfor lubbers, we're no more lubbers than you. Let's have a look at thelad."

  And he flapped right into Tom's face, and stared at him in the mostimpudent way (for the mollys are audacious fellows, as all whalersknow), and then asked him where he hailed from, and what land he sightedlast.

  And, when Tom told him, he seemed pleased, and said he was a goodplucked one to have got so far.

  "Come along, lads," he said to the rest, "and give this little chap acast over the pack, for Mother Carey's sake. We've eaten blubber enoughfor to-da
y, and we'll e'en work out a bit of our time by helping thelad."

  So the mollys took Tom up on their backs, and flew off with him,laughing and joking--and oh, how they did smell of train oil!

  "Who are you, you jolly birds?" asked Tom.

  "We are the spirits of the old Greenland skippers (as every sailorknows), who hunted here, right whales and horse-whales, full hundreds ofyears agone. But, because we were saucy and greedy, we were all turnedinto mollys, to eat whale's blubber all our days. But lubbers we arenone, and could sail a ship now against any man in the North seas,though we don't hold with this new-fangled steam. And it's a shame ofthose black imps of petrels to call us so; but because they're hergrace's pets, they think they may say anything they like."

  "And who are you?" asked Tom of him, for he saw that he was the king ofall the birds.

  "My name is Hendrick Hudson, and a right good skipper was I; and myname will last to the world's end, in spite of all the wrong I did. ForI discovered Hudson River, and I named Hudson's Bay; and many have comein my wake that dared not have shown me the way. But I was a hard man inmy time, that's truth, and stole the poor Indians off the coast ofMaine, and sold them for slaves down in Virginia; and at last I was socruel to my sailors, here in these very seas, that they set me adrift inan open boat, and I never was heard of more. So now I'm the king of allmollys, till I've worked out my time."

  And now they came to the edge of the pack, and beyond it they could seeShiny Wall looming, through mist, and snow, and storm. But the packrolled horribly upon the swell, and the ice giants fought and roared,and leapt upon each other's backs, and ground each other to powder, sothat Tom was afraid to venture among them, lest he should be ground topowder too. And he was the more afraid, when he saw lying among the icepack the wrecks of many a gallant ship; some with masts and yards allstanding, some with the seamen frozen fast on board. Alas, alas, forthem! They were all true English hearts; and they came to their end likegood knights-errant, in searching for the white gate that never wasopened yet.

  But the good mollys took Tom and his dog up, and flew with them safeover the pack and the roaring ice giants, and set them down at the footof Shiny Wall.

  "And where is the gate?" asked Tom.

  "There is no gate," said the mollys.

  "No gate?" cried Tom, aghast.

  "None; never a crack of one, and that's the whole of the secret, asbetter fellows, lad, than you have found to their cost; and if there hadbeen, they'd have killed by now every right whale that swims the sea."

  "What am I to do, then?"

  "Dive under the floe, to be sure, if you have pluck."

  "I've not come so far to turn now," said Tom; "so here goes for aheader."

  "A lucky voyage to you, lad," said the mollys; "we knew you were one ofthe right sort. So good-bye."

  "Why don't you come too?" asked Tom.

  But the mollys only wailed sadly, "We can't go yet, we can't go yet,"and flew away over the pack.

  So Tom dived under the great white gate which never was opened yet, andwent on in black darkness, at the bottom of the sea, for seven days andseven nights. And yet he was not a bit frightened. Why should he be? Hewas a brave English lad, whose business is to go out and see all theworld.

  And at last he saw the light, and clear clear water overhead; and up hecame a thousand fathoms, among clouds of sea-moths, which flutteredround his head. There were moths with pink heads and wings and opalbodies, that flapped about slowly; moths with brown wings that flappedabout quickly; yellow shrimps that hopped and skipped most quickly ofall; and jellies of all the colours in the world, that neither hoppednor skipped, but only dawdled and yawned, and would not get out of hisway. The dog snapped at them till his jaws were tired; but Tom hardlyminded them at all, he was so eager to get to the top of the water, andsee the pool where the good whales go.

  And a very large pool it was, miles and miles across, though the air wasso clear that the ice cliffs on the opposite side looked as if they wereclose at hand. All round it the ice cliffs rose, in walls and spires andbattlements, and caves and bridges, and stories and galleries, in whichthe ice-fairies live, and drive away the storms and clouds, that MotherCarey's pool may lie calm from year's end to year's end. And the sunacted policeman, and walked round outside every day, peeping just overthe top of the ice wall, to see that all went right; and now and then heplayed conjuring tricks, or had an exhibition of fireworks, to amuse theice-fairies. For he would make himself into four or five suns at once,or paint the sky with rings and crosses and crescents of white fire, andstick himself in the middle of them, and wink at the fairies; and Idaresay they were very much amused; for anything's fun in the country.

  "That's Mother Carey."--_P. 219._]

  And there the good whales lay, the happy sleepy beasts, upon the stilloily sea. They were all right whales, you must know, and finners, andrazor-backs, and bottle-noses, and spotted sea-unicorns with longivory horns. But the sperm whales are such raging, ramping, roaring,rumbustious fellows, that, if Mother Carey let them in, there would beno more peace in Peacepool. So she packs them away in a great pond bythemselves at the South Pole, two hundred and sixty-three milessouth-south-east of Mount Erebus, the great volcano in the ice; andthere they butt each other with their ugly noses, day and night fromyear's end to year's end.

  But here there were only good quiet beasts, lying about like the blackhulls of sloops, and blowing every now and then jets of white steam, orsculling round with their huge mouths open, for the sea-moths to swimdown their throats. There were no threshers there to thresh their poorold backs, or sword-fish to stab their stomachs, or saw-fish to rip themup, or ice-sharks to bite lumps out of their sides, or whalers toharpoon and lance them. They were quite safe and happy there; and allthey had to do was to wait quietly in Peacepool, till Mother Carey sentfor them to make them out of old beasts into new.

  Tom swam up to the nearest whale, and asked the way to Mother Carey.

  "There she sits in the middle," said the whale.

  Tom looked; but he could see nothing in the middle of the pool, but onepeaked iceberg: and he said so.

  "That's Mother Carey," said the whale, "as you will find when you get toher. There she sits making old beasts into new all the year round."

  "How does she do that?"

  "That's her concern, not mine," said the old whale; and yawned so wide(for he was very large) that there swam into his mouth 943 sea-moths,13,846 jelly-fish no bigger than pins' heads, a string of salpae nineyards long, and forty-three little ice-crabs, who gave each other aparting pinch all round, tucked their legs under their stomachs, anddetermined to die decently, like Julius Caesar.

  "I suppose," said Tom, "she cuts up a great whale like you into a wholeshoal of porpoises?"

  At which the old whale laughed so violently that he coughed up all thecreatures; who swam away again very thankful at having escaped out ofthat terrible whalebone net of his, from which bourne no travellerreturns; and Tom went on to the iceberg, wondering.

  And, when he came near it, it took the form of the grandest old lady hehad ever seen--a white marble lady, sitting on a white marble throne.And from the foot of the throne there swum away, out and out into thesea, millions of new-born creatures, of more shapes and colours than manever dreamed. And they were Mother Carey's children, whom she makes outof the sea-water all day long.

  He expected, of course--like some grown people who ought to knowbetter--to find her snipping, piecing, fitting, stitching, cobbling,basting, filing, planing, hammering, turning, polishing, moulding,measuring, chiselling, clipping, and so forth, as men do when they goto work to make anything.

  But, instead of that, she sat quite still with her chin upon her hand,looking down into the sea with two great grand blue eyes, as blue as thesea itself. Her hair was as white as the snow--for she was very veryold--in fact, as old as anything which you are likely to come across,except the difference between right and wrong.

  And, when she saw Tom, she looked at him ver
y kindly.

  "What do you want, my little man? It is long since I have seen awater-baby here."

  Tom told her his errand, and asked the way to the Other-end-of-Nowhere.

  "You ought to know yourself, for you have been there already."

  "Have I, ma'am? I'm sure I forget all about it."

  "Then look at me."

  And, as Tom looked into her great blue eyes, he recollected the wayperfectly.

  Now, was not that strange?

  "Thank you, ma'am," said Tom. "Then I won't trouble your ladyship anymore; I hear you are very busy."

  "I am never more busy than I am now," she said, without stirring afinger.

  "I heard, ma'am, that you were always making new beasts out of old."

  "So people fancy. But I am not going to trouble myself to make things,my little dear. I sit here and make them make themselves."

