The Water-Babies

They were very fond of music, but it was too much trouble to learn the piano or the violin; and as for dancing, that would have been too great an exertion.  So they sat on ant-hills all day long, and played on the Jews’ harp; and, if the ants bit them, why they just got up and went to the next ant-hill, till they were bitten there likewise.

And they sat under the flapdoodle-trees, and let the flapdoodle drop into their mouths; and under the vines, and squeezed the grape-juice down their throats; and, if any little pigs ran about ready roasted, crying, “Come and eat me,” as was their fashion in that country, they waited till the pigs ran against their mouths, and then took a bite, and were content, just as so many oysters would have been.

They needed no weapons, for no enemies ever came near their land; and no tools, for everything was readymade to their hand; and the stern old fairy Necessity never came near them to hunt them up, and make them use their wits, or die.

And so on, and so on, and so on, till there were never such comfortable, easy-going, happy-go-lucky people in the world.

“Well, that is a jolly life,” said Tom.

“You think so?” said the fairy.  “Do you see that great peaked mountain there behind,” said the fairy, “with smoke coming out of its top?”

“Yes.”

“And do you see all those ashes, and slag, and cinders lying about?”

“Yes.”

“Then turn over the next five hundred years, and you will see what happens next.”

And behold the mountain had blown up like a barrel of gunpowder, and then boiled over like a kettle; whereby one-third of the Doasyoulikes were blown into the air, and another third were smothered in ashes; so that there was only one-third left.

“You see,” said the fairy, “what comes of living on a burning mountain.”

“Oh, why did you not warn them?” said little Ellie.

“I did warn them all that I could.  I let the smoke come out of the mountain; and wherever there is smoke there is fire.  And I laid the ashes and cinders all about; and wherever there are cinders, cinders may be again.  But they did not like to face facts, my dears, as very few people do; and so they invented a cock-and-bull story, which, I am sure, I never told them, that the smoke was the breath of a giant, whom some gods or other had buried under the mountain; and that the cinders were what the dwarfs roasted the little pigs whole with; and other nonsense of that kind.  And, when folks are in that humour, I cannot teach them, save by the good old birch-rod.”

And then she turned over the next five hundred years: and there were the remnant of the Doasyoulikes, doing as they liked, as before.  They were too lazy to move away from the mountain; so they said, If it has blown up once, that is all the more reason that it should not blow up again.  And they were few in number: but they only said, The more the merrier, but the fewer the better fare.  However, that was not quite true; for all the flapdoodle-trees were killed by the volcano, and they had eaten all the roast pigs, who, of course, could not be expected to have little ones.  So they had to live very hard, on nuts and roots which they scratched out of the ground with sticks.  Some of them talked of sowing corn, as their ancestors used to do, before they came into the land of Readymade; but they had forgotten how to make ploughs (they had forgotten even how to make Jews’ harps by this time), and had eaten all the seed-corn which they brought out of the land of Hardwork years since; and of course it was too much trouble to go away and find more.  So they lived miserably on roots and nuts, and all the weakly little children had great stomachs, and then died.

“Why,” said Tom, “they are growing no better than savages.”

“And look how ugly they are all getting,” said Ellie.

“Yes; when people live on poor vegetables instead of roast beef and plum-pudding, their jaws grow large, and their lips grow coarse, like the poor Paddies who eat potatoes.”

And she turned over the next five hundred years.  And there they were all living up in trees, and making nests to keep off the rain.  And underneath the trees lions were prowling about.

“Why,” said Ellie, “the lions seem to have eaten a good many of them, for there are very few left now.”

“Yes,” said the fairy; “you see it was only the strongest and most active ones who could climb the trees, and so escape.”

“But what great, hulking, broad-shouldered chaps they are,” said Tom; “they are a rough lot as ever I saw.”

“Yes, they are getting very strong now; for the ladies will not marry any but the very strongest and fiercest gentlemen, who can help them up the trees out of the lions’ way.”

