“Look here!” said Moby Dick, “if you don’t quit talking and tend to this young man, I’ll swallow you. I don’t know as that will make much difference in the universe, but it’ll make a sight of difference toyou;” and the whale opened his tremendous jaws wide and showed all his teeth.
The sea-owl took the merman into his office on the instant. He bound up his wound and attended him very carefully, for he was by no means such a fool as you would imagine from his conversation. The merman was cured before long, and made the sea-owl a handsome return for his services. The owl was just as much pleased as though the money had been a large item in the sum of the universe. He gave the merman a present of his own poems neatly bound in shark skin. He had several hundred copies in his office, for he had issued them at his own expense. They had been much praised, but some way they did not sell. The sea-owl said it was because all the people in the sea were “Philistines.” No one knew just what he meant, but when he called people by that name most all of them experienced a sort of crushed feeling, and pretended to admire the poems. Sometimes they would even buy them, but not often. Moby Dick accompanied the young merman home, and they made up a story that his hurt had been caused by a sword-fish, against whom he had run in the dark. Nobody believed him, for some way every one knew the truth, but all the members of the family’s own circle pretended to believe the tale, for they were all very high-bred people.
It had been intended that the wedding of the professor’s granddaughter should be a very brilliant affair, but they felt so unhappy about the grandson that they resolved to invite only a few intimate friends. Moby Dick, of course, was among the number. He was too huge to come into the house, but he put his nose to the window and ate ice cream with a fire shovel for a spoon. The beautiful mermaid from next door was bridesmaid, and looked most lovely. She seemed in better spirits than any one else, and never said a word about her old playmate. Toward the end of the evening she went out into the garden that was all glittering with sea phosphorescence. She swam up to Moby Dick and said it was warm weather.
“So it is, my dear,” said the whale, and looking with admiration at the bridesmaid, who wore white lace and emeralds.
“You came from Gibraltar, didn’t you?” said the mermaid, playing with her looking-glass, which the sea ladies carry as ours do their fans.
“Yes, where the bridegroom and I went to see after that bewitched brother-in-law of his,” said the whale, for he was vexed at the merman.
“Do you think he is bewitched?” said the bridesmaid.
The whale scratched his head, which is not vulgar in a whale.
“I never thought of it before,” he said; “but now you speak of it I shouldn’t wonder if it was so.”
The bridesmaid whispered in the whale’s ear.
“I wish you’d come with me to the old Witch of the Sea,” she said. “Won’t you, please?”
“I’ll go to the ends of the ocean with you, miss, if you want me to,” said Moby Dick; “but what for?”
“Oh,” said the bridesmaid, looking straight in the eye which happened to be that side of the whale’s head, “I’m a friend of the family, you know. I’m very much attached to the girls and very fond of the professor. I should like to help them if I could, and I think the witch is a wise woman, and it wouldn’t do at all for the professor to go to her in his position, but it won’t make any difference to me and you. Will you come now? It isn’t far.”
“Of course I will,” said the whale. “Just sit on my head, and I’ll take you there in no time.”
Just then the bride’s sister came out into the garden.
“Are you going, dear?” she said to the bridesmaid.
“Yes, I think I shall. Mr. Dick will see me home,” said the other mermaid.
“It’s been rather forlorn,” sighed the bride’s sister. “To think of his loving a wooden thing!”
“I suppose he had a right to if he chose,” said the mermaid a little hastily. “I’m sure it’s nothing to me.”
The bride’s sister was not angry at all. She kissed her friend good-night, and when she and Dick had gone sat down and cried a little.
“The poor dear!” she said.
Meanwhile Moby Dick and the bridesmaid were on their way to the old Witch of the Sea. She lived in a cave in a thick dark grove of seaweed. She was sitting before the door talking with a gossip of hers, one of the Salem witches, whose broomstick would carry her through the water as well as through the air. The broomstick, which was a spirited young one, was standing hitched at the door, impatiently stamping its stick part on the ground and switching the broom part about to keep off the little crabs.
“Ho! ho!” said the Salem witch. “Here’s a dainty young maiden indeed! I’m a great mind to stick a few pins in her.”
“You better hadn’t,” said Moby Dick, grimly, for he was not at all afraid of witches. “Ask the old lady any questions you like, my dear; nothing shall hurt you.”