  "You are a clever fairy, indeed," thought Tom. And he was quite right.

  That is a grand trick of good old Mother Carey's, and a grand answer,which she has had occasion to make several times to impertinent people.

  There was once, for instance, a fairy who was so clever that she foundout how to make butterflies. I don't mean sham ones; no: but real liveones, which would fly, and eat, and lay eggs, and do everything thatthey ought; and she was so proud of her skill that she went flyingstraight off to the North Pole, to boast to Mother Carey how she couldmake butterflies.

  But Mother Carey laughed.

  "Know, silly child," she said, "that any one can make things, if theywill take time and trouble enough: but it is not every one who, like me,can make things make themselves."

  But people do not yet believe that Mother Carey is as clever as all thatcomes to; and they will not till they, too, go the journey to theOther-end-of-Nowhere.

  "And now, my pretty little man," said Mother Carey, "you are sure youknow the way to the Other-end-of-Nowhere?"

  Tom thought; and behold, he had forgotten it utterly.

  "That is because you took your eyes off me."

  Tom looked at her again, and recollected; and then looked away, andforgot in an instant.

  "But what am I to do, ma'am? For I can't keep looking at you when I amsomewhere else."

  "You must do without me, as most people have to do, for nine hundred andninety-nine thousandths of their lives; and look at the dog instead; forhe knows the way well enough, and will not forget it. Besides, you maymeet some very queer-tempered people there, who will not let you passwithout this passport of mine, which you must hang round your neck andtake care of; and, of course, as the dog will always go behind you, youmust go the whole way backward."

  "Backward!" cried Tom. "Then I shall not be able to see my way."

  "On the contrary, if you look forward, you will not see a step beforeyou, and be certain to go wrong; but, if you look behind you, and watchcarefully whatever you have passed, and especially keep your eye on thedog, who goes by instinct, and therefore can't go wrong, then you willknow what is coming next, as plainly as if you saw it in alooking-glass."

  Tom was very much astonished: but he obeyed her, for he had learntalways to believe what the fairies told him.

  "So it is, my dear child," said Mother Carey; "and I will tell you astory, which will show you that I am perfectly right, as it is my customto be.

  "Once on a time, there were two brothers. One was called Prometheus,because he always looked before him, and boasted that he was wisebeforehand. The other was called Epimetheus, because he always lookedbehind him, and did not boast at all; but said humbly, like theIrishman, that he had sooner prophesy after the event.

  "Pandora and her box."--_P. 224._]

  "Well, Prometheus was a very clever fellow, of course, and invented allsorts of wonderful things. But, unfortunately, when they were set towork, to work was just what they would not do: wherefore very little hascome of them, and very little is left of them; and now nobody knows whatthey were, save a few archaeological old gentlemen who scratch in queercorners, and find little there save Ptinum Furem, Blaptem Mortisagam,Acarum Horridum, and Tineam Laciniarum.

  "But Epimetheus was a very slow fellow, certainly, and went among menfor a clod, and a muff, and a milksop, and a slowcoach, and a bloke, anda boodle, and so forth. And very little he did, for many years: but whathe did, he never had to do over again.

  "And what happened at last? There came to the two brothers the mostbeautiful creature that ever was seen, Pandora by name; which means, Allthe gifts of the Gods. But because she had a strange box in her hand,this fanciful, forecasting, suspicious, prudential, theoretical,deductive, prophesying Prometheus, who was always settling what wasgoing to happen, would have nothing to do with pretty Pandora and herbox.

  "But Epimetheus took her and it, as he took everything that came; andmarried her for better for worse, as every man ought, whenever he haseven the chance of a good wife. And they opened the box between them,of course, to see what was inside: for, else, of what possible use couldit have been to them?

  "And out flew all the ills which flesh is heir to; all the children ofthe four great bogies, Self-will, Ignorance, Fear, and Dirt--forinstance:

  _Measles_, _Famines_, _Monks_, _Quacks_, _Scarlatina_, _Unpaid bills_, _Idols_, _Tight stays_, _Hooping-coughs_, _Potatoes_, _Popes_, _Bad Wine_, _Wars_, _Despots_, _Peacemongers_, _Demagogues_, _And, worst of all, Naughty Boys and Girls._

  But one thing remained at the bottom of the box, and that was, Hope.

  "So Epimetheus got a great deal of trouble, as most men do in thisworld: but he got the three best things in the world into the bargain--agood wife, and experience, and hope: while Prometheus had just as muchtrouble, and a great deal more (as you will hear), of his own making;with nothing beside, save fancies spun out of his own brain, as a spiderspins her web out of her stomach.

  "And Prometheus kept on looking before him so far ahead, that as he wasrunning about with a box of lucifers (which were the only useful thingshe ever invented, and do as much harm as good), he trod on his own nose,and tumbled down (as most deductive philosophers do), whereby he setthe Thames on fire; and they have hardly put it out again yet. So he hadto be chained to the top of a mountain, with a vulture by him to givehim a peck whenever he stirred, lest he should turn the whole worldupside down with his prophecies and his theories.

  "But stupid old Epimetheus went working and grubbing on, with the helpof his wife Pandora, always looking behind him to see what had happened,till he really learnt to know now and then what would happen next; andunderstood so well which side his bread was buttered, and which way thecat jumped, that he began to make things which would work, and go onworking, too; to till and drain the ground, and to make looms, andships, and railroads, and steam ploughs, and electric telegraphs, andall the things which you see in the Great Exhibition; and to foretellfamine, and bad weather, and the price of stocks and (what is hardest ofall) the next vagary of the great idol Whirligig, which some call PublicOpinion; till at last he grew as rich as a Jew, and as fat as a farmer,and people thought twice before they meddled with him, but only oncebefore they asked him to help them; for, because he earned his moneywell, he could afford to spend it well likewise.

  "And his children are the men of science, who get good lasting work donein the world; but the children of Prometheus are the fanatics, and thetheorists, and the bigots, and the bores, and the noisy windy people,who go telling silly folk what will happen, instead of looking to seewhat has happened already."

  Now, was not Mother Carey's a wonderful story? And, I am happy to say,Tom believed it every word.

  For so it happened to Tom likewise. He was very sorely tried; forthough, by keeping the dog to heels (or rather to toes, for he had towalk backward), he could see pretty well which way the dog was hunting,yet it was much slower work to go backwards than to go forwards.
But,what was more trying still, no sooner had he got out of Peacepool, thanthere came running to him all the conjurers, fortune-tellers,astrologers, prophesiers, projectors, prestigiators, as many as were inthose parts (and there are too many of them everywhere), Old MotherShipton on her broomstick, with Merlin, Thomas the Rhymer, Gerbertus,Rabanus Maurus, Nostradamus, Zadkiel, Raphael, Moore, Old Nixon, and agood many in black coats and white ties who might have known better,considering in what century they were born, all bawling and screaming athim, "Look a-head, only look a-head; and we will show you what man neversaw before, and right away to the end of the world!"

  But I am proud to say that, though Tom had not been to Cambridge--for,if he had, he would have certainly been senior wrangler--he was such alittle dogged, hard, gnarly, foursquare brick of an English boy, that henever turned his head round once all the way from Peacepool to theOther-end-of-Nowhere: but kept his eye on the dog, and let him pick outthe scent, hot or cold, straight or crooked, wet or dry, up hill or downdale; by which means he never made a single mistake, and saw all thewonderful and hitherto by-no-mortal-man-imagined things, which it is myduty to relate to you in the next chapter.

  "Come to me, O ye children! For I hear you at your play; And the questions that perplexed me Have vanished quite away.

  "Ye open the Eastern windows, That look towards the sun, Where thoughts are singing swallows, And the brooks of morning run.

  * * * * *

  "For what are all our contrivings And the wisdom of our books, When compared with your caresses, And the gladness of your looks?

  "Ye are better than all the ballads That ever were sung or said; For ye are living poems, And all the rest are dead."--LONGFELLOW.

  CHAPTER VIII AND LAST

  HERE begins the never-to-be-too-much-studied account of thenine-hundred-and-ninety-ninth part of the wonderful things which Tom sawon his journey to the Other-end-of-Nowhere; which all good littlechildren are requested to read; that, if ever they get to theOther-end-of-Nowhere, as they may very probably do, they may not burstout laughing, or try to run away, or do any other silly vulgar thingwhich may offend Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid.