And she turned over the next five hundred years.  And in that they were fewer still, and stronger, and fiercer; but their feet had changed shape very oddly, for they laid hold of the branches with their great toes, as if they had been thumbs, just as a Hindoo tailor uses his toes to thread his needle.

The children were very much surprised, and asked the fairy whether that was her doing.

“Yes, and no,” she said, smiling.  “It was only those who could use their feet as well as their hands who could get a good living: or, indeed, get married; so that they got the best of everything, and starved out all the rest; and those who are left keep up a regular breed of toe-thumb-men, as a breed of short-horns, or are skye-terriers, or fancy pigeons is kept up.”

“But there is a hairy one among them,” said Ellie.

“Ah!” said the fairy, “that will be a great man in his time, and chief of all the tribe.”

And, when she turned over the next five hundred years, it was true.

For this hairy chief had had hairy children, and they hairier children still; and every one wished to marry hairy husbands, and have hairy children too; for the climate was growing so damp that none but the hairy ones could live: all the rest coughed and sneezed, and had sore throats, and went into consumptions, before they could grow up to be men and women.

Then the fairy turned over the next five hundred years.  And they were fewer still.

“Why, there is one on the ground picking up roots,” said Ellie, “and he cannot walk upright.”

No more he could; for in the same way that the shape of their feet had altered, the shape of their backs had altered also.

“Why,” cried Tom, “I declare they are all apes.”

“Something fearfully like it, poor foolish creatures,” said the fairy.  “They are grown so stupid now, that they can hardly think: for none of them have used their wits for many hundred years.  They have almost forgotten, too, how to talk.  For each stupid child forgot some of the words it heard from its stupid parents, and had not wits enough to make fresh words for itself.  Beside, they are grown so fierce and suspicious and brutal that they keep out of each other’s way, and mope and sulk in the dark forests, never hearing each other’s voice, till they have forgotten almost what speech is like.  I am afraid they will all be apes very soon, and all by doing only what they liked.”

And in the next five hundred years they were all dead and gone, by bad food and wild beasts and hunters; all except one tremendous old fellow with jaws like a jack, who stood full seven feet high; and M. Du Chaillu came up to him, and shot him, as he stood roaring and thumping his breast.  And he remembered that his ancestors had once been men, and tried to say, “Am I not a man and a brother?” but had forgotten how to use his tongue; and then he had tried to call for a doctor, but he had forgotten the word for one.  So all he said was “Ubboboo!” and died.

And that was the end of the great and jolly nation of the Doasyoulikes.  And, when Tom and Ellie came to the end of the book, they looked very sad and solemn; and they had good reason so to do, for they really fancied that the men were apes, and never thought, in their simplicity, of asking whether the creatures had hippopotamus majors in their brains or not; in which case, as you have been told already, they could not possibly have been apes, though they were more apish than the apes of all aperies.

“But could you not have saved them from becoming apes?” said little Ellie, at last.

“At first, my dear; if only they would have behaved like men, and set to work to do what they did not like.  But the longer they waited, and behaved like the dumb beasts, who only do what they like, the stupider and clumsier they grew; till at last they were past all cure, for they had thrown their own wits away.  It is such things as this that help to make me so ugly, that I know not when I shall grow fair.”

“And where are they all now?” asked Ellie.

“Exactly where they ought to be, my dear.”

“Yes!” said the fairy, solemnly, half to herself, as she closed the wonderful book.  “Folks say now that I can make beasts into men, by circumstance, and selection, and competition, and so forth.  Well, perhaps they are right; and perhaps, again, they are wrong.  That is one of the seven things which I am forbidden to tell, till the coming of the Cocqcigrues; and, at all events, it is no concern of theirs.  Whatever their ancestors were, men they are; and I advise them to behave as such, and act accordingly.  But let them recollect this, that there are two sides to every question, and a downhill as well as an uphill road; and, if I can turn beasts into men, I can, by the same laws of circumstance, and selection, and competition, turn men into beasts.  You were very near being turned into a beast once or twice, little Tom.  Indeed, if you had not made up your mind to go on this journey, and see the world, like an Englishman, I am not sure but that you would have ended as an eft in a pond.”

