The Water-Babies

“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 said no.  They must go first to Allfowlsness, and wait there for the great gathering of all the sea-birds, before they start for their summer breeding-places far away in the Northern Isles; and there they would be sure to find some birds which were going to Shiny Wall: but where Allfowlsness was, he must promise never to tell, lest men should go there and shoot the birds, and stuff them, and put them into stupid museums, instead of leaving them to play and breed and work in Mother Carey’s water-garden, where they ought to be.

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

And there he found them holding their great caucus, which they hold every 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 had done; how many lambs’ eyes they had picked out, and how many dead bullocks they had eaten, and how many young grouse they had swallowed whole, and how many grouse-eggs they had flown away with, stuck on the point of their bills, which is the hoodie-crow’s particularly clever feat, of which he is as proud as a gipsy is of doing the hokany-baro; and what that is, I won’t tell you.

And at last they brought out the prettiest, neatest young lady-crow that ever was seen, and set her in the middle, and all began abusing and vilifying, and rating, and bullyragging at her, because she had stolen no grouse-eggs, and had actually dared to say that she would not steal any.  So she was to be tried publicly by their laws (for the hoodies always try some offenders in their great yearly parliament).  And there she stood in the middle, in her black gown and gray hood, looking as meek 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 death there and then, before Tom could come to help her; and then flew away, very proud of what they had done.

Now, was not this a scandalous transaction?

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

But the fairies took the good crow, and gave her nine new sets of feathers running, and turned her at last into the most beautiful bird of paradise with a green velvet suit and a long tail, and sent her to eat fruit 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?—on which they all set to work, peeking and gobbling and cawing and quarrelling to their hearts’ content.  But the moment afterwards, they all threw up their bills into the air, and gave one screech; and then turned head over heels backward, and fell down dead, one hundred and twenty-three of them at once.  For why?  The fairy had told the gamekeeper in 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, in thousands and tens of thousands, blackening all the air; swans and brant geese, harlequins and eiders, harolds and garganeys, smews and goosanders, divers and loons, grebes and dovekies, auks and razor-bills, gannets and petrels, skuas and terns, with gulls beyond all naming or numbering; and they paddled and washed and splashed and combed and brushed themselves on the sand, till the shore was white with feathers; and they quacked and clucked and gabbled and chattered and screamed and whooped as they talked over matters with their friends, and settled where they were to go and breed that summer, till you might have heard them ten miles off; and lucky it was for them that there was no one 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 stones slung across the roof by bent-ropes, lest the winter gales should blow the hut right away.  But he never minded the birds nor hurt them, because they were not in season; indeed, he minded but two things in the whole world, and those were, his Bible and his grouse; for he was as good an old Scotchman as ever knit stockings on a winter’s night: only, when all the birds were going, he toddled out, and took off his cap to them, and wished them a merry journey and a safe return; and then gathered up all the 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 to Shiny Wall: but one set was going to Sutherland, and one to the Shetlands, and one to Norway, and one to Spitzbergen, and one to Iceland, and one to Greenland: but none would go to Shiny Wall.  So the good-natured petrels said that they would show him part of the way themselves, but they were only going as far as Jan Mayen’s Land; and after 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 summer sky; and their cry was like ten thousand packs of hounds, and ten thousand peals of bells.  Only the puffins stayed behind, and killed the young rabbits, and laid their eggs in the rabbit-burrows; which was rough practice, certainly; but a man must see to his own family.

And, as Tom and the petrels went north-eastward, it began to blow right hard; for the old gentleman in the gray great-coat, who looks after the big copper boiler, in the gulf of Mexico, had got behindhand with his work; so Mother Carey had sent an electric message to him for more steam; and now the steam was coming, as much in an hour as ought to have come in a week, puffing and roaring and swishing and swirling, till you could not see where the sky ended and the sea began.  But Tom and the petrels never cared, for the gale was right abaft, and away they went over 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, waterlogged in the trough of the sea.  Her funnel and her masts were overboard, and swayed and surged under her lee; her decks were swept as clean 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 very sorry indeed, and also they expected to find some salt pork; and Tom scrambled on board of her and looked round, frightened and sad.