“‘Ho! ho!’ said the Salem witch. ‘Here’s a dainty young maiden indeed!’”
“‘Ho! ho!’ said the Salem witch. ‘Here’s a dainty young maiden indeed!’”
“If you would be so good,” said the mermaid, taking off her jeweled necklace and zone and holding them out to the witches, “will you tell me where the professor’s grandson is, and whether he cannot be induced to come home?”
“And what’s your interest inhim?” said the Witch of the Sea, taking snuff and looking at her sharply.
“I am his sister’s friend,” said the mermaid, steadily; “otherwise it is not a matter of consequence to me whether he spends his life in the chase of a wooden image; but I am very fond of the professor, and I think it a very sad thing that he should be left alone in his old age.”
“Umph!” said the Salem witch. “Just the same, fish-tailed or two-legged, in the sea or out of it. There’s a girl in our town as like her as two peas.”
“Young lady,” said the Witch of the Sea, “I haven’t had any hand in this matter.” (But of course I can’t say this was true. I incline myself to think she had had her finger in the pie.) “I can’t undo the spell—not now. If you want to find your friend’s brother, you must go West toward the coast.”
“Take a bee line,” said the Salem witch.
“I don’t know what that is,” said the mermaid, who didn’t know what a bee was.
“As the crow flies,” said the Salem witch.
“Crow?” said the mermaid, perplexed.
“As the mackerel swims,” said the sea witch.
“Oh, I see,” said the mermaid. “Thank you very much. Pray keep the stones. Good-night;” and she turned to Moby Dick. “You’ll go with me?”
“To be sure,” said the whale. “That’s rather a dangerous coast for me,” he thought to himself. “But never mind; if they come after me I can sink a whaler as easy as nothing. I’ll go with her. She reminds me of a whaless I used to go to school with;” and Moby Dick looked at the little slim mermaid in her bridesmaid’s dress, and heaved a sigh about a quarter of an acre in extent. “I’m your whale,” he said, cheerfully; and away they dashed at the rate of a hundred miles an hour.
Every one in the sea knew that the professor’s grandson had fallen in love with a wooden image, and was following it about the world. The very porpoises talked about it to each other. The whole family were dreadfully mortified.
“Suppose he marries her!” said his sisters.
“We never can take her into society. A real human being would be bad enough, but a wooden one—”
“I disown him,” said the old mer professor. “I desire that no one will mention him in my hearing. If he would only come home, the poor dear boy!”
There was universal sympathy with the family. The very sophomores behaved like gentlemen for as much as a week, they were so touched with the old mer professor’s trouble.
After his friend had left him, our merman swam once more after The Sea-nymph. He felt wicked, ashamed, remorseful and very miserable, but for all that he followed his wooden goddess. He was so worn out with his long journeying and with trouble of mind that he could not keep up with the ship—he who had once beaten a fin-back whale in a race. He had lost sight of the brig before she went into the harbor of Syracuse, but he knew where she was going, and he followed in her track. It was a beautiful moonlit night. The water was all golden ripples. The ruins of the ancient town stood up white, still and solemn in the flood of silver light. The modern city did not look dirty as it does by sunlight, but white and cool and still. Only a bell rung at intervals from the tower of a convent.
On a fragment of a broken capital that lay in the water near the island shore of Ortyggia sat three lovely ladies. They looked young and beautiful as the day, but they were very, very old. They had known the place before the first Greek ship bore the first Greek colonists to Sicily. The broken capital was the last bit of a temple that had been reared in their honor ages ago, for these were the real sea-nymphs. They had come back from the unknown countries where they went when men forgot them, and the monks shattered their beautiful marble statues to replace them with waxen virgins dressed in tinsel. They were taking a journey just to see what sort of a place this world had grown to be. They were all three rather low-spirited—as much so as sea-nymphs can be.
“This is all so different,” said Arethusa. “It was hardly sadder in the great siege; I could hardly find the place where my fountain was once.”
“And nothing of Alpheus?” said Cymodoce with a little smile.
“No, thank Heaven!” said Arethusa; “the stream is there, but it has another name. I wonder what has become of the old gentleman? My dears, you can’t think what a torment he was. I really don’t know what I should have done but for Diana.”
“Maybe you would have married him,” said Panope. “He was very devoted to you.”
