The Water-Babies: A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby
threshers and ice-sharks, who hunt the poor old whales. They came and
rubbed their great sides against the buoy, and lay basking in the sun
with their back-fins out of water; and winked at Tom: but he never could
get them to speak. They had eaten so many herrings that they were quite
stupid; and Tom was glad when a collier brig came by and frightened them
all away; for they did smell most horribly, certainly, and he had to
hold his nose tight as long as they were there.
And then there came by a beautiful creature, like a ribbon of pure
silver with a sharp head and very long teeth; but it seemed very sick
and sad. Sometimes it rolled helpless on its side; and then it dashed
away glittering like white fire; and then it lay sick again and
motionless.
"Where do you come from?" asked Tom. "And why are _you_ so sick and
sad?"
"I come from the warm Carolinas, and the sandbanks fringed with pines;
where the great owl-rays leap and flap, like giant bats, upon the tide.
But I wandered north and north, upon the treacherous warm gulf-stream,
till I met with the cold icebergs, afloat in the mid ocean. So I got
tangled among the icebergs, and chilled with their frozen breath. But
the water-babies helped me from among them, and set me free again. And
now I am mending every day; but I am very sick and sad; and perhaps I
shall never get home again to play with the owl-rays any more."
"Oh!" cried Tom. "And you have seen water-babies? Have you seen any near
here?"
"Yes; they helped me again last night, or I should have been eaten by a
great black porpoise."
How vexatious! The water-babies close to him, and yet he could not find
one.
And then he left the buoy, and used to go along the sands and round the
rocks, and come out in the night--like the forsaken Merman in Mr.
Arnold's beautiful, beautiful poem, which you must learn by heart some
day--and sit upon a point of rock, among the shining seaweeds, in the
low October tides, and cry and call for the water-babies; but he never
heard a voice call in return. And at last, with his fretting and crying,
he grew quite lean and thin.
But one day among the rocks he found a playfellow. It was not a
water-baby, alas! but it was a lobster; and a very distinguished lobster
he was; for he had live barnacles on his claws, which is a great mark of
distinction in lobsterdom, and no more to be bought for money than a
good conscience or the Victoria Cross.
Tom had never seen a lobster before; and he was mightily taken with this
one; for he thought him the most curious, odd, ridiculous creature he
had ever seen; and there he was not far wrong; for all the ingenious
men, and all the scientific men, and all the fanciful men, in the world,
with all the old German bogy-painters into the bargain, could never
invent, if all their wits were boiled into one, anything so curious, and
so ridiculous, as a lobster.
He had one claw knobbed and the other jagged; and Tom delighted in
watching him hold on to the seaweed with his knobbed claw, while he cut
up salads with his jagged one, and then put them into his mouth, after
smelling at them, like a monkey. And always the little barnacles threw
out their casting-nets and swept the water, and came in for their share
of whatever there was for dinner.
But Tom was most astonished to see how he fired himself off--snap! like
the leap-frogs which you make out of a goose's breast-bone. Certainly he
took the most wonderful shots, and backwards, too. For, if he wanted to
go into a narrow crack ten yards off, what do you think he did? If he
had gone in head foremost, of course he could not have turned round. So
he used to turn his tail to it, and lay his long horns, which carry his
sixth sense in their tips (and nobody knows what that sixth sense is),
straight down his back to guide him, and twist his eyes back till they
almost came out of their sockets, and then made ready, present, fire,
snap!--and away he went, pop into the hole; and peeped out and twiddled
his whiskers, as much as to say, "You couldn't do that."
Tom asked him about water-babies. "Yes," he said. He had seen them
often. But he did not think much of them. They were meddlesome little
creatures, that went about helping fish and shells which got into
scrapes. Well, for his part, he should be ashamed to be helped by little
soft creatures that had not even a shell on their backs. He had lived
quite long enough in the world to take care of himself.
He was a conceited fellow, the old lobster, and not very civil to Tom;
and you will hear how he had to alter his mind before he was done, as
conceited people generally have. But he was so funny, and Tom so lonely,
that he could not quarrel with him; and they used to sit in holes in the
rocks, and chat for hours.
And about this time there happened to Tom a very strange and important
adventure--so important, indeed, that he was very near never finding the
water-babies at all; and I am sure you would have been sorry for that.
I hope that you have not forgotten the little white lady all this while.
