Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men Part 19

"Don't cry, Molly! Please don't cry! I dare say the spider is there, only it's so small."

For some time Molly poked carefully here and there, but the spider was not to be found, and the contents of the aquarium were carried back to the wood.

I was very glad to see the pond again. The water-gnats were taking dimensions as usual, a blue-black beetle sat humming on the stake, and dragon-flies flitted hungrily about, like splinters of a broken rainbow; but the Water-Soldier's place was empty, and it was never refilled. He was the only specimen.

Molly was probably in the right when, after a last vain search for the scarlet spider, as Francis slowly emptied the pail, she said with a sigh,

"What makes me so very sorry is, that I don't think we ought to have 'collected' things unless we had really attended to them, and knew how to keep them alive."

FOOTNOTES:

Footnote D: Water-soldier--_Stratiotes aloides._ A handsome and rare plant, of aloe-like appearance, with a white blossom rising in the centre of its sword-leaves.

AMONG THE MERROWS.

A SKETCH OF A GREAT AQUARIUM.

I remember the time when I, and a brother who was with me, devoutly believed in a being whom we supposed to live among certain black, water-rotted, weed-grown stakes by the sea. These old wooden ruins were, I fancy, the remains of some rude pier, and amid them, when the tide was low, we used to play, and to pay fancy visits to our fancy friend.

We called her Shriny--why, I know no more than when I first read Croker's delightful story of "The Soul Cages" I knew why the Merrow whom Jack went to see below the waves was called Coomara.

My remembrance of even what we fancied about Shriny is very dim now; and as my brother was only four years old (I was eight), his is not more distinct. I know we thought of her, and talked of her, and were always eager to visit her supposed abode, and wander together amongst its rotten pillars (which, as we were so small, seemed lofty enough in our eyes), where the mussels and limpets held tightly on, and the slimy, olive-green fucus hung loosely down--a sea-ivy covering ruins made by the waves.

I have never been to the place since those days. If Shriny's palace is there now at all, I dare say I should find the stakes to be stumps, and all the vastness and mystery about them gone for ever. And yet we used to pretend to feast with her there. We served up the seed-vessels of the fucus as fish. I do not think we really ate them, we only sucked out the salt water, and tried to fancy we were enjoying the repast. Once we _began_ to eat a limpet!--Beyond that point my memory is dumb.

I wonder how we should have felt if Shriny had really appeared to us, as Coomara appeared to Jack Dogherty, and taken us down below the waves, or kept us among the stakes of her palace till the tide flooded them, and perhaps filled it with wonderful creatures and beautiful things, and floated out the dank, dripping fucus into a veil of lace above our heads; as our mother used to float out little dirty lumps of seaweed into beautiful web-like pictures when she was preserving them for her collection.

Shriny never did come, though Mr. Croker says Coomara came to Jack.

Perhaps, young readers, some of you have never read the story of the Soul Cages. It is a long one, and I am not going to repeat it here, only to say a word or two about it, for which I have a reason.

Jack Dogherty--so the story goes--had always longed to see a Merrow.

Merrow is the Irish name for seafolk; indeed, it properly means a mermaid. And Jack, you know, lived in a fairy tale, and not in lodgings at a watering-place on the south coast; so he saw his Merrow, though we never saw Shriny.

I do not think any of the after-history of the Merrow is equal to Mr.

Croker's account of his first appearance to Jack: afterwards "Old Coo"

becomes more like a tipsy old fisherman than the man-fish that he was.

The first appearance was on the coast to the northward, when "just as Jack was turning a point, he saw something, like to nothing he had ever seen before, perched upon a rock at a little distance out to sea; it looked green in the body, as well as he could discern at that distance, and he would have sworn, only the thing was impossible, that it had a c.o.c.ked-hat in its hand. Jack stood for a good half-hour, straining his eyes and wondering at it, and all the time the thing did not stir hand or foot. At last Jack's patience was quite worn out, and he gave a loud whistle and a hail, when the Merrow (for such it was) started up, put the c.o.c.ked-hat on its head, and dived down, head foremost, from the rocks."

For a long time Jack could get no nearer view of "the sea-gentleman with the c.o.c.ked-hat," but at last, one stormy day, when he had taken refuge in one of the caves along the coast, "he saw, sitting before him, a thing with green hair, long green teeth, a red nose, and pig's eyes.

It had a fish's tail, legs with scales on them, and short arms like fins. It wore no clothes, but had the c.o.c.ked-hat under its arm, and seemed engaged thinking very seriously about something."

As I copy these words--_It wore no clothes, but had the c.o.c.ked-hat under its arm, and seemed engaged thinking very seriously about something_--it seems to me that the portrait is strangely like something that I have seen. And the more I think of it, the more I am convinced that the type is familiar to me, and that, though I do not live in a fairy story, I have been among the Merrows. And further still that any one who pleases may go and see Coomara's cousins any day.

