The Sun's Babies Part 17

He really would not stay long.

So, forgetting his promise, this foolish baby swam back. Down went his head against the comfortable pile, and alas! there he has stayed ever since. His mother's wise words faded from his mind. He was too lazy to stir. From his head tiny tubes grew on to the wood, holding him there for life.

What a change has come over him! Tail and little growing eye and backbone, all have died away; in their place has grown the long tube with the gaily-coloured fleshy ball at its end, through which the water runs with every wave, bringing sometimes food, sometimes nothing but sand and stones. Gone are the old swimming powers, the old free life.

Gone is all chance of growing into something strong and grand and successful. He is beautiful, but he is helpless.

I wonder does he ever think of what might have been? Does he ever say, sadly: "If I had but kept moving on!"

III.--BOBBY BARNACLE'S WANDERINGS

The Barnacles lived on the rocks with the Mussels and Limpets and red Anemones. There were hundreds and thousands and millions of little sh.e.l.l-houses, set so closely together that scarcely any room was left for pathways. Twice a day the friendly waves, like busy white-capped waiters, hurried up the sh.o.r.e with a feast of tiny sea creatures in their soft, wet hands. Then, one by one, doors were carefully opened while the waiting sh.e.l.l-people took in their food, but were soon shut again, for fear of lurking enemies.

It was a quiet life, but so safe that the rocks became overcrowded.

When Bobby Barnacle and his brothers and sisters and cousins were hatched out of their little egg-cases and swam from their mother's acorn-sh.e.l.l houses, the old Barnacles were alarmed.

"Dear me!" said the very oldest. "What a swarm of you! For goodness sake don't come back here to settle after your swim. We are crowded already."

"Plenty of room in the sea!" laughed Bobby. "Come on everybody. We are not thinking of settling down yet. We are going to have a grand time first. I am sure I shall never wish to spend all my time in one place. A roving life for me!"

Headed by Bobby, the shoal of Barnacle babies set off on their travels.

They certainly did not look in the least like settling down. They swam and dived and frolicked and tumbled and whisked about in the dancing waves as if possessed by the very spirit of movement. To such atoms of energy, sitting still on a rock was plainly an impossibility. They were queer, tiny, soft-bodied creatures. Thin, delicate shields on their backs were their only sh.e.l.ls. They each had three pairs of legs, one eye, and a funny, spiky tail. As they went they ate hungrily, swallowing sea animals so tiny that scores of them would go into a small girl's thimble.

"Look out!" Bobby shouted suddenly. As he spoke he turned to the right and swam for dear life, hiding at last under a tangle of ferny seaweed.

The others were too late to save themselves. A great fish had swallowed them all in three snaps of its cruel jaws, and Bobby was left alone in the wide sea. He was badly frightened, but presently he swam out from his hiding-place and continued his travels. It was somewhat lonely, but he soon grew accustomed to that. Indeed, he began to like it. He swam and ate and whisked about in the water as cheerfully as ever, keeping his one eye well opened for possible enemies. A shoal of cousins from a sea rock met him.

"Come and play with us," they said.

"No," said Bobby; "I'm going to travel."

Out to sea he went, amongst all the wonders of the white-crested water.

Below him lay great colonies of bright corals and sponges and sea-anemones, living their simple quiet lives. Around him rushed and darted eager, busy fishes, keeping him ever on the move to evade their hungry jaws. Many a narrow escape he had, but he was so nimble that he never was caught.

As he grew, his skin and shield became too small for him. "This is most uncomfortable," he thought. Split! Skin and shield dropped off.

New ones had been growing underneath, but these at first were soft, and he had to shelter under seaweed till they hardened. To his great comfort they were soon firmer than the old ones. Several times he moulted in this way, and each time the new skin and shield came harder and stronger, making him safer from his enemies.

One day a strange thing happened. He lost his appet.i.te. "Whatever is the matter with me?" he wondered. He soon discovered. He was changing his shape. Another eye grew, and three more pairs of legs, and a shield on the front as well as the back.

"Well, I am a fine, strong fellow now," he thought. "I feel as if I could do wonders."

He swam on faster than ever. Indeed, his activity was marvellous. He seemed to shoot through the water. But, strangely enough, he still could not eat, so it is no wonder that at last he grew tired.

"I think I must settle down on something," he said. "This life is really most exhausting. And yet I don't want to sit down on a rock and stay in one place all my life. I wish I could find something moving."

Something moving came through the water, something so huge that to the tiny Barnacle its side was like the side of a world. It was a whale, but Bobby was not afraid. As it slowly lifted its great body through the waves he made his way to it and clung on with all his strength.

The whale plunged on his mighty way to colder seas, bearing his little unfelt rider with him.

"Hurrah!" said Bobby. "Now I shall still travel on, without being obliged to do my own swimming."

A more wonderful change than ever before came over him. A tiny bag of cement opened from his head and glued him to the whale's skin. Six strong sh.e.l.ls grew round him in an acorn ring, exactly like those of his mother's sh.e.l.l-house on the rock. Four more grew into a door.