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

He went up to it, and wanted to wake it; but behold, from under the cot out jumped a little black and tan terrier dog, and began barking and snapping 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 shove him away, and did; and he and the dog fought and struggled, for he wanted to help the baby, and did not want to throw the poor dog overboard: but as they were struggling there came a tall green sea, and walked in over the weather side of the ship, and swept them all into the waves.

“Oh, the baby, the baby!” screamed Tom: but the next moment he did not scream 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 come up 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 new water-baby in St. Brandan’s Isle.

And the poor little dog?

Why, after he had kicked and coughed a little, he sneezed so hard, that he 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 the whole way to the Other-end-of-Nowhere.

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

And there they fell in with a whole flock of molly-mocks, who were feeding on a dead whale.

“These are the fellows to show you the way,” said Mother Carey’s chickens; “we cannot help you farther north.  We don’t like to get among the ice pack, for fear it should nip our toes: but the mollys dare fly anywhere.”

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

“Come, come,” said the petrels, “you lazy greedy lubbers, this young gentleman is going to Mother Carey, and if you don’t attend on him, you won’t earn your discharge from her, you know.”

“Greedy we are,” says a great fat old molly, “but lazy we ain’t; and, as for lubbers, we’re no more lubbers than you.  Let’s have a look at the lad.”

And he flapped right into Tom’s face, and stared at him in the most impudent way (for the mollys are audacious fellows, as all whalers know), and then asked him where he hailed from, and what land he sighted last.

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

“Come along, lads,” he said to the rest, “and give this little chap a cast over the pack, for Mother Carey’s sake.  We’ve eaten blubber enough for to-day, and we’ll e’en work out a bit of our time by helping the lad.”

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 sailor knows), who hunted here, right whales and horse-whales, full hundreds of years agone.  But, because we were saucy and greedy, we were all turned into mollys, to eat whale’s blubber all our days.  But lubbers we are none, 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 of those black imps of petrels to call us so; but because they’re her grace’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 of all the birds.

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

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

But the good mollys took Tom and his dog up, and flew with them safe over the pack and the roaring ice giants, and set them down at the foot of 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, as better fellows, lad, than you have found to their cost; and if there had been, 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 a header.”

“A lucky voyage to you, lad,” said the mollys; “we knew you were one of the 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, and went on in black darkness, at the bottom of the sea, for seven days and seven nights.  And yet he was not a bit frightened.  Why should he be?  He was a brave English lad, whose business is to go out and see all the world.

And at last he saw the light, and clear clear water overhead; and up he came a thousand fathoms, among clouds of sea-moths, which fluttered round his head.  There were moths with pink heads and wings and opal bodies, that flapped about slowly; moths with brown wings that flapped about quickly; yellow shrimps that hopped and skipped most quickly of all; and jellies of all the colours in the world, that neither hopped nor skipped, but only dawdled and yawned, and would not get out of his way.  The dog snapped at them till his jaws were tired; but Tom hardly minded them at all, he was so eager to get to the top of the water, and see the pool where the good whales go.

And a very large pool it was, miles and miles across, though the air was so clear that the ice cliffs on the opposite side looked as if they were close at hand.  All round it the ice cliffs rose, in walls and spires and battlements, and caves and bridges, and stories and galleries, in which the ice-fairies live, and drive away the storms and clouds, that Mother Carey’s pool may lie calm from year’s end to year’s end.  And the sun acted policeman, and walked round outside every day, peeping just over the top of the ice wall, to see that all went right; and now and then he played conjuring tricks, or had an exhibition of fireworks, to amuse the ice-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, and stick himself in the middle of them, and wink at the fairies; and I daresay they were very much amused; for anything’s fun in the country.

And there the good whales lay, the happy sleepy beasts, upon the still oily sea.  They were all right whales, you must know, and finners, and razor-backs, and bottle-noses, and spotted sea-unicorns with long ivory horns.  But the sperm whales are such raging, ramping, roaring, rumbustious fellows, that, if Mother Carey let them in, there would be no more peace in Peacepool.  So she packs them away in a great pond by themselves at the South Pole, two hundred and sixty-three miles south-south-east of Mount Erebus, the great volcano in the ice; and there they butt each other with their ugly noses, day and night from year’s end to year’s end.