There can be no doubt of it! I have seen a Merrow--several Merrows. That unclothed, over-harnessed form is before me now; sitting motionless on a rock, "engaged thinking very seriously," till in some sudden impulse it rises, turns up its red nose, makes some sharp angular movements with head and elbows, and plunges down, with about as much grace as if some stiff, red-nosed old admiral, dressed in nothing but c.o.c.ked-hat, spectacles, telescope, and a sword between his legs, were to take a header from the quarter-deck into the sea.

I do not want to make a mystery about nothing. I should have resented it thoroughly myself when I was young. I make no pretence to have had any glimpses of fairyland. I could not see Shriny when I was eight years old, and I never shall now. Besides, no one sees fairies now-a-days. The "path to bonnie Elfland" has long been overgrown, and few and far between are the Princes who press through and wake the Beauties that sleep beyond. For compensation, the paths to Mother Nature's Wonderland are made broader, easier, and more attractive to the feet of all men, day by day. And it is Mother Nature's Merrows that I have seen--in the Crystal Palace Aquarium.

How Mr. Croker drew that picture of Coomara the Merrow, when he probably never saw a sea crayfish, a lobster, or even a prawn at home, I cannot account for, except by the divining and prophetic instincts of genius.

And when I speak of his seeing a crayfish, a lobster, or a prawn at home, I mean at their home, and not at Mr. Croker's. Two very different things for our friends the "sea-gentlemen," as to colour as well as in other ways. In his own home, for instance, a lobster is of various beautiful shades of blue and purple. In Mr. Croker's home he would be bright scarlet--from boiling! So would the prawn, and as solid as you please; who in his own home is colourless and transparent as any ghost.

Strangely beautiful those prawns are when you see them at home. And that one seems to do in the Great Aquarium; though, I suppose, it is much like seeing land beasts and birds in the Zoological Gardens--a poor imitation of their free life in their natural condition. Still, there is no other way in which you can see and come to know these wonderful "sea gentlemen" so well, unless you could go, like Jack Dogherty, to visit them at the bottom of the sea. And whilst I heartily recommend every one who has not seen the Aquarium to visit it as soon as possible, let me describe it for the benefit of those who cannot do so at present. It may also be of some little use to them hereafter to know what is most worth seeing there, and where to look for it.

No sooner have you paid your sixpence at the turnstile which admits you, than your eye is caught by what seems to be a large window in the wall, near the man who has taken your money. You look through the gla.s.s, and find yourself looking into a deep sea-pool, with low stone-grey rocks studded with sea-anemones in full bloom. There are twenty-one different species of sea-anemones in the Aquarium; but those to be seen in this particular pool are chosen from about seven of the largest kinds. The very biggest, a _Tealia cra.s.sicornis_, measures ten inches across when he spreads his pearly fingers to their full extent. "In my young days"

we called him by the familiar name of Cra.s.sy; and found him so difficult to keep in domestic captivity, that it was delightful to see him blooming and thriving as he does in Tank No. 1 of the Great Aquarium.

His squat build--low and broad--contrasts well with those tall white neighbours of his (_Dianthus plumosa_), whose faces are like a plume of snowy feathers. All the sea-anemones in this tank have settled themselves on the rocks according to their own fancy. They are of lovely shades of colour, rosy, salmon-coloured, and pearly-white.

There are more than five thousand sea-anemones of various kinds in the Aquarium; and they have an attendant, whose sole occupation is to feed them, by means of a pair of long wooden forceps.

Reluctantly breaking away from such old friends, we pa.s.s through a door into a long vault-like stone pa.s.sage or hall, down one side of which there seem to be high large windows, about as far apart as windows of a long room commonly are. Behind each of these is a sea-pool like the first one.

Take the first of the lot--Tank No. 2. It is stocked with _Serpulae_.

Sea-anemones are well-known to most people, but tube-worms are not such familiar friends; so I will try to describe this particular kind of "sea-gentlemen." The tube-worms are so called because, though they are true worms (sea-worms), they do not trust their soft bodies to the sea, as our common earth-worms trust theirs in a garden-bed, but build themselves tubes inside which they live, popping their heads out at the top now and then like a chimney-sweep pushing his brush out at the top of a tall round chimney. Now if you can fancy one of our tall round manufactory chimneys to be white instead of black, and the round chimney-sweep's brush to have lovely gay-coloured feathers all round it instead of dirty bristles, or if you can fancy the sweep letting off a monster catherine-wheel at the chimney's mouth, you may have some idea what a tube-worm's head is like when he pokes it out of his tube.