“Not he,” said Arethusa. “He was determined to have his own way, but he didn’t get it.”
“Sing something,” said Cymodoce. “What concerts we used to have on this very shore! Oh dear!”
Arethusa began to sing. I only wish you had been there to hear her.
“Years ago when the world was young,And this weary time was yet to be,A little bay lay the hills amongWhere the hills slope down to the sand and sea.
“Years ago when the world was young,
And this weary time was yet to be,
A little bay lay the hills among
Where the hills slope down to the sand and sea.
“The shepherd came down to the cool seashore,Fearless and tall and fair was he;Careless the cornel spear he bore,As he paced the sand along the sea.
“The shepherd came down to the cool seashore,
Fearless and tall and fair was he;
Careless the cornel spear he bore,
As he paced the sand along the sea.
“Low in the sky the red moon hung,The wind went wandering wild and free;To and fro the foam-bells swungOff from the sand into the sea.
“Low in the sky the red moon hung,
The wind went wandering wild and free;
To and fro the foam-bells swung
Off from the sand into the sea.
“‘Come up, my love,’ he called, ‘oh come!Give, oh goddess, once more to meThat fairest face in the whitening foam,On the pebbly marge ’twixt the sand and sea.’
“‘Come up, my love,’ he called, ‘oh come!
Give, oh goddess, once more to me
That fairest face in the whitening foam,
On the pebbly marge ’twixt the sand and sea.’
“The sunset faded like smouldering brand,And never the nymph again saw he;The shadow sloped from the tall headlandOff from the sand, out o’er the sea.
“The sunset faded like smouldering brand,
And never the nymph again saw he;
The shadow sloped from the tall headland
Off from the sand, out o’er the sea.
“His was a being that, born to-day,Grows old to-morrow and dies, and sheLived on for ages as fair alway,To sing on the shore ’twixt the sand and the sea.
“His was a being that, born to-day,
Grows old to-morrow and dies, and she
Lived on for ages as fair alway,
To sing on the shore ’twixt the sand and the sea.
“Yet oh, my lover, by this right hand,It was fate, not I, that was false to thee;For thine was the life of the solid land,And I was a thing of the restless sea.”
“Yet oh, my lover, by this right hand,
It was fate, not I, that was false to thee;
For thine was the life of the solid land,
And I was a thing of the restless sea.”
As Arethusa finished her song, the merman came swimming wearily toward the three nymphs. If he had been a human being, he would not have seen them, but as it was they were revealed to his eyes. He knew what they were in a moment. They were dressed like his wooden nymph, and Arethusa carried a little silver vase in her hand, but they were not like the figure-head, for they had sweet, kind faces, and could laugh and cry. The merman made a most respectful bow, for he knew how to do it.
“Well,” said Panope, kindly, “can we do anything for you?”
“Lovely nymphs,” said the merman, “have you seen a ship pass this way with one of your fair sisters on its prow?”
“One ofoursisters?” said Arethusa, a little haughtily. “That seems very unlikely.”
“I assure you she is, my lady,” said the merman, reverently but firmly. “She has her name, The Sea-nymph, written below her.”
“He has lost his wits,” said Panope, sighing.
“What a pity! Such a handsome youth!”
“You don’t mean that wooden figure-head?” cried Arethusa.
“Surely she is your sister,” said the merman, looking at Cymodoce, who was more like the wooden nymph than the other two, and whose manners were always a little stiff and prim.
“My sister!” cried Cymodoce, quite bristling. “Am I related to a log of wood?”
Here Arethusa slyly pinched Panope behind Cymodoce’s back, for the truth was Cymodoce had once been a wooden ship, and had been made into a nymph to save her from a conflagration. She never would allow, however, that this was a true story.
“No, of course there is nothing wooden about you, dear,” said Panope, soothingly. “Don’t be vexed. Let us help the poor boy if we can.”
“He’s very like a Triton I used to know,” said Arethusa, aside.
“I saw a ship pass,” said Panope, looking down at him with her kind blue eyes. “Such a big ship! Not like the ones I used to see here years ago, and it certainly had a wooden statue on the prow, but it was only a wooden image; it was not alive.”
“How strange it is,” thought the merman to himself, “that these three goddesses should be jealous of my beauty—just like three mortal mermaids.”