But here there were only good quiet beasts, lying about like the black hulls of sloops, and blowing every now and then jets of white steam, or sculling round with their huge mouths open, for the sea-moths to swim down their throats.  There were no threshers there to thresh their poor old backs, or sword-fish to stab their stomachs, or saw-fish to rip them up, or ice-sharks to bite lumps out of their sides, or whalers to harpoon and lance them.  They were quite safe and happy there; and all they had to do was to wait quietly in Peacepool, till Mother Carey sent for 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 one peaked iceberg: and he said so.

“That’s Mother Carey,” said the whale, “as you will find when you get to her.  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 nine yards long, and forty-three little ice-crabs, who gave each other a parting pinch all round, tucked their legs under their stomachs, and determined to die decently, like Julius Caesar.

“I suppose,” said Tom, “she cuts up a great whale like you into a whole shoal of porpoises?”

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

And, when he came near it, it took the form of the grandest old lady he had 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 the sea, millions of new-born creatures, of more shapes and colours than man ever dreamed.  And they were Mother Carey’s children, whom she makes out of the sea-water all day long.

He expected, of course—like some grown people who ought to know better—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 go to 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 the sea itself.  Her hair was as white as the snow—for she was very very old—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 very kindly.

“What do you want, my little man?  It is long since I have seen a water-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 way perfectly.

Now, was not that strange?

“Thank you, ma’am,” said Tom.  “Then I won’t trouble your ladyship any more; I hear you are very busy.”

“I am never more busy than I am now,” she said, without stirring a finger.

“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 found out how to make butterflies.  I don’t mean sham ones; no: but real live ones, which would fly, and eat, and lay eggs, and do everything that they ought; and she was so proud of her skill that she went flying straight off to the North Pole, to boast to Mother Carey how she could make butterflies.

But Mother Carey laughed.

“Know, silly child,” she said, “that any one can make things, if they will 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 that comes to; and they will not till they, too, go the journey to the Other-end-of-Nowhere.

“And now, my pretty little man,” said Mother Carey, “you are sure you know 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, and forgot in an instant.

“But what am I to do, ma’am?  For I can’t keep looking at you when I am somewhere else.”

“You must do without me, as most people have to do, for nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths of their lives; and look at the dog instead; for he knows the way well enough, and will not forget it.  Besides, you may meet some very queer-tempered people there, who will not let you pass without this passport of mine, which you must hang round your neck and take care of; and, of course, as the dog will always go behind you, you must 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 before you, and be certain to go wrong; but, if you look behind you, and watch carefully whatever you have passed, and especially keep your eye on the dog, who goes by instinct, and therefore can’t go wrong, then you will know what is coming next, as plainly as if you saw it in a looking-glass.”

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

“So it is, my dear child,” said Mother Carey; “and I will tell you a story, which will show you that I am perfectly right, as it is my custom to be.

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

“Well, Prometheus was a very clever fellow, of course, and invented all sorts of wonderful things.  But, unfortunately, when they were set to work, to work was just what they would not do: wherefore very little has come of them, and very little is left of them; and now nobody knows what they were, save a few archaeological old gentlemen who scratch in queer corners, 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 men for a clod, and a muff, and a milksop, and a slowcoach, and a bloke, and a boodle, and so forth.  And very little he did, for many years: but what he did, he never had to do over again.

“And what happened at last?  There came to the two brothers the most beautiful creature that ever was seen, Pandora by name; which means, All the 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 was going to happen, would have nothing to do with pretty Pandora and her box.

“But Epimetheus took her and it, as he took everything that came; and married her for better for worse, as every man ought, whenever he has even 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 could it have been to them?

“And out flew all the ills which flesh is heir to; all the children of the four great bogies, Self-will, Ignorance, Fear, and Dirt—for instance:

Measles,

Monks,

Scarlatina,

Idols,

Hooping-coughs,

Popes,

Wars,

Peacemongers,

Famines,

Quacks,

Unpaid bills,

Tight stays,

Potatoes,

Bad Wine,

Despots,

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 this world: but he got the three best things in the world into the bargain—a good wife, and experience, and hope: while Prometheus had just as much trouble, 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 spider spins her web out of her stomach.