  Now, as soon as Tom had left Peacepool, he came to the white lap of thegreat sea-mother, ten thousand fathoms deep; where she makes world-papall day long, for the steam-giants to knead, and the fire-giants tobake, till it has risen and hardened into mountain-loaves andisland-cakes.

  And there Tom was very near being kneaded up in the world-pap, andturned into a fossil water-baby; which would have astonished theGeological Society of New Zealand some hundreds of thousands of yearshence.

  For, as he walked along in the silence of the sea-twilight, on the softwhite ocean floor, he was aware of a hissing, and a roaring, and athumping, and a pumping, as of all the steam-engines in the world atonce. And, when he came near, the water grew boiling-hot; not that thathurt him in the least: but it also grew as foul as gruel; and everymoment he stumbled over dead shells, and fish, and sharks, and seals,and whales, which had been killed by the hot water.

  And at last he came to the great sea-serpent himself, lying dead at thebottom; and as he was too thick to scramble over, Tom had to walk roundhim three-quarters of a mile and more, which put him out of his pathsadly; and, when he had got round, he came to the place called Stop. Andthere he stopped, and just in time.

  For he was on the edge of a vast hole in the bottom of the sea, up whichwas rushing and roaring clear steam enough to work all the engines inthe world at once; so clear, indeed, that it was quite light at moments;and Tom could see almost up to the top of the water above, and downbelow into the pit for nobody knows how far.

  But, as soon as he bent his head over the edge, he got such a rap on thenose from pebbles, that he jumped back again; for the steam, as itrushed up, rasped away the sides of the hole, and hurled it up into thesea in a shower of mud and gravel and ashes; and then it spread allaround, and sank again, and covered in the dead fish so fast, thatbefore Tom had stood there five minutes he was buried in silt up to hisankles, and began to be afraid that he should have been buried alive.

  And perhaps he would have been, but that while he was thinking, thewhole piece of ground on which he stood was torn off and blown upwards,and away flew Tom a mile up through the sea, wondering what was comingnext.

  At last he stopped--thump! and found himself tight in the legs of themost wonderful bogy which he had ever seen.

  It had I don't know how many wings, as big as the sails of a windmill,and spread out in a ring like them; and with them it hovered over thesteam which rushed up, as a ball hovers over the top of a fountain. Andfor every wing above it had a leg below, with a claw like a comb at thetip, and a nostril at the root; and in the middle it had no stomach andone eye; and as for its mouth, that was all on one side, as themadreporiform tubercle in a star-fish is. Well, it was a very strangebeast; but no stranger than some dozens which you may see.

  "What do you want here," it cried quite peevishly, "getting in my way?"and it tried to drop Tom: but he held on tight to its claws, thinkinghimself safer where he was.

  So Tom told him who he was, and what his errand was. And the thingwinked its one eye, and sneered:

  "I am too old to be taken in in that way. You are come after gold--Iknow you are."

  "Gold! What is gold?" And really Tom did not know; but: the suspiciousold bogy would not believe him.

  But after a while Tom began to understand a little. For, as the vapourscame up out of the hole, the bogy smelt them with his nostrils, andcombed them and sorted them with his combs; and then, when they steamedup through them against his wings, they were changed into showers andstreams of metal. From one wing fell gold-dust, and from another silver,and from another copper, and from another tin, and from another lead,and so on, and sank into the soft mud, into veins and cracks, andhardened there. Whereby it comes to pass that the rocks are full ofmetal.

  But, all of a sudden, somebody shut off the steam below, and the holewas left empty in an instant: and then down rushed the water into thehole, in such a whirlpool that the bogy spun round and round as fast asa teetotum. But that was all in his day's work, like a fair fall withthe hounds; so all he did was to say to Tom--

  "Now is your time, youngster, to get down, if you are in earnest, whichI don't believe."

  "You'll soon see," said Tom; and away he went, as bold as BaronMunchausen, and shot down the rushing cataract like a salmon atBallisodare.

  And, when he got to the bottom, he swam till he was washed on shore safeupon the Other-end-of-Nowhere; and he found it, to his surprise, as mostother people do, much more like This-End-of-Somewhere than he had beenin the habit of expecting.

  And first he went through Waste-paper-land, where all the stupid bookslie in heaps, up hill and down dale, like leaves in a winter wood; andthere he saw people digging and grubbing among them, to make worse booksout of bad ones, and thrashing chaff to save the dust of it; and a verygood trade they drove thereby, especially among children.

  Then he went by the sea of slops, to the mountain of messes, and theterritory of tuck, where the ground was very sticky, for it was all madeof bad toffee (not Everton toffee, of course), and full of deep cracksand holes choked with wind-fallen fruit, and green gooseberries, andsloes, and crabs, and whinberries, and hips and haws, and all the nastythings which little children will eat, if they can get them. But thefairies hide them out of the way in that country as fast as they can,and very hard work they have, and of very little use it is. For as fastas they hide away the old trash, foolish and wicked people make freshtrash full of lime and poisonous paints, and actually go and stealreceipts out of old Madame Science's big book to invent poisons forlittle children, and sell them at wakes and fairs and tuck-shops. Verywell. Let them go on. Dr. Letheby and Dr. Hassall cannot catch them,though they are set
ting traps for them all day long. But the Fairy withthe birch-rod will catch them all in time, and make them begin at onecorner of their shops, and eat their way out at the other: by which timethey will have got such stomach-aches as will cure them of poisoninglittle children.

  Next he saw all the little people in the world, writing all the littlebooks in the world, about all the other little people in the world;probably because they had no great people to write about: and if thenames of the books were not Squeeky, nor the Pump-lighter, nor theNarrow Narrow World, nor the Hills of the Chattermuch, nor theChildren's Twaddeday, why then they were something else. And all therest of the little people in the world read the books, and thoughtthemselves each as good as the President; and perhaps they were right,for every one knows his own business best. But Tom thought he wouldsooner have a jolly good fairy tale, about Jack the Giant-killer orBeauty and the Beast, which taught him something that he didn't knowalready.

  And next he came to the centre of Creation (the hub, they call itthere), which lies in latitude 42.21 deg. south, and longitude 108.56deg. east.

  And there he found all the wise people instructing mankind in thescience of spirit-rapping, while their house was burning over theirheads: and when Tom told them of the fire, they held an indignationmeeting forthwith, and unanimously determined to hang Tom's dog forcoming into their country with gunpowder in his mouth. Tom couldn't helpsaying that though they did fancy they had carried all the wit away withthem out of Lincolnshire two hundred years ago, yet if they had had onesuch Lincolnshire nobleman among them as good old Lord Yarborough, hewould have called for the fire-engines before he hanged other people'sdogs. But it was of no use, and the dog was hanged: and Tom couldn'teven have his carcase; for they had abolished the have-his-carcase actin that country, for fear lest when rogues fell out, honest men shouldcome by their own. And so they would have succeeded perfectly, as theyalways do, only that (as they also always do) they failed in one littleparticular, viz. that the dog would not die, being a water-dog, but bittheir fingers so abominably that they were forced to let him go, and Tomlikewise, as British subjects. Whereon they recommenced rapping for thespirits of their fathers; and very much astonished the poor old spiritswere when they came, and saw how, according to the laws of Mrs.Bedonebyasyoudid, their descendants had weakened their constitution byhard living.

  Then came Tom to the Island of Polupragmosyne (which some call Rogues'Harbour; but they are wrong; for that is in the middle of BramshillBushes, and the county police have cleared it out long ago). There everyone knows his neighbour's business better than his own; and a very noisyplace it is, as might be expected, considering that all the inhabitantsare _ex officio_ on the wrong side of the house in the "Parliament ofMan, and the Federation of the World"; and are always making wry mouths,and crying that the fairies' grapes were sour.

  There Tom saw ploughs drawing horses, nails driving hammers, birds'nests taking boys, books making authors, bulls keeping china-shops,monkeys shaving cats, dead dogs drilling live lions, blind brigadiersshelfed as principals of colleges, play-actors not in the least shelfedas popular preachers; and, in short, every one set to do something whichhe had not learnt, because in what he had learnt, or pretended to learn,he had failed.

