The Water-Babies

Tom was so astonished that he never said a word but he stared with all his eyes.  And he went up to the top of the water too, and peeped out to see what would happen.

And as the creature sat in the warm bright sun, a wonderful change came over it.  It grew strong and firm; the most lovely colours began to show on its body, blue and yellow and black, spots and bars and rings; out of its back rose four great wings of bright brown gauze; and its eyes grew so large that they filled all its head, and shone like ten thousand diamonds.

“Oh, you beautiful creature!” said Tom; and he put out his hand to catch it.

But the thing whirred up into the air, and hung poised on its wings a moment, and then settled down again by Tom quite fearless.

“No!” it said, “you cannot catch me.  I am a dragon-fly now, the king of all the flies; and I shall dance in the sunshine, and hawk over the river, and catch gnats, and have a beautiful wife like myself.  I know what I shall do.  Hurrah!”  And he flew away into the air, and began catching gnats.

“Oh! come back, come back,” cried Tom, “you beautiful creature.  I have no one to play with, and I am so lonely here.  If you will but come back I will never try to catch you.”

“I don’t care whether you do or not,” said the dragon-fly; “for you can’t.  But when I have had my dinner, and looked a little about this pretty place, I will come back, and have a little chat about all I have seen in my travels.  Why, what a huge tree this is! and what huge leaves on it!”

It was only a big dock: but you know the dragon-fly had never seen any but little water-trees; starwort, and milfoil, and water-crowfoot, and such like; so it did look very big to him.  Besides, he was very short-sighted, as all dragon-flies are; and never could see a yard before his nose; any more than a great many other folks, who are not half as handsome as he.

The dragon-fly did come back, and chatted away with Tom.  He was a little conceited about his fine colours and his large wings; but you know, he had been a poor dirty ugly creature all his life before; so there were great excuses for him.  He was very fond of talking about all the wonderful things he saw in the trees and the meadows; and Tom liked to listen to him, for he had forgotten all about them.  So in a little while they became great friends.

And I am very glad to say, that Tom learned such a lesson that day, that he did not torment creatures for a long time after.  And then the caddises grew quite tame, and used to tell him strange stories about the way they built their houses, and changed their skins, and turned at last into winged flies; till Tom began to long to change his skin, and have wings like them some day.

And the trout and he made it up (for trout very soon forget if they have been frightened and hurt).  So Tom used to play with them at hare and hounds, and great fun they had; and he used to try to leap out of the water, head over heels, as they did before a shower came on; but somehow he never could manage it.  He liked most, though, to see them rising at the flies, as they sailed round and round under the shadow of the great oak, where the beetles fell flop into the water, and the green caterpillars let themselves down from the boughs by silk ropes for no reason at all; and then changed their foolish minds for no reason at all either; and hauled themselves up again into the tree, rolling up the rope in a ball between their paws; which is a very clever rope-dancer’s trick, and neither Blondin nor Leotard could do it: but why they should take so much trouble about it no one can tell; for they cannot get their living, as Blondin and Leotard do, by trying to break their necks on a string.

And very often Tom caught them just as they touched the water; and caught the alder-flies, and the caperers, and the cock-tailed duns and spinners, yellow, and brown, and claret, and gray, and gave them to his friends the trout.  Perhaps he was not quite kind to the flies; but one must do a good turn to one’s friends when one can.

And at last he gave up catching even the flies; for he made acquaintance with one by accident and found him a very merry little fellow.  And this was the way it happened; and it is all quite true.

He was basking at the top of the water one hot day in July, catching duns and feeding the trout, when he saw a new sort, a dark gray little fellow with a brown head.  He was a very little fellow indeed: but he made the most of himself, as people ought to do.  He cocked up his head, and he cocked up his wings, and he cocked up his tail, and he cocked up the two whisks at his tail-end, and, in short, he looked the cockiest little man of all little men.  And so he proved to be; for instead of getting away, he hopped upon Tom’s finger, and sat there as bold as nine tailors; and he cried out in the tiniest, shrillest, squeakiest little voice you ever heard,

“Much obliged to you, indeed; but I don’t want it yet.”

“Want what?” said Tom, quite taken aback by his impudence.

“Your leg, which you are kind enough to hold out for me to sit on.  I must just go and see after my wife for a few minutes.  Dear me! what a troublesome business a family is!” (though the idle little rogue did nothing at all, but left his poor wife to lay all the eggs by herself).  “When I come back, I shall be glad of it, if you’ll be so good as to keep it sticking out just so;” and off he flew.