“Jealous of that stick indeed!” cried Cymodoce, answering his thought.
“Men!” said Arethusa. “Panope, my darling, they are just the creatures they always were in the water or out of it.”
“So it seems,” said Panope, playing in the sand with her little pink toes like a mortal girl.
“I assure you, sir,” said Cymodoce, gravely, “that you are under a serious mistake. That figure is a mere painted figure-head, quite incapable of a rational thought or instructive conversation.”
“What we admire in woman is her affections, not her intellect,” said the merman.
“Look at me!” said Arethusa; and the tall nymph stood up before him in all her immortal beauty and shook down her golden hair till it swept her ankles.
“My dear Arethusa,” said Cymodoce, “let me ask you to consider if this is quite proper?”
Panope only smiled, and Arethusa took no sort of notice.
“Look at me,” she said, “and compare me with that wooden thing. Don’t you see the difference?”
A difference there certainly was. The merman felt a cold chill go to his heart. For one instant his eyes were opened; for one instant he knew he had been worshiping a stick. Then he wouldnotsee or feel the truth.
“Farewell!” he cried, desperately; “I will follow her to the ends of the earth, whether she is alive or not;” and he swam away.
“Poor fellow!” said Arethusa.
“He looks a good deal like the pious Æneas,” said Cymodoce, who often mentioned that gentleman.
“I don’t see it,” said Panope, almost sharply. “He may be a goose, but he is not a prig. I do wish you ever could talk about any one else, Cymodoce! I am tired to death of the pious Æneas.”
“So am I,” said Arethusa; “he was a humbug if ever there was one.”
“What an expression!” said Cymodoce.
“Never mind,” said Arethusa; “suppose we do this poor merman a good turn, and get Aphrodite to make his wooden thing a live creature. Don’t you think she would do as much for wood as she did for marble?”
“We could ask her,” said Cymodoce. “I have some influence with her. I was so well acquainted with her son, the pious—”
“Oh botherhim!” said Arethusa, who had been a mountain nymph originally, and was apt to be a little brusque.
“I don’t believe she’d be good for much if she did come alive,” said Panope, looking down. “I’ve heard that match of Pygmalion’s didn’t turn out very well. I saw the marble woman once. She was pretty enough, butsostiff, and she walked as though she weighed a ton, and hadn’t a word to say for herself. And as for this wooden thing, the woodenness would always remain in her mind and manners. But we can try. Come, if you like;” and the three slipped into the sea and went swimming after the merman, but he never saw them. He had caught sight of his wooden goddess, and had no eyes for the real ones. He thought he had never seen his idol looking so beautiful, so lifelike. “Shewood!” he thought as he leaned back in the water and looked up in her face. Meanwhile, some strange influence was at work upon the wooden image. A kind of thrill ran over it. It began slowly to breathe.
“Dear me!” thought the wooden creature, for it could think a little now. “I must be coming alive! How very disagreeable! I can see—even feel. I don’t like it. It’s too much trouble. What is that thing in the sea staring at me?” and she actually bent her head and looked down.
The merman, of course, was in ecstasies, for he thought she was coming to him.
“I certainly am growing alive,” thought the wooden thing. “I won’t come alive; I was made wood, and wood I’ll stay; I won’t go out of my sphere; I’m sure it’s not proper;” and she stiffened herself as stiff as she could. “I will be wood,” she thought, and wood she was, for even a goddess can’t make a thing alive against its own will. “Yes, this is much the best way,” was the wooden image’s last thought, as the breath of life went away from her and left her more wooden than ever.
“Let it go, the stupid thing,” said Arethusa in a pet which was scarcely reasonable, as the image was wood in its nature. “Come, my dears, let us go from a world where no one cares for our gifts. Don’t cry, Panope dear. There are just as many fools in the world as ever there were, for all they pretend to be so much wiser.”
“It is strange too,” said Cymodoce, “considering how long they have had before them the example of the pious Æneas—”
“Henever lost sight of his interest,” said Panope. “I wish we could persuade that poor merman, but I know very well that the twelve great gods couldn’t do it;” and the three vanished and were seen no more.