  There stands the Pantheon of the Great Unsuccessful, from the buildersof the Tower of Babel to those of the Trafalgar Fountains; in whichpoliticians lecture on the constitutions which ought to have marched,conspirators on the revolutions which ought to have succeeded,economists on the schemes which ought to have made every one's fortune,and projectors on the discoveries which ought to have set the Thames onfire. There cobblers lecture on orthopedy (whatsoever that may be)because they cannot sell their shoes; and poets on AEsthetics (whatsoeverthat may be) because they cannot sell their poetry. There philosophersdemonstrate that England would be the freest and richest country in theworld, if she would only turn Papist again; penny-a-liners abuse the_Times_, because they have not wit enough to get on its staff; and youngladies walk about with lockets of Charles the First's hair (or ofsomebody else's, when the Jews' genuine stock is used up), inscribedwith the neat and appropriate legend--which indeed is popular throughall that land, and which, I hope, you will learn to translate in duetime and to perpend likewise:--

  "_Victrix causa diis placuit, sed victa puellis._"

  When he got into the middle of the town, they all set on him at once,to show him his way; or rather, to show him that he did not know hisway; for as for asking him what way he wanted to go, no one ever thoughtof that.

  But one pulled him hither, and another poked him thither, and a thirdcried--

  "You mustn't go west, I tell you; it is destruction to go west."

  "But I am not going west, as you may see," said Tom.

  And another, "The east lies here, my dear; I assure you this is theeast."

  "But I don't want to go east," said Tom.

  "Well, then, at all events, whichever way you are going, you are goingwrong," cried they all with one voice--which was the only thing whichthey ever agreed about; and all pointed at once to all thethirty-and-two points of the compass, till Tom thought all thesign-posts in England had got together, and fallen fighting.

  And whether he would have ever escaped out of the town, it is hard tosay, if the dog had not taken it into his head that they were going topull his master in pieces, and tackled them so sharply about thegastrocnemius muscle, that he gave them some business of their own tothink of at last; and while they were rubbing their bitten calves, Tomand the dog got safe away.

  On the borders of that island he found Gotham, where the wise men live;the same who dragged the pond because the moon had fallen into it, andplanted a hedge round the cuckoo, to keep spring all the year. And hefound them bricking up the town gate, because it was so wide that littlefolks could not get through. And, when he asked why, they told him theywere expanding their liturgy. So he went on; for it was no business ofhis: only he could not help saying that in his country, if the kittencould not get in at the same hole as the cat, she might stay outside andmew.

  But he saw the end of such fellows, when he came to the island of theGolden Asses, where nothing but thistles grow. For there they were allturned into mokes with ears a yard long, for meddling with matters whichthey do not understand, as Lucius did in the story. And like him, mokesthey must remain, till, by the laws of development, the thistles developinto roses. Till then, they must comfort themselves with the thought,that the longer their ears are, the thicker their hides; and so a goodbeating don't hurt them.

  Then came Tom to the great land of Hearsay, in which are no less thanthirty and odd kings, beside half a dozen Republics, and perhaps more bynext mail.

  And there he fell in with a deep, dark, deadly, and destructive war,waged by the princes and potentates of those parts, both spiritual andtemporal, against what do you think? One thing I am sure of. That unlessI told you, you would never know; nor how they waged that war either;for all their strategy and art military consisted in the safe and easyprocess of stopping their ears and screaming, "Oh, don't tell us!" andthen running away.

  So when Tom came into that land, he found them all, high and low, man,woman, and child, running for their lives day and night continually, andentreating not to be told they didn't know what: only the land being anisland, and they having a dislike to the water (being a musty lot forthe most part), they ran round and round the shore for ever, which (asthe island was exactly of the same circumference as the planet on whichwe have the honour of living) was hard work, especially to those who hadbusiness to look after. But before them, as bandmaster and fugleman, rana gentleman shearing a pig; the melodious strains of which animal ledthem for ever, if not to conquest, still to flight; and kept up theirspirits mightily with the thought that they would at least have thepig's wool for their pains.

  And running after them, day and night, came such a poor, lean, seedy,hard-worked old giant, as ought to have been cockered up, and had a gooddinner given him, and a good
wife found him, and been set to play withlittle children; and then he would have been a very presentable oldfellow after all; for he had a heart, though it was considerablyovergrown with brains.

  He was made up principally of fish bones and parchment, put togetherwith wire and Canada balsam; and smelt strongly of spirits, though henever drank anything but water: but spirits he used somehow, there wasno denying. He had a great pair of spectacles on his nose, and abutterfly-net in one hand, and a geological hammer in the other; andwas hung all over with pockets, full of collecting boxes, bottles,microscopes, telescopes, barometers, ordnance maps, scalpels, forceps,photographic apparatus, and all other tackle for finding out everythingabout everything, and a little more too. And, most strange of all, hewas running not forwards but backwards, as fast as he could.

  Away all the good folks ran from him, except Tom, who stood his groundand dodged between his legs; and the giant, when he had passed him,looked down, and cried, as if he was quite pleased and comforted,--

  "What? who are you? And you actually don't run away, like all the rest?"But he had to take his spectacles off, Tom remarked, in order to see himplainly.

  Tom told him who he was; and the giant pulled out a bottle and a corkinstantly, to collect him with.

  But Tom was too sharp for that, and dodged between his legs and in frontof him; and then the giant could not see him at all.

  "No, no, no!" said Tom, "I've not been round the world, and through theworld, and up to Mother Carey's haven, beside being caught in a net andcalled a Holothurian and a Cephalopod, to be bottled up by any old giantlike you."

  And when the giant understood what a great traveller Tom had been, hemade a truce with him at once, and would have kept him there to this dayto pick his brains, so delighted was he at finding any one to tell himwhat he did not know before.

  "Ah, you lucky little dog!" said he at last, quite simply--for he wasthe simplest, pleasantest, honestest, kindliest old Dominie Sampson of agiant that ever turned the world upside down without intending it--"ah,you lucky little dog! If I had only been where you have been, to seewhat you have seen!"

  "Well," said Tom, "if you want to do that, you had best put your headunder water for a few hours, as I did, and turn into a water-baby, orsome other baby, and then you might have a chance."

  "Turn into a baby, eh? If I could do that, and know what was happeningto me for but one hour, I should know everything then, and be at rest.But I can't; I can't be a little child again; and I suppose if I could,it would be no use, because then I should know nothing about what washappening to me. Ah, you lucky little dog!" said the poor old giant.

  "But why do you run after all these poor people?" said Tom, who likedthe giant very much.

  "My dear, it's they that have been running after me, father and son, forhundreds and hundreds of years, throwing stones at me till they haveknocked off my spectacles fifty times, and calling me a malignant and aturbaned Turk, who beat a Venetian and traduced the State--goodness onlyknows what they mean, for I never read poetry--and hunting me round andround--though catch me they can't, for every time I go over the sameground, I go the faster, and grow the bigger. While all I want is to befriends with them, and to tell them something to their advantage, likeMr. Joseph Ady: only somehow they are so strangely afraid of hearing it.But, I suppose I am not a man of the world, and have no tact."

  "But why don't you turn round and tell them so?"

  "Because I can't. You see, I am one of the sons of Epimetheus, and mustgo backwards, if I am to go at all."

  "But why don't you stop, and let them come up to you?"

  "Why, my dear, only think. If I did, all the butterflies andcockyolybirds would fly past me, and then I should catch no more newspecies, and should grow rusty and mouldy, and die. And I don't intendto do that, my dear; for I have a destiny before me, they say: thoughwhat it is I don't know, and don't care."

  "Don't care?" said Tom.

  "No. Do the duty which lies nearest you, and catch the first beetle youcome across, is my motto; and I have thriven by it for some hundredyears. Now I must go on. Dear me, while I have been talking to you, atleast nine new species have escaped me."

  And on went the giant, behind before, like a bull in a china-shop, tillhe ran into the steeple of the great idol temple (for they are allidolaters in those parts, of course, else they would never be afraid ofgiants), and knocked the upper half clean off, hurting himself horriblyabout the small of the back.

  But little he cared; for as soon as the ruins of the steeple were wellbetween his legs, he poked and peered among the falling stones, andshifted his spectacles, and pulled out his pocket-magnifier, and cried--

  "An entirely new Oniscus, and three obscure Podurellae! Besides a mothwhich M. le Roi des Papillons (though he, like all Frenchmen, is givento hasty inductions) says is confined to the limits of the GlacialDrift. This is most important!"

  And down he sat on the nave of the temple (not being a man of the world)to examine his Podurellae. Whereon (as was to be expected) the roof cavedin bodily, smashing the idols, and sending the priests flying out ofdoors and windows, like rabbits out of a burrow when a ferret goes in.

  But he never heeded; for out of the dust flew a bat, and the giant hadhim in a moment.