Tom thought him a very cool sort of personage; and still more so, when, in five minutes he came back, and said—“Ah, you were tired waiting?  Well, your other leg will do as well.”

And he popped himself down on Tom’s knee, and began chatting away in his squeaking voice.

“So you live under the water?  It’s a low place.  I lived there for some time; and was very shabby and dirty.  But I didn’t choose that that should last.  So I turned respectable, and came up to the top, and put on this gray suit.  It’s a very business-like suit, you think, don’t you?”

“Very neat and quiet indeed,” said Tom.

“Yes, one must be quiet and neat and respectable, and all that sort of thing for a little, when one becomes a family man.  But I’m tired of it, that’s the truth.  I’ve done quite enough business, I consider, in the last week, to last me my life.  So I shall put on a ball dress, and go out and be a smart man, and see the gay world, and have a dance or two.  Why shouldn’t one be jolly if one can?”

“And what will become of your wife?”

“Oh! she is a very plain stupid creature, and that’s the truth; and thinks about nothing but eggs.  If she chooses to come, why she may; and if not, why I go without her;—and here I go.”

And, as he spoke, he turned quite pale, and then quite white.

“Why, you’re ill!” said Tom.  But he did not answer.

“You’re dead,” said Tom, looking at him as he stood on his knee as white as a ghost.

“No, I ain’t!” answered a little squeaking voice over his head.  “This is me up here, in my ball-dress; and that’s my skin.  Ha, ha! you could not do such a trick as that!”

And no more Tom could, nor Houdin, nor Robin, nor Frikell, nor all the conjurors in the world.  For the little rogue had jumped clean out of his own skin, and left it standing on Tom’s knee, eyes, wings, legs, tail, exactly as if it had been alive.

“Ha, ha!” he said, and he jerked and skipped up and down, never stopping an instant, just as if he had St. Vitus’s dance.  “Ain’t I a pretty fellow now?”

And so he was; for his body was white, and his tail orange, and his eyes all the colours of a peacock’s tail.  And what was the oddest of all, the whisks at the end of his tail had grown five times as long as they were before.

“Ah!” said he, “now I will see the gay world.  My living, won’t cost me much, for I have no mouth, you see, and no inside; so I can never be hungry nor have the stomach-ache neither.”

No more he had.  He had grown as dry and hard and empty as a quill, as such silly shallow-hearted fellows deserve to grow.

But, instead of being ashamed of his emptiness, he was quite proud of it, as a good many fine gentlemen are, and began flirting and flipping up and down, and singing -

“My wife shall dance, and I shall sing,So merrily pass the day;For I hold it for quite the wisest thing,To drive dull care away.”

And he danced up and down for three days and three nights, till he grew so tired, that he tumbled into the water, and floated down.  But what became of him Tom never knew, and he himself never minded; for Tom heard him singing to the last, as he floated down -

“To drive dull care away-ay-ay!”

And if he did not care, why nobody else cared either.

But one day Tom had a new adventure.  He was sitting on a water-lily leaf, he and his friend the dragon-fly, watching the gnats dance.  The dragon-fly had eaten as many as he wanted, and was sitting quite still and sleepy, for it was very hot and bright.  The gnats (who did not care the least for their poor brothers’ death) danced a foot over his head quite happily, and a large black fly settled within an inch of his nose, and began washing his own face and combing his hair with his paws: but the dragon-fly never stirred, and kept on chatting to Tom about the times when he lived under the water.

Suddenly, Tom heard the strangest noise up the stream; cooing, and grunting, and whining, and squeaking, as if you had put into a bag two stock-doves, nine mice, three guinea-pigs, and a blind puppy, and left them there to settle themselves and make music.

He looked up the water, and there he saw a sight as strange as the noise; a great ball rolling over and over down the stream, seeming one moment of soft brown fur, and the next of shining glass: and yet it was not a ball; for sometimes it broke up and streamed away in pieces, and then it joined again; and all the while the noise came out of it louder and louder.

Tom asked the dragon-fly what it could be: but, of course, with his short sight, he could not even see it, though it was not ten yards away.  So he took the neatest little header into the water, and started off to see for himself; and, when he came near, the ball turned out to be four or five beautiful creatures, many times larger than Tom, who were swimming about, and rolling, and diving, and twisting, and wrestling, and cuddling, and kissing and biting, and scratching, in the most charming fashion that ever was seen.  And if you don’t believe me, you may go to the Zoological Gardens (for I am afraid that you won’t see it nearer, unless, perhaps, you get up at five in the morning, and go down to Cordery’s Moor, and watch by the great withy pollard which hangs over the backwater, where the otters breed sometimes), and then say, if otters at play in the water are not the merriest, lithest, gracefullest creatures you ever saw.

