The Island of Gold Part 26

Are they sharks? No, no. Five times as large are they as any shark ever seen. Whales? No, again. A whale lives not under the water but on it.

In the ocean wild and wide, reader, we sailors find many a strange mystery, see many a fearsome sight at night we can neither describe nor explain. And if we talk of these when we come on sh.o.r.e, you landsmen look incredulous.

But after a time the child became accustomed to scenes like these.

Indeed the sea by night appeared to have a kind of fascination for her.

In beholding it, she appeared to be looking through it into some strange land, the abode of the fairies and elves and mermaids with which her imagination had peopled it.

"Deep, deep down among the rocks," she would say to Ransey, "who lives there? Tell us, tell us."

Ransey had therefore to become the story-teller whether he would or not.

He spoke to her then of mermaid-land deep down below the dark, heaving ocean.

"Deep, deep, _deep_ down, 'Ansey?"

"Very, very deep. You see only a glimmer of light below you as you sink and sink; and this light is greenish and clear, and the farther down you get the brighter and more beautiful does it become."

"And you're not drowned?"

"No! oh, no! not if you're good. Well, then you come to--oh, ever so beautiful a country! The trees are all of sea-weed, and underneath them is the yellow, yellow sand; but here and there are beautiful rockeries, and beds of such bright and lovely flowers that they would dazzle your eyes to look upon. And the strange thing about these flowers is this, Babs, they are all alive."

"All alive? My! and can they talk to you?"

"Yes, and sing too. A sailor man who had been there told me. And he said their voices were so low and sweet that you had to put your ear quite close down before you could hear and understand; for at a little distance, he said, it was just like the tinkling of tiny silver bells.

The danger is in stopping too long, and being enchanted or slain."

"Enchanted? Whatever is that, 'Ansey?"

"Oh, you stay so long listening that you feel like in a dream, and before you know what has happened you are a flower yourself; and then, though you can see and hear everything that goes on around you, you cannot move away from the rock you are growing on, and you never get back again out of the water."

"Never, never, 'Ansey?"

"Never, never, Babs."

"But in the deep, dark, beautiful woods that you come to and enter there is many a terrible monster living--horned, sh.e.l.ly, warty monsters. And they are all waiting to catch you."

"Terrible, 'Ansey!"

"Are you afraid, dear?"

"Oh, no, 'Ansey! Be terrible some more."

"Well, there is danger all around you now, for some of these monsters are quite hidden among the sand, with only one eye protruding, and this looks like a flower because it grows on a stalk. But when you go to look at it, suddenly the sandy ground gives way under you. You are caught and killed, and know no more.

"Some of these monsters, Nelda, live in caves, and if you go too near the entrance a great, long, skinny arm is thrust out, and you are dragged into the dark and devoured."

"But I would turn quickly away out of that terrible wood, 'Ansey," said Nelda.

"Yes, that is just what the sailor did."

"And then he was saved?"

"Not yet. He came to a lovely wide patch of clear, hard sand, and he was looking down to admire it. He had taken up some to examine, and was pouring it from one hand into the other--for the sand was pure gold mixed with pearls and rubies--when all at once it began to get dark, and looking up he saw a creature that was nearly all one horrible, cruel, grinning head, with eight long arms round it. It stopped high up, just hovering, Nelda, like a hawk over a field. The sailor man was spell-bound. He could only stare up at it with starting eyes and utter a long, low, frightened moan. But from the creature above a tent was lowered, just like a huge bell, and he knew it would soon fall over him and he would be sucked up to the sea-demon's body and slowly eaten alive.

"But at that very moment, sissie, the creature uttered a terribly wild and mournful cry, and darted off through the water, which was all just like ink now."

"And the sailor was dead?"

"No; a voice that sounded like the sweetest music ever he had heard in his life was heard, and a hand grasped his.

"'Quick, quick,' she cried, for it was a mermaid, 'I will lead you into safety. Stay but another moment here and you are doomed.'

"'I'll follow you to the end of the world, miss,' said the gallant sailor.

"It did seem queer to call a mermaid miss, but Jack Reid couldn't help it.

"'You won't have to follow so far,' she said, with a sweet smile that put Jack's heart all in a flutter.

"And in five minutes' time they were out of danger, and there was Jack with his hat in his hand, which he had taken off for politeness' sake, being led along by the most charming young lady he had ever clapped eyes on.

"'Her beauty,' he said to me, 'was radiant, and her long yellow hair floated behind her in the water till I was ravished; on'y the wust of it was, that all below the waist wasn't lady at all, but ling or some other kind of fish.'

"But Jack wouldn't look at the ling part at all, only just at the mermaid's face and hair and hands.

"However dark it might have been, you could have seen to read by the light of the diamonds around her brow and neck.

"They soon came to a rock of quartz and porphyry, and next minute Jack found himself in a hall of such dazzling delight that he had to rub his eyes and pinch himself hard to make sure he was not in a dream. This was the mermaids' and sea-fairies' great ballroom.

"Tier upon tier of galleries rose up towards the beautiful, star-studded ceiling, and every gallery was filled with beautiful ladies. Jack knew that they all ended in ling, but the tails could not be seen.

"There was light and loveliness everywhere, and flowers everywhere--"

"Go on, 'Ansey. Your story is better than the Revelations, better even than 'Jack the Giant Killer.'"

"I must stop, siss, because even _I_ don't know much more, only that the music was so ravishing that Jack himself danced till he couldn't dance a bit more."

"And did he sit down?"

"No; he thought he would like a smoke, so he floated away down to the entrance to a cave at the far, far end.

"'That must be the smoking-room,' he thought to himself, so he pushed aside the curtain and floated boldly in.

"But lo and behold, this inner cave was filled with little shrivelled-up old men, uglier far in the face than toads.

"These, sissie, were the mermen, and they were all sitting on rough blocks of coral, which must have hurt them dreadful, nursing their tails. These mermen sat there swaying their yellow, wrinkled bodies back and fore, to and fro, but taking not the slightest notice of Jack.

The sailor stood staring at them; and well he might, for whatever motion one made the others all made the same. If one lifted a skeleton hand to rub its bald head, every hand was raised, every bald head was rubbed; whichever way one swayed all the rest swayed; sometimes every blear eye was directed to the ceiling, or lowered towards their tails, as the case might be; and when one gaped and yawned they all gaped and yawned, and Jack told me that he had never seen such a set of ugly, toothless mouths in his life before.

"But as _they_ wouldn't speak, Jack Reid himself--and he was a very brave sailor, sissie--did speak.