When he opened the door he could shoot out his twelve curled legs and kick his food down into his mouth in the sh.e.l.l-house. So there he was, living head down and toes up on the whale, and glued so tightly that he could never fall off.

He was grown-up now. All his changes were over. His appet.i.te came back, and he went travelling easily and comfortably with the whale.

For all you or I know to the contrary, his roving life may be still going on.

IV.--LITTLE STARFISH

He floated in the depths of the cool salt sea, an egg so small as to remain unnoticed and undevoured. Later, he hatched into a queer-shaped creature, not at all like a starfish, rather like a lump of jelly, with a thick end pushed out here and there. He swam and ate, and grew larger every day. From the sea-food he ate his wonderful little body had power to draw minute particles of lime and build them into a star-shaped framework within itself. Slowly the firm star grew, spreading its rays on every side, and absorbing into itself the soft walls of his earlier body, until at last he was a starfish.

He was strangely made. His mouth was underneath the middle of his body, a small red eye lay at the tip of each ray-arm. His legs, scores of them, were small and white, and could be pushed out or drawn in at will from his ray-arms. Drawing in sea water through narrow pa.s.sages in his body, he could fill these legs and make them firm, and so crawl up the steepest rocks or creep slowly over the smooth sea-floor. When he did not wish to walk he drew the water from his legs and tucked them up inside his arms. The last foot of each ray-arm was at once his nose and finger, for by it he smelt and felt. On his back were spines, some of them snapping in the sea like scissor-blades, to keep his skin clean and free from parasites.

He roamed slowly here and there in search of food. Companies of brother starfishes went with him. They were a hungry crowd, and so numerous that soon there was very little left to eat in their valley of the sea.

"I shall travel," said Little Starfish. "Perhaps I shall find a better feeding-place."

He set off. Sometimes he swam, sometimes he floated with the waves, sometimes he dropped to the bottom and crawled over the sand or rocks.

After several days he came to land. The tide was going in; the waves were dancing gaily up the stony beach.

"Carry me, please," said Little Starfish.

He laid himself in the arms of a wave and was carried merrily up the beach and left in a pool amongst the rocks.

"This is a good feeding-place," said the wave, as she set him down.

It was indeed a good feeding-place. All the rock creatures had opened their sh.e.l.ls to feast on the myriads of tiny things brought in by the tide. The pool was awhirl with life. Shrimps darted to and fro, barnacles and limpets raised themselves from their rocks, furry-legged hermit crabs ran about under their borrowed sh.e.l.ls. Best of all, tempting rock oysters, fat and juicy, sat with their sh.e.l.ls agape, to catch their daily meal. Little Starfish's mouth fairly watered at the sweet smell of them. Pushing out his scores of white sucker-feet, he pulled himself up inch by inch to where the first one sat. As soon as the oyster felt him near, snap went the sh.e.l.l. But Little Starfish was too quick for him. One strong ray-arm was in the sh.e.l.l before the edges met, and hope was over for the oyster. Little Starfish swallowed him, and then crawled on to find another as delicious.

"So glad to find you at home," he joked, as he poked his arm into the next open sh.e.l.l.

"We'll see about that," remarked the oyster. He snapped his sh.e.l.l hard, hard. How it hurt! He was a powerful oyster, and the edges of the sh.e.l.l caught the arm in a tender spot. Crunch! went the oyster viciously, and off broke the arm in the middle. Little Starfish swam painfully away from that terrible oyster, leaving half an arm in the sh.e.l.l.

"How tiresome!" he said. "Now I shall have to give up travelling while I grow again."

He crept away into a safe hiding-place under the sea. There he grew a new half-arm, coming out again as strong as ever, but far more cautious. Many another feast he had on the oyster rocks, but never again did he hunt so recklessly.

V.--KELP

A tiny sea-weed spore loosened itself from its place in a forked branch of the mother sea-weed, whirled itself round and round in the water, and began to sink towards the sea-floor. A pa.s.sing current caught it, lifted it, and carried it far past its old home to where a cl.u.s.ter of bare rocks guarded the sh.o.r.e. Here, broken up by the rocks, the current weakened. The spore, carried into the calmer waters of a sheltered pool, eddied, trembled, and slowly sank. From the spore sprang amber-coloured rootlets, fixing it firmly to a rock. A little amber-coloured stem grew upwards through the sea, growing ever thicker and stronger as the weeks went on, till at last it reached the top.

Drawing its daily food from the nourishing sea, the plant went on from strength to strength. Amber branches grew; amber leaves, veined and thin and long, swayed with every movement of the water. Spores formed and loosed themselves, and whirled and slowly sank, to grow in turn to neighbour plants amongst the rocks.

Year after year pa.s.sed by, through winter's rains and summer's gentle, sun-kissed days, till many years had flown. From the tiny spore, which in that earlier day was borne so helplessly, had grown a mighty forest.

Great lifting, drifting trees of kelp, their roots like iron bands about the rocks, their heavy limbs upheld by rows of air-filled floats, swayed back and forth with every rolling wave. Hidden, protected by the giant boughs, what life was here! What a wonder-scene of beauty!