That night there came up a terrible storm. There was wind and rain and thunder such as the merman had never heard. From far away came a thick sulphurous cloud of smoke, and in the air was a dull red glare. The land shook and trembled, for Ætna was feeding his hidden fires, filling his inmost furnaces. The gale blew fiercely from land. The Sea-nymph snapped her cable, and drove out of the harbor before the tempest. The merman followed her. By the glare of the lightning he could see that the figure stood in its old place holding out her silver vase. “What wonderful courage!” he thought, for he did not know it was nailed there. The masts went crashing into the sea. The sailors threw overboard everything they could to lighten the ship. One of them sprang forward with an axe and began to cut away the figure-head. The merman swam, balancing himself on the crest of the waves; every one was too busy to notice him; he could not hear the blows of the axe in the noise of the wind and thunder; he did not see what the sailor was doing; he saw the image quiver under the strokes of the axe, and thought that at last she was coming down to him. “Oh come, come,” he cried, swimming directly below and holding out his arms. The wooden image quivered and shook; it bent forward; the next instant the solid heavy oak fell with a plunge and struck the poor merman in its fall. He felt that he was dying, but he did not know what had hurt him. “My own love, my sea-nymph,” he murmured; and he put his arms round the figure-head that was bobbing up and down in the sea quite unconcernedly. He kissed the painted lips. Then at length he knew that his idolized nymph, for whom he had given his life, was nothing but a carved log. It was well for him that his next breath was his last.
Moby Dick went on his way, “emerging strong against the tide.” A Nantucket ship saw him as he blew, and her boats put out after him.
“Just get off a minute, my dear,” said he to the little mermaid whom he carried. She did so, and then, instead of swimming away from the boats, he put down his enormous head and went straight at them.
“The white whale!” cried the sailors; and they did not throw the harpoon, but went meekly back to the ship. They were bold enough, but they were afraid of the white whale, for Moby Dick had sunk two or three ships in his time and entirely reversed the whalers’ programme.
Moby Dick executed a huge frisk on the surface of the sea, flapped his tail on the water with a noise like thunder, and then dived down to rejoin the mermaid.
“All right, my dear,” he said, cheerfully.
“I’m so glad you are safe,” said the mermaid, patting him with her little hands.
On they went through the water, and the coast was soon in sight. It was growing dusk, and the lighthouse showed its red star over the sea. The mermaid was silent, and Moby Dick did not trouble her to talk.
Suddenly a beautiful woman appeared to them on the crest of a long rolling billow. She made no effort; she did not swim, but moved through the water by her will alone. She seemed a part of the sea, like a wave come alive.
“That is not a human being, surely,” said the mermaid, startled.
“It’s very like that—you know—that wooden thing—thatheran after,” said Moby Dick in a gigantic whisper, “only it’s alive.”
“She don’t seem as though she could ever have been wood,” said the mermaid. “She looks kind. I don’t feel as though she were that—that person. Please ask if she has seen our friend.”
“Yes; my dear child,” said Panope—for she it was—answering the mermaid’s thought, “I have seen him;” and the immortal sighed.
“His family are very anxious about him, my lady,” said the whale, who was conscious of an awe he had never known before, though he felt he could trust the Sea-Nymph.
“They need be anxious no more,” said Panope, gently and sadly.
“What has happened?” asked the mermaid, turning pale, but keeping herself very quiet.
Panope went to her, and the immortal daughter of the sea put her white arms round the mermaid and held her in a close and soft embrace.
“My dear,” she said, very gently, “your old playmate is dead.”
“‘My dear,’ she said, very gently, ‘your old playmate is dead.’”
“‘My dear,’ she said, very gently, ‘your old playmate is dead.’”
“You don’t say so, ma’am!” said Moby Dick, with a great sigh; and then he swam away to a little distance and left the mermaid to the care of the Sea-Nymph, for he was a whale of very delicate feelings.
The mermaid looked into the blue eyes of the Goddess, and felt that the countless ages of her being had but made her more wise and kind. She hid her face on the immortal maiden’s bosom.
“My sweet child,” said Panope, after a little while, “I cannot bring your friend to life—it is beyond my power—but if you will, I can give you an immortality like my own. I can carry you with me to a world where death or pain has never come, and keep you young and lovely for ever.”
The mermaid was silent a moment. Then she looked up into Panope’s face.
“You will not be angry with me?” said she.
“Angry, my poor darling!”