The _Serpulae_ make their tubes of chalky stuff, something like egg-sh.e.l.l; and they stick them on to anything that comes to hand down below. Those in the Great Aquarium came from Weymouth. They were dredged up with the white pipes or tubes sticking to oyster-sh.e.l.ls, old bottles, stones, and what not, like bits of maccaroni glued on to old crockery sherds. These odds and ends are overgrown, however, with weeds and zoophytes, and (like an ugly house covered by creepers) look picturesque rather than otherwise. The worms have small bristles down their bodies, which serve as feet, and help them to scramble up inside their tubes, when they wish to poke their heads out and breathe. These heads are delicate, bright-coloured plumes. Each species has its own plume of its own special shape and colour. They are only to be seen when the animal is alive. A good many little _Serpulae_ have been born in the Aquarium.

Through the next window--Tank No. 3--you may see more tube-worms, with ray-like, daisy heads, and soft muddy tubes. They are _Sabellae_.

Have you ever see a "sea-mouse"? Probably you have: preserved in a bottle. It is only like a mouse from being about the size of a mouse's body, without legs, and with a lot of rainbow-coloured hairs. You may be astonished to hear that it is cla.s.sed among the worms. There is a sea-mouse in the Great Aquarium. I did not see him; perhaps because he is given to burrowing. If he is not in one of the two tanks just named he is probably in No. 21 or No. 25. He is so handsome dead and in a bottle, that he must be gorgeous to behold alive and in a pool. You should look out for him.

It is a disappointing feature of this water wonderland that some of the "sea-gentlemen" are apt to hide, like hobbledehoy children, when visitors call. Indeed, a good many of them--such as the swimming-crabs, the burrowing-crabs, the sea-scorpions, and the eels--are night-feeders, and one cannot expect them to change their whole habits and customs to be seen of the British public. Anyhow, whether they hide from custom or caprice, they are quite safe from interference. Much happier, in this respect, than the beasts in the Zoological Gardens. One may disturb the big elephant's repose with umbrella-points, or throw buns at the brown bear, but the "sea-gentlemen" are safe in their caves, and humanity flattens its nose against the gla.s.s wall of separation in vain.

When I looked into Tank No. 5, however, there were several swimming-crabs and sea-scorpions to be seen. The sea-scorpions are fish, but bold-faced, fiery, greedy little fellows. The swimming-crabs are said to be "the largest, strongest, and _hungriest_" of English crabs.

What a thought for those they live on! Let us picture to ourselves the largest, strongest, and _hungriest_ of cannibals! Doubtless he would make short work even of the American Giant, as the swimming-crabs, by night, devour other crabs, larger but milder-tempered than themselves.

It speaks volumes for the sea-scorpions, who are small fish, that they can hold their own in the same pool with the swimming-crabs.

Tank 4 contains big spider-crabs, who sit with their knees above their heads, winking at you with their eyes and feelers; or scramble out unexpectedly from dens and caves here and there, high up in the rocky sides of the pool.

Nos. 6, 7, and 8 contain fish.

It really is sad to think how completely our ideas on the subject of cod spring from the kitchen and the fish-kettle. (As to our cod-liver oil, we know no more how much of it has anything to do with cod-fish than we can guess where our milk and port-wine come from.) Poor cod! If of a certain social standing, it's odds if we will recognize any of him but his head and shoulders. I have seen him served up in country inns with a pickled walnut in the socket of each eye; and in life, and at home, he has the attentive, inquisitive, watchful, humorous eyes common to all fishes.

Fishes remind me rather of Chinese, who are also a cold-blooded race: slow, watchful, inquisitive, acquisitive, and full of the sense of humour. There are fishes in the Great Aquarium whose faces twinkle again with quiet fun.

The cod here seemed quite as much interested in looking at us through a gla.s.s window as we were in looking at them. They are tame, and have very large appet.i.tes--so tame, and so hungry, that the fish who live with them are at a disadvantage at meal-times, and it is feared that they must be removed.

These other fish are plaice, soles, brill, turbot, and skate. The skate love to lie buried over head and ears in the sand. The faintest outline of tail or a flapping fin betrays the spot, and you long for an umbrella-poke from some Zoological-Garden-frequenting old lady, to stir the lazy creature up; but it is impossible.

Suddenly, when you are as tired of waiting as Jack was when Coomara was "engaged thinking," the fin movement becomes more distinct, a cloud of sand rises into the water, and a grey-coated skate, with two ornamental k.n.o.bs upon his tail, flaps slowly away across the pool.

Sometimes these flat-fish flap upwards to the surface, poke their noses into the other world, and then, like larks, having gone up with effort, let themselves easily down again to the ground.

As we were looking into No. 7, an ambitious little sole took into his head to climb up the rocks, in the caves of which dwell crusty crabs. By marvellously agile doubles of his flat little body, he scrambled a good way up. Then he fell, and two or three valiant efforts still proving vain, he gave it up.