The Water-Babies

e, the old

d upon h

Here is a

hath writte

er with me,

gions ye

what is s

nuscripts

ndered awa

e, the dea

to him ni

s of the

GFE

m ready be off, if it

nd-of-Nowhere. You must go to Shiny Wall, and through the white gate that never was opened; and then you will come to Peacepool, and Mother Carey's Have

do not know my way to Shiny

r grow to be men; so that you must ask all the beasts in the sea and the birds in the a

etter start at once. Good-bye, Miss Ellie; you know I am

but you will not forget me, Tom.

considering she was a lady born; so he promised not to forget her: but his little whirl-about of a head was so full of the notion of g

birds in the air, but none of them knew the way to

going three feet for her one, and Tom asked them the way to Shiny Wall: but they did not know. Then he tried to find out how she moved, and at last he saw her screw, and was so delighted with it that he played under her quarter all day, till he nearly had h

ack widow's weeds, and in her arms a baby. She leaned over the quarter-gallery

from out the sw

cloud-webs athwa

s of mist on dew

ppled gauze to sha

I

within thine ow

d, O Lord, on eart

s within Thy hol

sin, and shame my he

stened to it all day. But as she held the baby over the gallery rail, to show it the dol

d held out his hands; and Tom smiled and held out his hands too; and

er eyes followed the baby's till she too caught sig

Well, perhaps it is the happiest place for them;" and waved her hand to Tom, and cried,

d, sad and wondering; and watched the great steamer slide away into the dusk, and the lights on board peep out on

ngs, with a curry-comb growing out of his nose, and a sprat in his mouth for a cigar,

he Gairfowl. She is of a very ancient clan, very nearly as ancient as my own; and knows

was a courteous old gentleman of the old school, though he was horribly ugly, and

m and set off, he called after

ied," says

you to say nothing to the old lady a

ow in tens of thousands, and gobbled shell-fish all day long; and the blue sharks roved above in hundreds, and gobbled them when they came up. So they ate, and

t upright, like some old Highland chieftainess. She had on a black velvet gown, and a white pinner and apron, and a very high bridge to her nose (which

herself, and complained of the dreadful heat; and she kept on crooning an ol

birds they s

y, and then

fal-lal

after, and the

or stone was

al-lal-l

could not fly, she had a right to alter it. However, it was a

ly, and made his bow; and th

wings? Can

uld not think of such thin

flying, and raising themselves above their proper station in life? In the days of my ancestors no birds ever thought of having wings, and did very well without; and now they all laugh at me because I keep to the good old fashion. W

and at last he did, when the old lady got out of breath, and began fan

of mine and I came and settled on this rock when we were young, to be out of the way of low people. Once we were a great nation, and spread over all the Northern Isles. But men shot us so, and knocked us on the head, and took our eggs-why, if you will believe it, they say that on the coast of Labrador the sailors used to lay a plank from the rock on board the thing called their ship, and drive us along the plank by hundreds, till we tumbled down into the ship's waist in heaps; and then, I suppose, they ate us, the nasty fellows! Well-but-what was I saying? At last, there were none of us left, except on the old Gairfowlskerry, just off the Iceland coast, up w

, and, strange as it may seem

!" said Tom; "then you mig

will find it as easy to get on in the world as other people who don't care what they do. Why, if I had

s that,

n fact, he actually proposed to me. Well, I can't blame him; I was young, and very handsome then, I don't

h, of course, he knew nothing about it.

wk him, and peck him continually, to keep him at his proper distance; and, to tell the truth, I once pecked him a little too hard, poor fellow, and he tumbled backwards

fal-lal-

ar, and nobody will miss me; and then

h is the way to Sh

r old brains are getting quite puzzled. Do you know, my little dear, I am afraid, if you

re oil; and Tom was quite sorry for her; and for h

al of fresh experience between the time that she invented the Gairfowl and the time that she invented them. They flitted along like a flock of black swallows, and hopped and skipped from wave

will show you. We are Mother Carey's own chickens, and she send

s bow to the Gairfowl. But she would not return his bow: but

or stone was l

al-lal-l

t left all alone: and the next time that Tom

liver oil and guano, and salting down the fish; and there will be a man-of-war steamer there to protect them, and a lighthouse to show them the way; and you and I, perhaps, shall go some day to the Allalonestone to the great summer sea-fair, and dredge strange creatures such as man never saw before; and we shall hear the sailors boast that it is not the worst jewel in Queen Victoria's crown, for there are eighty miles of codbank, and food for all the poor folk i

hangeth, giving

ils himself

r 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, le

waited, he saw a very curious sight. On the rabbit burrows on the shore there gathered hundreds and hundreds of hoodie-crows

every year in the North; and all their stump-orators were speechif

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, w

r, 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 offen

n vain that

d not like

t her living very

to eat them, for fea

at them, because the grouse wer

zen reas

r to death there and then, before Tom could come to help

his a scandalo

make other people do so too; so that, for any freedom of speech, thought, or action,

urned her at last into the most beautiful bird of paradise with a green velvet suit and a

bling 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 b

ed 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

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 sa

mer sky; and their cry was like ten thousand packs of hounds, and ten thousand peals of bells. Only the puffins stayed behind, and kille