  "Dear me! This is even more important! Here is a cognate species to thatwhich Macgilliwaukie Brown insists is confined to the Buddhist templesof Little Thibet; and now when I look at it, it may be only a varietyproduced by difference of climate!"

  And having bagged his bat, up he got, and on he went; while all thepeople ran, being in none the better humour for having their templesmashed for the sake of three obscure species of Podurella, and aBuddhist bat.

  "Well," thought Tom, "this is a very pretty quarrel, with a good deal tobe said on both sides. But it is no business of mine."

  And no more it was, because he was a water-baby, and had the originalsow by the right ear; which you will never have, unless you be a baby,whether of the water, the land, or the air, matters not, provided youcan only keep on continually being a baby.

  So the giant ran round after the people, and the people ran round afterthe giant, and they are running unto this day for aught I know, or donot know; and will run till either he, or they, or both, turn intolittle children. And then, as Shakespeare says (and therefore it must betrue)--

  "_Jack shall have Gill Nought shall go ill The man shall have his mare again, and all go well._"

  Then Tom came to a very famous island, which was called, in the days ofthe great traveller Captain Gulliver, the Isle of Laputa. But Mrs.Bedonebyasyoudid has named it over again the Isle of Tomtoddies, allheads and no bodies.

  And when Tom came near it, he heard such a grumbling and grunting andgrowling and wailing and weeping and whining that he thought people mustbe ringing little pigs, or cropping puppies' ears, or drowning kittens:but when he came nearer still, he began to hear words among the noise;which was the Tomtoddies' song which they sing morning and evening, andall night too, to their great idol Examination--

  "_I can't learn my lesson: the examiner's coming!_"

  And that was the only song which they knew.

  And when Tom got on shore the first thing he saw was a great pillar, onone side of which was inscribed, "Playthings not allowed here"; at whichhe was so shocked that he would not stay to see what was written on theother side. Then he looked round for the people of the island: butinstead of men, women, and children, he found nothing but turnips andradishes, beet and mangold wurzel, without a single green leaf amongthem, and half of them burst and decayed, with toadstools growing out ofthem. Those which were left began crying to Tom, in half a dozendifferent languages at once, and all of them badly spoken, "I can'tlearn my lesson; do come and help me!" And one cried, "Can you show mehow to extract this square root?"

  And another, "Can you tell me the distance between [Greek: a] Lyrae and[Greek: b] Camelopardis?"

  And another, "What is the latitude and
longitude of Snooksville, inNoman's County, Oregon, U.S.?"

  And another, "What was the name of Mutius Scaevola's thirteenth cousin'sgrandmother's maid's cat?"

  And another, "How long would it take a school-inspector of averageactivity to tumble head over heels from London to York?"

  And another, "Can you tell me the name of a place that nobody ever heardof, where nothing ever happened, in a country which has not beendiscovered yet?"

  And another, "Can you show me how to correct this hopelessly corruptpassage of Graidiocolosyrtus Tabenniticus, on the cause why crocodileshave no tongues?"

  And so on, and so on, and so on, till one would have thought they wereall trying for tide-waiters' places, or cornetcies in the heavydragoons.

  "And what good on earth will it do you if I did tell you?" quoth Tom.

  Well, they didn't know that: all they knew was the examiner was coming.

  Then Tom stumbled on the hugest and softest nimblecomequick turnip youever saw filling a hole in a crop of swedes, and it cried to him, "Canyou tell me anything at all about anything you like?"

  "About what?" says Tom.

  "About anything you like; for as fast as I learn things I forget themagain. So my mamma says that my intellect is not adapted for methodicscience, and says that I must go in for general information."

  Tom told him that he did not know general information, nor any officersin the army; only he had a friend once that went for a drummer: but hecould tell him a great many strange things which he had seen in histravels.

  So he told him prettily enough, while the poor turnip listened verycarefully; and the more he listened, the more he forgot, and the morewater ran out of him.

  Tom thought he was crying: but it was only his poor brains running away,from being worked so hard; and as Tom talked, the unhappy turnipstreamed down all over with juice, and split and shrank till nothing wasleft of him but rind and water; whereat Tom ran away in a fright, for hethought he might be taken up for killing the turnip.

  But, on the contrary, the turnip's parents were highly delighted, andconsidered him a saint and a martyr, and put up a long inscription overhis tomb about his wonderful talents, early development, andunparalleled precocity. Were they not a foolish couple? But there was astill more foolish couple next to them, who were beating a wretchedlittle radish, no bigger than my thumb, for sullenness and obstinacy andwilful stupidity, and never knew that the reason why it couldn't learnor hardly even speak was, that there was a great worm inside it eatingout all its brains. But even they are no foolisher than some hundredscore of papas and mammas, who fetch the rod when they ought to fetch anew toy, and send to the dark cupboard instead of to the doctor.

  Tom was so puzzled and frightened with all he saw, that he was longingto ask the meaning of it; and at last he stumbled over a respectableold stick lying half covered with earth. But a very stout and worthystick it was, for it belonged to good Roger Ascham in old time, and hadcarved on its head King Edward the Sixth, with the Bible in his hand.

  "You see," said the stick, "there were as pretty little children once asyou could wish to see, and might have been so still if they had beenonly left to grow up like human beings, and then handed over to me; buttheir foolish fathers and mothers, instead of letting them pick flowers,and make dirt-pies, and get birds' nests, and dance round the gooseberrybush, as little children should, kept them always at lessons, working,working, working, learning week-day lessons all week-days, and Sundaylessons all Sunday, and weekly examinations every Saturday, and monthlyexaminations every month, and yearly examinations every year, everythingseven times over, as if once was not enough, and enough as good as afeast--till their brains grew big, and their bodies grew small, and theywere all changed into turnips, with little but water inside; and stilltheir foolish parents actually pick the leaves off them as fast as theygrow, lest they should have anything green about them."

  "Ah!" said Tom, "if dear Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby knew of it she wouldsend them a lot of tops, and balls, and marbles, and ninepins, and makethem all as jolly as sand-boys."

  "It would be no use," said the stick. "They can't play now, if theytried. Don't you see how their legs have turned to roots and grown intothe ground, by never taking any exercise, but sapping and moping alwaysin the same place? But here comes the Examiner-of-all-Examiners. So youhad better get away, I warn you, or he will examine you and your doginto the bargain, and set him to examine all the other dogs, and you toexamine all the other water-babies. There is no escaping out of hishands, for his nose is nine thousand miles long, and can go downchimneys, and through keyholes, upstairs, downstairs, in my lady'schamber, examining all little boys, and the little boys' tutorslikewise. But when he is thrashed--so Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid has promisedme--I shall have the thrashing of him: and if I don't lay it on with awill it's a pity."

  Tom went off: but rather slowly and surlily; for he was somewhat mindedto face this same Examiner-of-all-Examiners, who came striding among thepoor turnips, binding heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and layingthem on little children's shoulders, like the Scribes and Pharisees ofold, and not touching the same with one of his fingers; for he hadplenty of money, and a fine house to live in, and so forth; which wasmore than the poor little turnips had.

  But when he got near, he looked so big and burly and dictatorial, andshouted so loud to Tom, to come and be examined, that Tom ran for hislife, and the dog too. And really it was time; for the poor turnips, intheir hurry and fright, crammed themselves so fast to be ready for theExaminer, that they burst and popped by dozens all round him, till theplace sounded like Aldershot on a field-day, and Tom thought he shouldbe blown into the air, dog and all.

  As he went down to the shore he passed the poor turnip's new tomb. ButMrs. Bedonebyasyoudid had taken away the epitaph about talents andprecocity and development, and put up one of her own instead which Tomthought much more sensible:--

  "_Instruction sore long time I bore, And cramming was in vain; Till heaven did please my woes to ease With water on the brain._"

  So Tom jumped into the sea, and swam on his way, singing:--

  "_Farewell, Tomtoddies all; I thank my stars That nought I know save those three royal r's: Reading and riting sure, with rithmetick, Will help a lad of sense through thin and thick._"

  Whereby you may see that Tom was no poet: but no more was John Bunyan,though he was as wise a man as you will meet in a month of Sundays.

  And next he came to Oldwivesfabledom, where the folks were all heathens,and worshipped a howling ape.

  And there he found a little boy sitting in the middle of the road, andcrying bitterly.

  "What are you crying for?" said Tom.

  "Because I am not as frightened as I could wish to be."