But, when the biggest of them saw Tom, she darted out from the rest, and cried in the water-language sharply enough, “Quick, children, here is something to eat, indeed!” and came at poor Tom, showing such a wicked pair of eyes, and such a set of sharp teeth in a grinning mouth, that Tom, who had thought her very handsome, said to himself, Handsome is that handsome does, and slipped in between the water-lily roots as fast as he could, and then turned round and made faces at her.

“Come out,” said the wicked old otter, “or it will be worse for you.”

But Tom looked at her from between two thick roots, and shook them with all his might, making horrible faces all the while, just as he used to grin through the railings at the old women, when he lived before.  It was not quite well bred, no doubt; but you know, Tom had not finished his education yet.

“Come, away, children,” said the otter in disgust, “it is not worth eating, after all.  It is only a nasty eft, which nothing eats, not even those vulgar pike in the pond.”

“I am not an eft!” said Tom; “efts have tails.”

“You are an eft,” said the otter, very positively; “I see your two hands quite plain, and I know you have a tail.”

“I tell you I have not,” said Tom.  “Look here!” and he turned his pretty little self quite round; and, sure enough, he had no more tail than you.

The otter might have got out of it by saying that Tom was a frog: but, like a great many other people, when she had once said a thing, she stood to it, right or wrong; so she answered:

“I say you are an eft, and therefore you are, and not fit food for gentlefolk like me and my children.  You may stay there till the salmon eat you (she knew the salmon would not, but she wanted to frighten poor Tom).  Ha! ha! they will eat you, and we will eat them;” and the otter laughed such a wicked cruel laugh—as you may hear them do sometimes; and the first time that you hear it you will probably think it is bogies.

“What are salmon?” asked Tom.

“Fish, you eft, great fish, nice fish to eat.  They are the lords of the fish, and we are lords of the salmon;” and she laughed again.  “We hunt them up and down the pools, and drive them up into a corner, the silly things; they are so proud, and bully the little trout, and the minnows, till they see us coming, and then they are so meek all at once, and we catch them, but we disdain to eat them all; we just bite out their soft throats and suck their sweet juice—Oh, so good!”—(and she licked her wicked lips)—“and then throw them away, and go and catch another.  They are coming soon, children, coming soon; I can smell the rain coming up off the sea, and then hurrah for a fresh, and salmon, and plenty of eating all day long.”

And the otter grew so proud that she turned head over heels twice, and then stood upright half out of the water, grinning like a Cheshire cat.

“And where do they come from?” asked Tom, who kept himself very close, for he was considerably frightened.

“Out of the sea, eft, the great wide sea, where they might stay and be safe if they liked.  But out of the sea the silly things come, into the great river down below, and we come up to watch for them; and when they go down again we go down and follow them.  And there we fish for the bass and the pollock, and have jolly days along the shore, and toss and roll in the breakers, and sleep snug in the warm dry crags.  Ah, that is a merry life too, children, if it were not for those horrid men.”

“What are men?” asked Tom; but somehow he seemed to know before he asked.

“Two-legged things, eft: and, now I come to look at you, they are actually something like you, if you had not a tail” (she was determined that Tom should have a tail), “only a great deal bigger, worse luck for us; and they catch the fish with hooks and lines, which get into our feet sometimes, and set pots along the rocks to catch lobsters.  They speared my poor dear husband as he went out to find something for me to eat.  I was laid up among the crags then, and we were very low in the world, for the sea was so rough that no fish would come in shore.  But they speared him, poor fellow, and I saw them carrying him away upon a pole.  All, he lost his life for your sakes, my children, poor dear obedient creature that he was.”

And the otter grew so sentimental (for otters can be very sentimental when they choose, like a good many people who are both cruel and greedy, and no good to anybody at all) that she sailed solemnly away down the burn, and Tom saw her no more for that time.  And lucky it was for her that she did so; for no sooner was she gone, than down the bank came seven little rough terrier doors, snuffing and yapping, and grubbing and splashing, in full cry after the otter.  Tom hid among the water-lilies till they were gone; for he could not guess that they were the water-fairies come to help him.