“Oh, dear me!” said Tom; “sooner than that, and be all over slime, I’ll go this minute, if it is to the world’s end.”

CHAPTER VII

“And Nature, the old Nurse, tookThe child upon her knee,Saying, ‘Here is a story bookThy father hath written for thee.“‘Come wander with me,’ she said,‘Into regions yet untrod,And read what is still unreadIn the Manuscripts of God.’“And he wandered away and awayWith Nature, the dear old Nurse,Who sang to him night and dayThe rhymes of the universe.”LONGFELLOW.

“Now,” said Tom, “I am ready be off, if it’s to the world’s end.”

“Ah!” said the fairy, “that is a brave, good boy.  But you must go farther than the world’s end, if you want to find Mr. Grimes; for he is at the Other-end-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 Haven, where the good whales go when they die.  And there 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 where it is at all.”

“Little boys must take the trouble to find out things for themselves, or they will never grow to be men; so that you must ask all the beasts in the 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 at once.  Good-bye, Miss Ellie; you know I am getting a big boy, and I must go out and see the world.”

“I know you must,” said Ellie; “but you will not forget me, Tom.  I shall wait here till you come.”

And she shook hands with him, and bade him good-bye.  Tom longed very much 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: but his little whirl-about of a head was so full of the notion of going out to see the world, that it forgot her in five minutes: however, though his 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, but none of them knew the way to Shiny Wall.  For why?  He was still too far down south.

Then he met a ship, far larger than he had ever seen—a gallant ocean-steamer, with a long cloud of smoke trailing behind; and he wondered how she went on without sails, and swam up to her to see.  A school of dolphins were running races round and round her, 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 his nose knocked off by the fans, and thought it time to move.  Then he watched the sailors upon deck, and the ladies, with their bonnets and parasols: but none of them could see him, because their eyes were not opened,—as, indeed, most people’s eyes are not.

At last there came out into the quarter-gallery a very pretty lady, in deep black widow’s weeds, and in her arms a baby.  She leaned over the quarter-gallery, and looked back and back toward England far away; and as 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 twiningWeave 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, that Tom could have listened to it all day.  But as she held the baby over the gallery rail, to show it the dolphins leaping and the water gurgling in the ship’s wake, lo! and behold, the baby saw Tom.

He was quite sure of that for when their eyes met, the baby smiled and held out his hands; and Tom smiled and held out his hands too; and the baby 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 the baby’s till she too caught sight of Tom, swimming about among the foam-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 a little: 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, and drew her in.  And Tom turned away northward, sad and wondering; and watched the great steamer slide away into the dusk, and the lights on board peep out one by one, and die out again, and the long bar of smoke fade 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 King of the Herrings, with a curry-comb growing out of his nose, and a sprat in his mouth for a cigar, and asked him the way to Shiny Wall; so he bolted his sprat head foremost, and said:

“If I were you, young Gentleman, I should go to the Allalonestone, and ask the last of the Gairfowl.  She is of a very ancient clan, very nearly as ancient as my own; and knows a good deal which these modern upstarts don’t, as ladies of old houses are likely to do.”

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

But just as Tom had thanked him and set off, he called after him: “Hi!  I say, can you fly?”

“I never tried,” says Tom.  “Why?”

“Because, if you can, I should advise you to say nothing to the old lady about it.  There; take a hint.  Good-bye.”

And away Tom went for seven days and seven nights due north-west, till he came to a great codbank, the like of which he never saw before.  The great cod lay below 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 ate, and ate each other, as they had done since the making of the world; for no man had come here yet to catch them, and find out how rich old Mother Carey is.

And there he saw the last of the Gairfowl, standing up on the Allalonestones all alone.  And a very grand old lady she was, full three feet high, and bolt 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 is a sure mark of high breeding), and a large 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 she fanned herself, and complained of the dreadful heat; and she kept on crooning an old song to herself, which she learnt when she was a little baby-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 not fly, she had a right to alter it.  However, it was a very fit song for her to sing, because she was a lady herself.