  "Not frightened? You are a queer little chap: but, if you want to befrightened, here goes--Boo!"

  "Ah," said the little boy, "that is very kind of you; but I don't feelthat it has made any impression."

  Tom offered to upset him, punch him, stamp on him, fettle him over thehead with a brick, or anything else whatsoever which would give him theslightest comfort.

  But he only thanked Tom very civilly, in fine long words which he hadheard other folk use, and which, therefore, he thought were fit andproper to use himself; and cried on till his papa and mamma came, andsent off for the Powwow man immediately. And a very good-naturedgentleman and lady they were, though they were heathens; and talkedquite pleasantly to Tom about his travels, till the Powwow man arrived,with his thunderbox under his arm.

  And a well-fed, ill-favoured gentleman he was, as ever served HerMajesty at Portland. Tom was a little frightened at first; for hethought it was Grimes. But he soon saw his mistake: for Grimes alwayslooked a man in the face; and this fellow never did. And when he spoke,it was fire and smoke; and when he sneezed, it was squibs and crackers;and when he cried (which he did whenever it paid him), it was boilingpitch; and some
of it was sure to stick.

  "Here we are again!" cried he, like the clown in a pantomime. "So youcan't feel frightened, my little dear--eh? I'll do that for you. I'llmake an impression on you! Yah! Boo! Whirroo! Hullabaloo!"

  And he rattled, thumped, brandished his thunderbox, yelled, shouted,raved, roared, stamped, and danced corrobory like any black fellow; andthen he touched a spring in the thunderbox, and out popped turnip-ghostsand magic-lanthorns and pasteboard bogies and spring-heeled Jacks, andsallaballas, with such a horrid din, clatter, clank, roll, rattle, androar, that the little boy turned up the whites of his eyes, and faintedright away.

  And at that his poor heathen papa and mamma were as much delighted as ifthey had found a gold mine; and fell down upon their knees before thePowwow man, and gave him a palanquin with a pole of solid silver andcurtains of cloth of gold; and carried him about in it on their ownbacks: but as soon as they had taken him up, the pole stuck to theirshoulders, and they could not set him down any more, but carried him onwillynilly, as Sinbad carried the old man of the sea: which was apitiable sight to see; for the father was a very brave officer, and woretwo swords and a blue button; and the mother was as pretty a lady asever had pinched feet like a Chinese. But you see, they had chosen to doa foolish thing just once too often; so, by the laws of Mrs.Bedonebyasyoudid, they had to go on doing it whether they chose or not,till the coming of the Cocqcigrues.

  Ah! don't you wish that some one would go and convert those poorheathens, and teach them not to frighten their little children intofits?

  "Now, then," said the Powwow man to Tom, "wouldn't you like to befrightened, my little dear? For I can see plainly that you are a verywicked, naughty, graceless, reprobate boy."

  "You're another," quoth Tom, very sturdily. And when the man ran at him,and cried "Boo!" Tom ran at him in return, and cried "Boo!" likewise,right in his face, and set the little dog upon him; and at his legs thedog went.

  At which, if you will believe it, the fellow turned tail, thunderbox andall, with a "Woof!" like an old sow on the common; and ran for his life,screaming, "Help! thieves! murder! fire! He is going to kill me! I am aruined man! He will murder me; and break, burn, and destroy my preciousand invaluable thunderbox; and then you will have no morethunder-showers in the land. Help! help! help!"

  At which the papa and mamma and all the people of Oldwivesfabledom flewat Tom, shouting, "Oh, the wicked, impudent, hard-hearted, gracelessboy! Beat him, kick him, shoot him, drown him, hang him, burn him!" andso forth: but luckily they had nothing to shoot, hang, or burn him with,for the fairies had hid all the killing-tackle out of the way a littlewhile before; so they could only pelt him with stones; and some of thestones went clean through him, and came out the other side. But he didnot mind that a bit; for the holes closed up again as fast as they weremade, because he was a water-baby. However, he was very glad when he wassafe out of the country, for the noise there made him all but deaf.

  Then he came to a very quiet place, called Leaveheavenalone. And therethe sun was drawing water out of the sea to make steam-threads, and thewind was twisting them up to make cloud-patterns, till they had workedbetween them the loveliest wedding veil of Chantilly lace, and hung itup in their own Crystal Palace for any one to buy who could afford it;while the good old sea never grudged, for she knew they would pay herback honestly. So the sun span, and the wind wove, and all went wellwith the great steam-loom; as is likely, considering--andconsidering--and considering--

  And at last, after innumerable adventures, each more wonderful than thelast, he saw before him a huge building, much bigger, and--what is mostsurprising--a little uglier than a certain new lunatic asylum, but notbuilt quite of the same materials. None of it, at least--or, indeed, foraught that I ever saw, any part of any other building whatsoever--iscased with nine-inch brick inside and out, and filled up with rubblebetween the walls, in order that any gentleman who has been confinedduring Her Majesty's pleasure may be unconfined during his own pleasure,and take a walk in the neighbouring park to improve his spirits, afteran hour's light and wholesome labour with his dinner-fork or one of thelegs of his iron bedstead. No. The walls of this building were built onan entirely different principle, which need not be described, as it hasnot yet been discovered.

  Tom walked towards this great building, wondering what it was, andhaving a strange fancy that he might find Mr. Grimes inside it, till hesaw running toward him, and shouting "Stop!" three or four people, who,when they came nearer, were nothing else than policemen's truncheons,running along without legs or arms.

  Tom was not astonished. He was long past that. Besides, he had seen thenaviculae in the water move nobody knows how, a hundred times, withoutarms, or legs, or anything to stand in their stead. Neither was hefrightened; for he had been doing no harm.

  So he stopped; and, when the foremost truncheon came up and asked hisbusiness, he showed Mother Carey's pass; and the truncheon looked at itin the oddest fashion; for he had one eye in the middle of his upperend, so that when he looked at anything, being quite stiff, he had toslope himself, and poke himself, till it was a wonder why he did nottumble over; but, being quite full of the spirit of justice (as allpolicemen, and their truncheons, ought to be), he was always in aposition of stable equilibrium, whichever way he put himself.

  "All right--pass on," said he at last. And then he added: "I had bettergo with you, young man." And Tom had no objection, for such company wasboth respectable and safe; so the truncheon coiled its thong neatlyround its handle, to prevent tripping itself up--for the thong had gotloose in running--and marched on by Tom's side.

  "Why have you no policeman to carry you?" asked Tom, after a while.

  "Because we are not like those clumsy-made truncheons in the land-world,which cannot go without having a whole man to carry them about. We doour own work for ourselves; and do it very well, though I say it whoshould not."

  "Then why have you a thong to your handle?" asked Tom.

  "To hang ourselves up by, of course, when we are off duty."

  Tom had got his answer, and had no more to say, till they came up to thegreat iron door of the prison. And there the truncheon knocked twice,with its own head.

  A wicket in the door opened, and out looked a tremendous old brassblunderbuss charged up to the muzzle with slugs, who was the porter; andTom started back a little at the sight of him.

  "What case is this?" he asked in a deep voice, out of his broad bellmouth.

  "If you please, sir, it is no case; only a young gentleman from herladyship, who wants to see Grimes, the master-sweep."

  "Grimes?" said the blunderbuss. And he pulled in his muzzle, perhaps tolook over his prison-lists.

  "Grimes is up chimney No. 345," he said from inside. "So the younggentleman had better go on to the roof."

  Tom looked up at the enormous wall, which seemed at least ninety mileshigh, and wondered how he should ever get up: but, when he hinted thatto the truncheon, it settled the matter in a moment. For it whiskedround, and gave him such a shove behind as sent him up to the roof in notime, with his little dog under his arm.

  And there he walked along the leads, till he met another truncheon, andtold him his errand.

  "Very good," it said. "Come along: but it will be of no use. He is themost unremorseful, hard-hearted, foul-mouthed fellow I have in charge;and thinks about nothing but beer and pipes, which are not allowed here,of course."

  So they walked along over the leads, and very sooty they were, and Tomthought the chimneys must want sweeping very much. But he was surprisedto see that the soot did not stick to his feet, or dirty them in theleast. Neither did the live coals, which were lying about in plenty,burn him; for, being a water-baby, his radical humours were of a moistand cold nature, as you may read at large in Lemnius, Cardan, VanHelmont, and other gentlemen, who knew as much as they could, and no mancan know more.