But he could not help thinking of what the otter had said about the great river and the broad sea.  And, as he thought, he longed to go and see them.  He could not tell why; but the more he thought, the more he grew discontented with the narrow little stream in which he lived, and all his companions there; and wanted to get out into the wide wide world, and enjoy all the wonderful sights of which he was sure it was full.

And once he set off to go down the stream.  But the stream was very low; and when he came to the shallows he could not keep under water, for there was no water left to keep under.  So the sun burned his back and made him sick; and he went back again and lay quiet in the pool for a whole week more.

And then, on the evening of a very hot day, he saw a sight.

He had been very stupid all day, and so had the trout; for they would not move an inch to take a fly, though there were thousands on the water, but lay dozing at the bottom under the shade of the stones; and Tom lay dozing too, and was glad to cuddle their smooth cool sides, for the water was quite warm and unpleasant.

But toward evening it grew suddenly dark, and Tom looked up and saw a blanket of black clouds lying right across the valley above his head, resting on the crags right and left.  He felt not quite frightened, but very still; for everything was still.  There was not a whisper of wind, nor a chirp of a bird to be heard; and next a few great drops of rain fell plop into the water, and one hit Tom on the nose, and made him pop his head down quickly enough.

And then the thunder roared, and the lightning flashed, and leapt across Vendale and back again, from cloud to cloud, and cliff to cliff, till the very rocks in the stream seemed to shake: and Tom looked up at it through the water, and thought it the finest thing he ever saw in his life.

But out of the water he dared not put his head; for the rain came down by bucketsful, and the hail hammered like shot on the stream, and churned it into foam; and soon the stream rose, and rushed down, higher and higher, and fouler and fouler, full of beetles, and sticks; and straws, and worms, and addle-eggs, and wood-lice, and leeches, and odds and ends, and omnium-gatherums, and this, that, and the other, enough to fill nine museums.

Tom could hardly stand against the stream, and hid behind a rock.  But the trout did not; for out they rushed from among the stones, and began gobbling the beetles and leeches in the most greedy and quarrelsome way, and swimming about with great worms hanging out of their mouths, tugging and kicking to get them away from each other.

And now, by the flashes of the lightning, Tom saw a new sight—all the bottom of the stream alive with great eels, turning and twisting along, all down stream and away.  They had been hiding for weeks past in the cracks of the rocks, and in burrows in the mud; and Tom had hardly ever seen them, except now and then at night: but now they were all out, and went hurrying past him so fiercely and wildly that he was quite frightened.  And as they hurried past he could hear them say to each other, “We must run, we must run.  What a jolly thunderstorm!  Down to the sea, down to the sea!”

And then the otter came by with all her brood, twining and sweeping along as fast as the eels themselves; and she spied Tom as she came by, and said “Now is your time, eft, if you want to see the world.  Come along, children, never mind those nasty eels: we shall breakfast on salmon to-morrow.  Down to the sea, down to the sea!”

Then came a flash brighter than all the rest, and by the light of it—in the thousandth part of a second they were gone again—but he had seen them, he was certain of it—Three beautiful little white girls, with their arms twined round each other’s necks, floating down the torrent, as they sang, “Down to the sea, down to the sea!”

“Oh stay!  Wait for me!” cried Tom; but they were gone: yet he could hear their voices clear and sweet through the roar of thunder and water and wind, singing as they died away, “Down to the sea!”

“Down to the sea?” said Tom; “everything is going to the sea, and I will go too.  Good-bye, trout.”  But the trout were so busy gobbling worms that they never turned to answer him; so that Tom was spared the pain of bidding them farewell.

And now, down the rushing stream, guided by the bright flashes of the storm; past tall birch-fringed rocks, which shone out one moment as clear as day, and the next were dark as night; past dark hovers under swirling banks, from which great trout rushed out on Tom, thinking him to be good to eat, and turned back sulkily, for the fairies sent them home again with a tremendous scolding, for daring to meddle with a water-baby; on through narrow strids and roaring cataracts, where Tom was deafened and blinded for a moment by the rushing waters; along deep reaches, where the white water-lilies tossed and flapped beneath the wind and hail; past sleeping villages; under dark bridge-arches, and away and away to the sea.  And Tom could not stop, and did not care to stop; he would see the great world below, and the salmon, and the breakers, and the wide wide sea.

And when the daylight came, Tom found himself out in the salmon river.