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, t

ugh of the sea. Her funnel and her masts were overboard, and swayed and surged under her

y sorry indeed, and also they expected to find some salt pork; and

ark, lay a baby fast asleep; the very same baby, Tom sa

the cot out jumped a little black and tan terrier dog, and began

and struggled, for he wanted to help the baby, and did not want to throw the poor dog overboard: but as they were stru

he green water, with the baby, smiling in it, fast asleep; and he saw the fairies come up from below, and carry baby and cradle

poor lit

skin, and turned into a water-dog, and jumped and danced round Tom, and ran over the crests of the waves,

the peak of Jan Mayen's Land, standing-up like

whole flock of molly-mocks, wh

s; "we cannot help you farther north. We don't like to get among the ice

and greedy, gobbling and peeking and spluttering and fighti

young gentleman is going to Mother Carey, and if you don't at

lazy we ain't; and, as for lubbers, we're no mor

udent way (for the mollys are audacious fellows, as all whalers know),

d pleased, and said he was a goo

st over the pack, for Mother Carey's sake. We've eaten blubber enough fo

and flew off with him, laughing and joki

you jolly bird

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

of him, for he saw that he

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; an

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 ma

ew with them safe over the pack and the roaring ice

is the gate

gate," said

" cried T

tter fellows, lad, than you have found to their cost; and if there had

I to do

loe, to be sure,

turn now," said Tom; "s

d the mollys; "we knew you were o

ou come too?

, "We can't go yet, we can't go

, at the bottom of the sea, for seven days and seven nights. And yet he was not a bit frightened.

apped 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 dawdl

e, 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 exhibitio

orns. 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

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,

rest whale, and asked

in the middle,

ng in the middle of the pool, but

will find when you get to her. There she sits

es she

ea-moths, 13,846 jelly-fish no bigger than pins' heads, a string of salpae nine yards long, and forty-three little ice-crabs, who g

ts up a great whale like you i

swam away again very thankful at having escaped out of that terrible whalebone net of

rble throne. And from the foot of the throne there swum away, out and out into the sea, millions of new-born creatures, of more

ng, fitting, stitching, cobbling, basting, filing, planing, hammering, turning, polishing, mouldin

at grand blue eyes, as blue as the sea itself. Her hair was as white as the snow-for she was very very old-in

Tom, she looked

e man? It is long since I h

, and asked the way to

ourself, for you hav

I'm sure I forge

look a

r great blue eyes, he reco

not tha

n I won't trouble your ladyship an

an I am now," she said,

you were always making

uble myself to make things, my little dear.

, indeed," thought Tom.

s, and a grand answer, which she has had occasi

; no: but real live ones, which would fly, and eat, and lay eggs, and do everything that they ought; and she was so proud

er Carey

gs, if they will take time and trouble enough: but it is n

clever as all that comes to; and they will not till

Mother Carey, "you are sure you know

behold, he had fo

se you took yo

recollected; and then looked

For I can't keep looking at y

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

. "Then I shall not b

behind you, and watch carefully whatever you have passed, and especially keep your eye on the dog, who goes by instinc

obeyed her, for he had learnt always

d I will tell you a story, which will show you th

nd boasted that he was wise beforehand. The other was called Epimetheus, because he always looked behind hi

as 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 arc

d a muff, and a milksop, and a slowcoach, and a bloke, and a boodle, and so forth. A

l the gifts of the Gods. But because she had a strange box in her hand, this fanciful, forecasting, suspicious, prudential, theoretical, de

e, as every man ought, whenever he has even the chance of a good wife. And they opened the box betwee

o; all the children of the four great bogies, Se

es, F

s, Q

na, Unpa

Tight

coughs,

, Bad

, De

gers, De

all, Naughty B

at the bottom of the

bargain-a good wife, and experience, and hope: while Prometheus had just as much trouble, and a great deal more (as you will he

as good), he trod on his own nose, and tumbled down (as most deductive philosophers do), whereby he set the Thames on fire; and they have hardly put it out again yet. So he had to be

hings which would work, and go on working, too; to till and drain the ground, and to make looms, and ships, and railroads, and steam ploughs, and electric telegraphs, and all the things which you see in the Great Exhibition; and to foretell famine, and bad weather, and the price of stocks and (what is hardest of all) the

of Prometheus are the fanatics, and the theorists, and the bigots, and the bores, and the noisy windy

nderful story? And, I am happy t

he got out of Peacepool, than there came running to him all the conjurors, fortune-tellers, astrologers, prophesiers, projectors, prestigiators, as many as were in those parts (and there are too many of them everywhere), Old Mother Shipton on her broomstick, with Merlin, Thomas the Rhymer, Gerbertus, Rabanus Maurus, No

y, that he never turned his head round once all the way from Peacepool to the Other-end-of-Nowhere: but kept his eye on the dog, and let him pick out the scent, hot or cold, straight or crooked, wet or