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

“Have you wings?  Can you fly?”

“Oh dear, no, ma’am; I should not think of such thing,” said cunning little Tom.

“Then I shall have great pleasure in talking to you, my dear.  It is quite refreshing nowadays to see anything without wings.  They must all have wings, forsooth, now, every new upstart sort of bird, and fly.  What can they want with 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.  Why, the very marrocks and dovekies have got wings, the vulgar creatures, and poor little ones enough they are; and my own cousins too, the razor-bills, who are gentlefolk 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 began fanning herself again; and then he asked if she knew the way to Shiny Wall.

“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 was fit for gentlefolk; but now, what with the heat, and what with these vulgar-winged things who fly up and down and eat everything, so that gentlepeople’s hunting is all spoilt, and one really cannot get one’s living, or hardly venture off the rock for fear of being flown against by some creature that would not have dared to come within a mile of one a thousand years ago—what was I saying?  Why, we have quite gone down in the world, my dear, and have nothing left but our honour.  And I am the last of my family.  A friend 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 which no man could climb.  Even there we had no peace; for one day, when I was quite a young girl, the land rocked, and the sea boiled, and the sky grew dark, and all the air was filled with smoke and dust, and down tumbled 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 us were dashed to pieces, and some drowned; and those who were left got away to Eldey, and the dovekies tell me they are all dead now, and that another 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 every word of it true.

“If you only had had wings!” said Tom; “then you might all have flown away too.”

“Yes, young gentleman: and if people are not gentleman and ladies, and forget that noblesse oblige, they 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 not recollected that noblesse oblige, I should not have been all alone now.”  And the poor old lady sighed.

“How was that, ma’am?”

“Why, my dear, a gentleman came hither with me, and after we had been here 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’t deny: but you see, I could not hear of such a thing, because he was my deceased sister’s husband, you see?”

“Of course not, ma’am,” said Tom; though, of course, he knew nothing about it.  “She was very much diseased, I suppose?”

“You do not understand me, my dear.  I mean, that being a lady, and with right and honourable feelings, as our house always has had, I felt it my duty to snub him, and howk 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 off the rock, and—really, it was very unfortunate, but it was not my fault—a shark coming by saw him flapping, and snapped him up. And since then I have lived all alone -

‘With a fal-lal-la-lady.’

And soon I shall be gone, my little dear, and nobody will miss me; and then 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 am sure—that is—really, my poor old brains are getting quite puzzled.  Do you know, my little dear, I am afraid, if you want to know, you must ask 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 was quite sorry for her; and for himself too, for he was at his wit’s end whom to ask.

But by there came a flock of petrels, who are Mother Carey’s own chickens; and Tom thought them much prettier than Lady Gairfowl, and so perhaps they were; for Mother Carey had had a great deal 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 to wave, lifting up their little feet behind them so daintily, and whistling to each other so tenderly, that Tom fell in love with them at once, and called them to know the way to Shiny Wall.

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

Tom was delighted, and swam off to them, after he had made his bow to the Gairfowl.  But she would not return his bow: but held herself bolt upright, 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 the next 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 in her place; and when Tom comes he will see the fishing-smacks anchored there in hundreds, from Scotland, and from Ireland, and from the Orkneys, and the Shetlands, and from all the Northern ports, full of the children of the old Norse Vikings, the masters of the sea.  And the men will be hauling in the great cod by thousands, till their hands are sore from the lines; and they will be making cod-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 in the land.  That is what Tom will see, and perhaps you and I shall see it too.  And then we shall not be sorry because we cannot get a Gairfowl to stuff, much less find gairfowl enough to drive them into stone pens and slaughter them, as the old Norsemen did, or drive them on board along a plank till the ship was victualled with them, as the old English and French rovers used to do, of whom dear old Hakluyt tells: but we shall remember what Mr. Tennyson says: how