And what sort of a river was it?  Was it like an Irish stream, winding through the brown bogs, where the wild ducks squatter up from among the white water-lilies, and the curlews flit to and fro, crying “Tullie-wheep, mind your sheep;” and Dennis tells you strange stories of the Peishtamore, the great bogy-snake which lies in the black peat pools, among the old pine-stems, and puts his head out at night to snap at the cattle as they come down to drink?—But you must not believe all that Dennis tells you, mind; for if you ask him:

“Is there a salmon here, do you think, Dennis?”

“Is it salmon, thin, your honour manes?  Salmon?  Cartloads it is of thim, thin, an’ ridgmens, shouldthering ache out of water, av’ ye’d but the luck to see thim.”

Then you fish the pool all over, and never get a rise.

“But there can’t be a salmon here, Dennis! and, if you’ll but think, if one had come up last tide, he’d be gone to the higher pools by now.”

“Shure thin, and your honour’s the thrue fisherman, and understands it all like a book.  Why, ye spake as if ye’d known the wather a thousand years!  As I said, how could there be a fish here at all, just now?”

“But you said just now they were shouldering each other out of water?”

And then Dennis will look up at you with his handsome, sly, soft, sleepy, good-natured, untrustable, Irish gray eye, and answer with the prettiest smile:

“Shure, and didn’t I think your honour would like a pleasant answer?”

So you must not trust Dennis, because he is in the habit of giving pleasant answers: but, instead of being angry with him, you must remember that he is a poor Paddy, and knows no better; so you must just burst out laughing; and then he will burst out laughing too, and slave for you, and trot about after you, and show you good sport if he can—for he is an affectionate fellow, and as fond of sport as you are—and if he can’t, tell you fibs instead, a hundred an hour; and wonder all the while why poor ould Ireland does not prosper like England and Scotland, and some other places, where folk have taken up a ridiculous fancy that honesty is the best policy.

Or was it like a Welsh salmon river, which is remarkable chiefly (at least, till this last year) for containing no salmon, as they have been all poached out by the enlightened peasantry, to prevent the Cythrawl Sassenach (which means you, my little dear, your kith and kin, and signifies much the same as the Chinese Fan Quei) from coming bothering into Wales, with good tackle, and ready money, and civilisation, and common honesty, and other like things of which the Cymry stand in no need whatsoever?

Or was it such a salmon stream as I trust you will see among the Hampshire water-meadows before your hairs are gray, under the wise new fishing-laws?—when Winchester apprentices shall covenant, as they did three hundred years ago, not to be made to eat salmon more than three days a week; and fresh-run fish shall be as plentiful under Salisbury spire as they are in Holly-hole at Christchurch; in the good time coming, when folks shall see that, of all Heaven’s gifts of food, the one to be protected most carefully is that worthy gentleman salmon, who is generous enough to go down to the sea weighing five ounces, and to come back next year weighing five pounds, without having cost the soil or the state one farthing?

Or was it like a Scotch stream, such as Arthur Clough drew in his “Bothie”:-

“Where over a ledge of graniteInto a granite bason the amber torrent descended. . . . .Beautiful there for the colour derived from green rocks under;Beautiful most of all, where beads of foam uprisingMingle their clouds of white with the delicate hue of the stillness. . . .Cliff over cliff for its sides, with rowan and pendant birch boughs.” . . .

Ah, my little man, when you are a big man, and fish such a stream as that, you will hardly care, I think, whether she be roaring down in full spate, like coffee covered with scald cream, while the fish are swirling at your fly as an oar-blade swirls in a boat-race, or flashing up the cataract like silver arrows, out of the fiercest of the foam; or whether the fall be dwindled to a single thread, and the shingle below be as white and dusty as a turnpike road, while the salmon huddle together in one dark cloud in the clear amber pool, sleeping away their time till the rain creeps back again off the sea.  You will not care much, if you have eyes and brains; for you will lay down your rod contentedly, and drink in at your eyes the beauty of that glorious place; and listen to the water-ouzel piping on the stones, and watch the yellow roes come down to drink and look up at you with their great soft trustful eyes, as much as to say, “You could not have the heart to shoot at us?”  And then, if you have sense, you will turn and talk to the great giant of a gilly who lies basking on the stone beside you.  He will tell you no fibs, my little man; for he is a Scotchman, and fears God, and not the priest; and, as you talk with him, you will be surprised more and more at his knowledge, his sense, his humour, his courtesy; and you will find out—unless you have found it out before—that a man may learn from his Bible to be a more thorough gentleman than if he had been brought up in all the drawing-rooms in London.