“Then, my friends that I have loved have all been mortal. My mother is dead, my twin brother was killed in the war, and now my old companion—and I have known him so long! I think I should rather not be so very different, but go to them when my time comes.”
Panope caressed her hair with a soft hand.
“I don’t know but you are right. Sometimes,” said the Goddess, with a sad, tired look in her eyes, “I think I would be glad to be mortal myself, except that I am glad to be a little comfort to you. I am sorry I came back. Either the world has grown a sad place, or else I had forgotten what it used to be. But I don’t know; I almost broke my heart over Prometheus when I was quite a young thing. I could have helped him take care of his beloved human race a great deal better than Asia, but he never cared anything for me. It is all over long ago. Is there nothing that I can do for you, my dear?”
The mermaid was silent a minute. Then she said:
“I think I should like to take him home to his friends. I know they would wish it should be so.”
“It shall be,” said Panope. “Wait here, and I will bring him to you. But, my dear child, you are so quiet. All the mortal women I ever knew in the old days, in the sea or out, would have torn their hair and screamed, but you are so different.”
The mermaid looked up with a little ghost of a smile, half proud, half pitiful. “I suppose it is because I was born in American waters,” she said.
“Wait but a little,” said Panope. “The whale will take care of you. He is a good creature. His great-grandfathers were pets of mine long ago. I will soon come back again;” and the Nymph was gone.
Some time after the news had come to Salem of the total loss of the brig Sea-nymph, Lucy Peabody was walking alone along the sands. She felt weary, and sat down under the shadow of a rock to rest. The sun was just setting, the west was suffused with a golden glow, the water lay, hardly rippling to a low whispering wind, a sea of fire and glass. Lucy leaned her head against the rock, and sitting there, she dreamed a dream. Along the sands toward her came old Goody Cobb, whom everybody suspected of witchcraft. She appeared so suddenly that Lucy in her dream thought she had come out of the sea.
“Ho! ho!” said Goody Cobb, with a cracked laugh; “so here is Madam Peabody’s lady daughter come out to cry over her disappointment all by herself? The man was a fool, sure enough, but I wouldn’t mind. Just let me write your name down in a little book I keep, and you shall see our fine young madam dwine away like snow in spring-time, and then we shall see—”
“You are out of your mind, Goody,” said Lucy in her dream; “but such talk as that is not safe, for there are those in town who are silly enough to believe witch stories, and you might get yourself into trouble.”
“Silly, are they!” cried Goody Cobb, growing angry. “But never mind. Just let me have your name, and we shall see what we shall see. Look at the pretty necklace I will give you;” and she drew from her pocket a chain of shining green stones and held it up before the girl’s eyes.
“I will have nothing to say to you or your gifts,” said Lucy, steadily. “Pass on your way, Goody, and leave me alone.”
“So you think yourself too good for me!” said the witch in a rage. “Let me tell you that my family is as good as yours, and better. My grandfather was a minister—ay, and a noted one—while yours was selling clams round the streets.”
It was a very odd thing that while Goody Cobb had become a witch, renounced her baptism and sold herself to the enemy of mankind, she was yet very proud of the eminent divine, her grandfather.
“I’ll be the death of you! I’ll stick pins in you, and set my imps to pinch you black and blue!” screamed Goody Cobb, with the look of a possessed woman, as she was.
Suddenly, as Lucy dreamed—so suddenly that she seemed to grow out of the air—there stood on the sand between herself and the witch a tall and beautiful woman in shining raiment of green and silver, with golden hair that fell loosely to her ankles. She gazed sternly on the witch; a divine wrath made her blue eyes awful.
“You earth-born creature!” she cried as she caught the green necklace from the old woman’s trembling hand. “This girl is a child of the ocean, and is in my care;” and Lucy dreamed that she felt glad to remember how she had been born on the voyage her mother made with her father to Calcutta. “Stay where you are for ever!” continued the stranger lady, raising her white hand with a gesture of command. “You will wreck no more ships—you, nor your sister witch.” And then as she stood Goody Cobb stiffened into stone and became a black rock.
“You need not be afraid of me, my dear,” said the dream lady to Lucy. “I never hurt any one in my life. I am only an innocent Sea-Nymph, and I am—or I was—the helper of all the sailor-folk, and your father is a bold seaman.”