  And at last they came to chimney No. 345. Out of the top of it, his headand shoulders just showing, stuck poor Mr. Grimes, so sooty, andbleared
, and ugly, that Tom could hardly bear to look at him. And in hismouth was a pipe; but it was not a-light; though he was pulling at itwith all his might.

  "Attention, Mr. Grimes," said the truncheon; "here is a gentleman cometo see you."

  But Mr. Grimes only said bad words; and kept grumbling, "My pipe won'tdraw. My pipe won't draw."

  "Keep a civil tongue, and attend!" said the truncheon; and popped upjust like Punch, hitting Grimes such a crack over the head with itself,that his brains rattled inside like a dried walnut in its shell. Hetried to get his hands out, and rub the place: but he could not, forthey were stuck fast in the chimney. Now he was forced to attend.

  "Hey!" he said, "why, it's Tom! I suppose you have come here to laugh atme, you spiteful little atomy?"

  Tom assured him he had not, but only wanted to help him.

  "I don't want anything except beer, and that I can't get; and a light tothis bothering pipe, and that I can't get either."

  "I'll get you one," said Tom; and he took up a live coal (there wereplenty lying about) and put it to Grimes' pipe: but it went outinstantly.

  "It's no use," said the truncheon, leaning itself up against the chimneyand looking on. "I tell you, it is no use. His heart is so cold that itfreezes everything that comes near him. You will see that presently,plain enough."

  "Oh, of course, it's my fault. Everything's always my fault," saidGrimes. "Now don't go to hit me again" (for the truncheon startedupright, and looked very wicked); "you know, if my arms were only free,you daren't hit me then."

  The truncheon leant back against the chimney, and took no notice of thepersonal insult, like a well-trained policeman as it was, though he wasready enough to avenge any transgression against morality or order.

  "But can't I help you in any other way? Can't I help you to get out ofthis chimney?" said Tom.

  "No," interposed the truncheon; "he has come to the place whereeverybody must help themselves; and he will find it out, I hope, beforehe has done with me."

  "Oh, yes," said Grimes, "of course it's me. Did I ask to be brought hereinto the prison? Did I ask to be set to sweep your foul chimneys? Did Iask to have lighted straw put under me to make me go up? Did I ask tostick fast in the very first chimney of all, because it was soshamefully clogged up with soot? Did I ask to stay here--I don't knowhow long--a hundred years, I do believe, and never get my pipe, nor mybeer, nor nothing fit for a beast, let alone a man?"

  "No," answered a solemn voice behind. "No more did Tom, when you behavedto him in the very same way."

  It was Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid. And, when the truncheon saw her, itstarted bolt upright--Attention!--and made such a low bow, that if ithad not been full of the spirit of justice, it must have tumbled on itsend, and probably hurt its one eye. And Tom made his bow too.

  "Oh, ma'am," he said, "don't think about me; that's all past and gone,and good times and bad times and all times pass over. But may not I helppoor Mr. Grimes? Mayn't I try and get some of these bricks away, that hemay move his arms?"

  "You may try, of course," she said.

  So Tom pulled and tugged at the bricks: but he could not move one. Andthen he tried to wipe Mr. Grimes' face: but the soot would not come off.

  "Oh, dear!" he said. "I have come all this way, through all theseterrible places, to help you, and now I am of no use at all."

  "You had best leave me alone," said Grimes; "you are a good-naturedforgiving little chap, and that's truth; but you'd best be off. Thehail's coming on soon, and it will beat the eyes out of your littlehead."

  "What hail?"

  "Why, hail that falls every evening here; and, till it comes close tome, it's like so much warm rain: but then it turns to hail over my head,and knocks me about like small shot."

  "That hail will never come any more," said the strange lady. "I havetold you before what it was. It was your mother's tears, those whichshe shed when she prayed for you by her bedside; but your cold heartfroze it into hail. But she is gone to heaven now, and will weep no morefor her graceless son."

  Then Grimes was silent awhile; and then he looked very sad.

  "So my old mother's gone, and I never there to speak to her! Ah! a goodwoman she was, and might have been a happy one, in her little schoolthere in Vendale, if it hadn't been for me and my bad ways."

  "Did she keep the school in Vendale?" asked Tom. And then he told Grimesall the story of his going to her house, and how she could not abide thesight of a chimney-sweep, and then how kind she was, and how he turnedinto a water-baby.

  "Ah!" said Grimes, "good reason she had to hate the sight of achimney-sweep. I ran away from her and took up with the sweeps, andnever let her know where I was, nor sent her a penny to help her, andnow it's too late--too late!" said Mr. Grimes.

  And he began crying and blubbering like a great baby, till his pipedropped out of his mouth, and broke all to bits.

  "Oh, dear, if I was but a little chap in Vendale again, to see the clearbeck, and the apple-orchard, and the yew-hedge, how different I would goon! But it's too late now. So you go along, you kind little chap, anddon't stand to look at a man crying, that's old enough to be yourfather, and never feared the face of man, nor of worse neither. But I'mbeat now, and beat I must be. I've made my bed, and I must lie on it.Foul I would be, and foul I am, as an Irishwoman said to me once; andlittle I heeded it. It's all my own fault: but it's too late." And hecried so bitterly that Tom began crying too.

  "Never too late," said the fairy, in such a strange soft new voice thatTom looked up at her; and she was so beautiful for the moment, that Tomhalf fancied she was her sister.

  No more was it too late. For, as poor Grimes cried and blubbered on, hisown tears did what his mother's could not do, and Tom's could not do,and nobody's on earth could do for him; for they washed the soot off hisface and off his clothes; and then they washed the mortar away frombetween the bricks; and the chimney crumbled down; and Grimes began toget out of it.

  Up jumped the truncheon, and was going to hit him on the crown atremendous thump, and drive him down again like a cork into a bottle.But the strange lady put it aside.

  "Will you obey me if I give you a chance?"

  "As you please, ma'am. You're stronger than me--that I know too well,and wiser than me, I know too well also. And, as for being my ownmaster, I've fared ill enough with that as yet. So whatever yourladyship pleases to order me; for I'm beat, and that's the truth."

  "Be it so then--you may come out. But remember, disobey me again, andinto a worse place still you go."

  "I beg pardon, ma'am, but I never disobeyed you that I know of. I neverhad the honour of setting eyes upon you till I came to these uglyquarters."

  "Never saw me? Who said to you, Those that will be foul, foul they willbe?"

  Grimes looked up; and Tom looked up too; for the voice was that of theIrishwoman who met them the day that they went out together toHarthover. "I gave you your warning then: but you gave it yourself athousand times before and since. Every bad word that you said--everycruel and mean thing that you did--every time that you got tipsy--everyday that you went dirty--you were disobeying me, whether you knew it ornot."

  "If I'd only known, ma'am----"

  "You knew well enough that you were disobeying something, though you didnot know it was me. But come out and take your chance. Perhaps it may beyour last."

  So Grimes stepped out of the chimney, and really, if it had not been forthe scars on his face, he looked as clean and respectable as amaster-sweep need look.

  "Take him away," said she to the truncheon, "and give him histicket-of-leave."

  "And what is he to do, ma'am?"

  "Get him to sweep out the crater of Etna; he will find some very steadymen working out their time there, who will teach him his business: butmind, if that crater gets choked again, and there is an earthquake inconsequence, bring them all to me, and I shall investigate the case veryseverely."

  So the truncheon marched off Mr. Grimes, looking as meek as a drownedworm.

 
And for aught I know, or do not know, he is sweeping the crater of Etnato this very day.

  "And now," said the fairy to Tom, "your work here is done. You may aswell go back again."

  "I should be glad enough to go," said Tom, "but how am I to get up thatgreat hole again, now the steam has stopped blowing?"

  "I will take you up the backstairs: but I must bandage your eyes first;for I never allow anybody to see those backstairs of mine."

  "I am sure I shall not tell anybody about them, ma'am, if you bid menot."