At least, here she comes, looking like a clean white good little
darling, as she always was, and always will be. For it befell in the
pleasant short December days, when the wind always blows from the
south-west, till Old Father Christmas comes and spreads the great white
table-cloth, ready for little boys and girls to give the birds their
Christmas dinner of crumbs--it befell (to go on) in the pleasant
December days, that Sir John was so busy hunting that nobody at home
could get a word out of him. Four days a week he hunted, and very good
sport he had; and the other two he went to the bench and the board of
guardians, and very good justice he did; and, when he got home in time,
he dined at five; for he hated this absurd new fashion of dining at
eight in the hunting season, which forces a man to make interest with
the footman for cold beef and beer as soon as he comes in, and so spoil
his appetite, and then sleep in an arm-chair in his bedroom, all stiff
and tired, for two or three hours before he can get his dinner like a
gentleman. And do you be like Sir John, my dear little man, when you are
your own master; and, if you want either to read hard or ride hard,
stick to the good old Cambridge hours of breakfast at eight and dinner
at five; by which you may get two days' work out of one. But, of course,
if you find a fox at three in the afternoon and run him till dark, and
leave off twenty miles from home, why you must wait for your dinner till
you can get it, as better men than you have done. Only see that, if you
go hungry, your horse does not; but give him his warm gruel and beer,
and take him gently home, remembering that good horses don't grow on the
hedge like blackberries.
It befell (to go on a second time) that Sir John, hunting all day, and
dining at five, fell asleep every evening, and snored so terribly that
all the windows in Harthover shook, and the soot fell down the
chimneys. Whereon My Lady, being no more able to get conversation out of
him than a song out of a dead nightingale, determined to go off and
leave him, and the doctor, and Captain Swinger the agent, to snore in
concert every evening to their hearts' content. So she started for the
seaside with all the children, in order to put herself and them into
condition by mild applications of iodine. She might as well have stayed
at home and used Parry's liquid horse-blister, for there was plenty of
it in the stables; and then she would have saved her money, and saved
the chance, also, of making all the children ill instead of well (as
hundreds are made), by taking them to some nasty smelling undrained
lodging, and then wondering how they caught scarlatina and diphtheria:
but people won't be wise enough to understand that till they are dead of
bad smells, and then it will be too late; besides you see, Sir John did
certainly snore very loud.
But where she went to nobody must know, for fear young ladies should
begin to fancy that there are water-babies there! and so hunt and howk
after them (besides raising the price of lodgings), and keep them in
aquariums, as the ladies at Pompeii (as you may see by the paintings)
used to keep Cupids in cages. But nobody ever heard that they starved
the Cupids, or let them die of dirt and neglect, as English young ladies
do by the poor sea-beasts. So nobody must know where My Lady went.
Letting water-babies die is as bad as taking singing birds' eggs; for,
though there are thousands, ay, millions, of both of them in the world,
yet there is not one too many.
Now it befell that, on the very shore, and over the very rocks, where
Tom was sitting with his friend the lobster, there walked one day the
little white lady, Ellie herself, and with her a very wise man
indeed--Professor Ptthmllnsprts.
His mother was a Dutchwoman, and therefore he was born at Curaçao (of
course you have learnt your geography, and therefore know why); and his
father a Pole, and therefore he was brought up at Petropaulowski (of
course you have learnt your modern politics, and therefore know why):
but for all that he was as thorough an Englishman as ever coveted his
neighbour's goods. And his name, as I said, was Professor Ptthmllnsprts,
which is a very ancient and noble Polish name.
He was, as I said, a very great naturalist, and chief professor of
_Necrobioneopalæonthydrochthonanthropopithekology_ in the new university
which the king of the Cannibal Islands had founded; and, being a member
of the Acclimatisation Society, he had come here to collect all the
nasty things which he could find on the coast of England, and turn them
loose round the Cannibal Islands, because they had not nasty things
enough there to eat what they left.
But he was a very worthy kind good-natured little old gentleman; and
very fond of children (for he was not the least a cannibal himself); and
very good to all the world as long as it was good to him. Only one
fault he had, which cock-robins have likewise, as you may see if you
look out of the nursery window--that, when any one else found a curious
worm, he would hop round them, and peck them, and set up his tail, and
bristle up his feathers, just as a cock-robin would; and declare that he
found the worm first; and that it was his worm; and, if not, that then
it was not a worm at all.
He had met Sir John at Scarborough, or Fleetwood, or somewhere or other
(if you don't care where, nobody else does), and had made acquaintance
with him, and become very fond of his children. Now, Sir John knew
nothing about sea-cockyolybirds, and cared less, provided the fishmonger
sent him good fish for dinner; and My Lady knew as little: but she
thought it proper that the children should know something. For in the
stupid old times, you must understand, children were taught to know one
thing, and to know it well; but in these enlightened new times they are
taught to know a little about everything, and to know it all ill; which
is a great deal pleasanter and easier, and therefore quite right.
So Ellie and he were walking on the rocks, and he was showing her about
one in ten thousand of all the beautiful and curious things which are to
be seen there. But little Ellie was not satisfied with them at all. She
liked much better to play with live children, or even with dolls, which
she could pretend were alive; and at last she said honestly, "I don't
care about all these things, because they can't play with me, or talk
to me. If there were little children now in the water, as there used to
be, and I could see them, I should like that."
"Children in the water, you strange little duck?" said the professor.
"Yes," said Ellie. "I know there used to be children in the water, and