  "Aha! So you think, my little man. But you would soon forget yourpromise if you got back into the land-world. For, if people only oncefound out that you had been up my backstairs, you would have all thefine ladies kneeling to you, and the rich men emptying their pursesbefore you, and statesmen offering you place and power; and young andold, rich and poor, crying to you, 'Only tell us the great backstairssecret, and we will be your slaves; we will make you lord, king,emperor, bishop, archbishop, pope, if you like--only tell us the secretof the backstairs. For thousands of years we have been paying, andpetting, and obeying, and worshipping quacks who told us they had thekey of the backstairs, and could smuggle us up them; and in spite of allour disappointments, we will honour, and glorify, and adore, andbeatify, and translate, and apotheotise you likewise, on the chance ofyour knowing something about the backstairs, that we may all go onpilgrimage to it; and, even if we cannot get up it, lie at the foot ofit, and cry--

  '_Oh, backstairs_, _precious backstairs_, _comfortable backstairs_, _invaluable backstairs_, _humane backstairs_, _requisite backstairs_, _reasonable backstairs_, _necessary backstairs_, _long-sought backstairs_, _good-natured backstairs_, _coveted backstairs_, _cosmopolitan backstairs_, _aristocratic backstairs_, _comprehensive backstairs_, _respectable backstairs_, _accommodating backstairs_, _gentlemanlike backstairs_, _well-bred backstairs_, _ladylike backstairs_, _commercial backstairs_, _orthodox backstairs_, _economical backstairs_, _probable backstairs_, _practical backstairs_, _credible backstairs_, _logical backstairs_, _demonstrable backstairs_, _deductive backstairs_, _irrefragable backstairs_, _potent backstairs_, _all-but-omnipotent backstairs_, _&c._

  Save us from the consequences of our own actions, and from the cruelfairy, Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid!' Do not you think that you would be alittle tempted then to tell what you know, laddie?"

  Tom thought so certainly. "But why do they want so to know about thebackstairs?" asked he, being a little frightened at the long words, andnot understanding them the least; as, indeed, he was not meant to do, oryou either.

  "That I shall not tell you. I never put things into little folks' headswhich are but too likely to come there of themselves. So come--now Imust bandage your eyes." So she tied the bandage on his eyes with onehand, and with the other she took it off.

  "Now," she said, "you are safe up the stairs." Tom opened his eyes verywide, and his mouth too; for he had not, as he thought, moved a singlestep. But, when he looked round him, there could be no doubt that he wassafe up the backstairs, whatsoever they may be, which no man is going totell you, for the plain reason that no man knows.

  The first thing which Tom saw was the black cedars, high and sharpagainst the rosy dawn; and St. Brandan's Isle reflected double in thestill broad silver sea. The wind sang softly in the cedars, and thewater sang among the caves: the sea-birds sang as they streamed out intothe ocean, and the land-birds as they built among the boughs; and theair was so full of song that it stirred St. Brandan and his hermits, asthey slumbered in the shade; and they moved their good old lips, andsang their morning hymn amid their dreams. But among all the songs onecame across the water more sweet and clear than all; for it was the songof a young girl's voice.

  And what was the song which she sang? Ah, my little man, I am too old tosing that song, and you too young to understand it. But have patience,and keep your eye single, and your hands clean, and you will learn someday to sing it yourself, without needing any man to teach you.

  And as Tom neared the island, there sat upon a rock the most gracefulcreature that ever was seen, looking down, with her chin upon her hand,and paddling with her feet in the water. And when they came to her shelooked up, and behold it was Ellie.

  "Oh, Miss Ellie," said he, "how you are grown!"

  "Oh, Tom," said she, "how you are grown too!"

  And no wonder; they were both quite grown up--he into a tall man, andshe into a beautiful woman.

  "Perhaps I may be grown," she said. "I have had time enough; for I havebeen sitting here waiting for you many a hundred years, till I thoughtyou were never coming."

  "Many a hundred years?" thought Tom; but he had seen so much in histravels that he had quite given up being astonished; and, indeed, hecould think of nothing but Ellie. So he stood and looked at Ellie, andEllie looked at him; and they liked the employment so much that theystood and looked for seven years more, and neither spoke nor stirred.

  At last they heard the fairy say: "Attention, children. Are you nevergoing to look at me again?"

  "We have been looking at you all this while," they said. And so theythought they had been.

  "Then look at me once more," said she.

  They looked--and both of them cried out at once, "Oh, who are you, afterall?"

  "You are our dear Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby."

  "No, you are good Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid; but you are grown quitebeautiful now!"

  "To you," said the fairy. "But look again."

  "You are Mother Carey," said Tom, in a very low, solemn voice; for hehad found out something which made him very happy, and yet frightenedhim more than all that he had ever seen.

  "But you are grown quite young again."

  "To you," said the fairy. "Look again."

  "You are the Irishwoman who met me the day I went to Harthover!"

  And when they looked she was neither of them, and yet all of them atonce.

  "My name is written in my eyes, if you have eyes to see it there."

  And they looked into her great, deep, soft eyes, and they changed againand again into every hue, as the light changes in a diamond.

  "Now read my name," said she, at last.

  And her eyes flashed, for one moment, clear, white, blazing light: butthe children could not read her name; for they were dazzled, and hidtheir faces in their hands.

  "Not yet, young things, not yet," said she, smiling; and then she turnedto Ellie.

  "You may take him home with you now on Sundays, Ellie. He has won hisspurs in the great battle, and become fit to go with you and be a man;because he has done the thing he did not like."

  So Tom went home with Ellie on Sundays, and sometimes on week-days, too;and he is now a great man of science, and can plan railroads, andsteam-engines, and electric telegraphs, and rifled guns, and so forth;and knows everything about everything, except why a hen's egg don't turninto a crocodile, and two or three other little things which no one willknow till the coming of the Cocqcigrues. And all this from what helearnt when he was a water-baby, underneath the sea.

  "And of course Tom married Ellie?"

  My dear child, what a silly notion! Don't you know that no one evermarries in a fairy tale, under the rank of a prince or a princess?

  "And Tom's dog?"

  Oh, you may see him any clear night in July; for the old dog-star was soworn out by the last three hot summers that there have been no dog-dayssince; so that they had to take him down and put Tom's dog up in hisplace. Therefore, as new brooms sweep clean, we may hope for some warmweather this year. And that is the end of my story.

  MORAL

  _And now, my dear little man, what should we learn from this parable?_

  _We should learn thirty-seven or thirty-nine things, I am not exactlysure which: but one thin
g, at least, we may learn, and that isthis--when we see efts in the pond, never to throw stones at them, orcatch them with crooked pins, or put them into vivariums withsticklebacks, that the sticklebacks may prick them in their poor littlestomachs, and make them jump out of the glass into somebody's work-box,and so come to a bad end. For these efts are nothing else but thewater-babies who are stupid and dirty, and will not learn their lessonsand keep themselves clean; and, therefore (as comparative anatomistswill tell you fifty years hence, though they are not learned enough totell you now), their skulls grow flat, their jaws grow out, and theirbrains grow small, and their tails grow long, and they lose all theirribs (which I am sure you would not like to do), and their skins growdirty and spotted, and they never get into the clear rivers, much lessinto the great wide sea, but hang about in dirty ponds, and live in themud, and eat worms, as they deserve to do._

  _But that is no reason why you should ill-use them: but only why youshould pity them, and be kind to them, and hope that some day they willwake up, and be ashamed of their nasty, dirty, lazy, stupid life, andtry to amend, and become something better once more. For, perhaps, ifthey do so, then after 379,423 years, nine months, thirteen days, twohours, and twenty-one minutes (for aught that appears to the contrary),if they work very hard and wash very hard all that time, their brainsmay grow bigger, and their jaws grow smaller, and their ribs come back,and their tails wither off, and they will turn into water-babies again,and perhaps after that into land-babies; and after that perhaps intogrown men._

  _You know they won't? Very well, I daresay you know best. But you see,some folks have a great liking for those poor little efts. They neverdid anybody any harm, or could if they tried; and their only fault is,that they do no good--any more than some thousands of their betters. Butwhat with ducks, and what with pike, and what with sticklebacks, andwhat with water-beetles, and what with naughty boys, they are "sae sairhadden doun," as the Scotsmen say, that it is a wonder how they live;and some folks can't help hoping, with good Bishop Butler, that they mayhave another chance, to make things fair and even, somewhere, somewhen,somehow._

  _Meanwhile, do you learn your lessons, and thank God that you haveplenty of cold water to wash in; and wash in it too, like a trueEnglishman. And then, if my story is not true, something better is; andif I am not quite right, still you will be, as long as you stick to hardwork and cold water._

  _But remember always, as I told you at first, that this is all a fairytale, and only fun and pretence: and, therefore, you are not to believea word of it, even if it is true._

  THE END

  _Printed in Great Britain by R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, Edinburgh._

  * * * * *

  Transcriber's Notes:

  Obvious punctuation errors repaired.

  Page 6, "piert" was retained as a spelling for "pert".

  Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net
Share this book with friends