Lucy dreamed that she was very much surprised, which was curious, for in a dream the more remarkable a thing is, the less it astonishes the dreamer.
“But I thought there never were any nymphs,” she said, perplexed.
The sea-maiden smiled a queer little smile—half sad, half amused.
“Do you know,” she said, “that since men left off believing in them and building temples, the gods all declare that there never were such things as human creatures, and that it was all a delusion of ours? Keep this;” and she dropped the necklace into Lucy’s lap. “It belonged to one who will not care to wear it now. Farewell;” and the goddess bent down and lightly kissed the girl’s forehead, and the next instant Lucy was alone. She woke up, as she thought, and sat still for a moment.
“What a singular dream!” she said to herself. Then she looked round, and saw a black rock standing beside her, “Was that rock there? I don’t remember it, but of course it must have been.” She rose to her feet. Something fell glittering on the sand. She picked it up. It was a long, shining necklace of green stones.
“This is very strange!” said Lucy, thoughtfully. “But I suppose I had better take them home. They must have been washed up from the sea and caught to my gown some way. How pretty they are! I wonder if they belonged to some one who is drowned?”
She put the necklace into her pocket, and turned to go home. She had gone but a little way when she met Job Chippit.
“Uncle Job,” she said, “I have found something on the sand. Do you think any one in town has lost it, or that it was washed up by the sea?”
Job examined closely the emerald necklace. “This never belonged to anyone in our town, Lucy,” he said; “most likely the tide washed it up in the last storm. Yours it is by all right if no one comes to claim it; and be keerful of it, for I expect it’s awful valuable. But what’s happened to you?”
“Why?”
“You’ve got an odd look about you, some way, but I never see you look so pretty. Has anything happened?”
“No,” said Lucy, quietly, “only I sat down to rest and fell asleep, and had a very strange dream. Good-night, Uncle Job.” From that evening Goody Cobb was never seen in Salem town.
Job Chippit continued his walk, thoughtfully whittling a little stick. Before long he overtook Master Isaac Torrey, who was walking along the shore with his head down, seeming to notice nothing but the sand at his feet. Master Torrey had quite left off his wild ways. He made no more foolish, fanciful speeches about nymphs and goddesses, and such nonsense. “Anna Jane had made a sensible man of him,” said his father-in-law. “He was greatly improved,” said every one, with the exception of Ichabod Sterns and Job Chippit.
Master Torrey had avoided the wood-carver since his marriage. His father-in-law thought it a good sign. “He had been quite too familiar with that person,” thought the colonel. But this night Master Torrey did not avoid him, though he only nodded without speaking in answer to Job’s “Good-evening,” and then the two walked on in silence.
“That’s an odd-looking thing on the beach,” said Job at last.
They went up to the dark mass Job had pointed out. There on a heap of weed, thrown up by the late storm, lay the wooden nymph, the paint almost washed away, and there, with its arms tightly clasped about her neck, lay a strange creature, half fish, half human.
“As sure as the world, it’s a merman!” said Job; “and there really are such critters, after all! Poor fellow! The human part of him was pretty good-lookin’ when he was alive. See what a dent he’s got in his head!”
“And this is the figure-head of The Sea-nymph,” said Master Torrey. “Don’t you know it?”
“To be sure! Well, it does beat all! What shall we do with the merman? I’d kind of hate to make a show of him. He’s a sort of man, and I ’spose he had his feelings anyhow. Look at the empty scabbard and the sword-belt; and he’s got a ring on his finger.”
Job bent down and tried to unfold the dead hand from its close clasp. At that moment, though it was very calm, a huge wave rose from the sea, and came thundering up the beach, covering the two men with spray. When it retreated the dead merman and the figure-head were gone, and up from the sea came a low sobbing sound.
Master Torrey and Job stood watching, surprised and startled. Another minute, and up came a second huge wave, bearing upon its crest the oaken sea-nymph. On it rolled—a mountain of water. It dashed its burden upon the jagged rocks once, twice, thrice, and strewed the shattered fragments over sea and sand. Job drew a long breath.
“Waal,” said he, “there goes the best piece of wood I ever chipped. Tell ye what, philosophy won’t explain everything. ’Tain’t best to be too rational if you want to have any insight into things inthisworld. If that wa’n’t done a-purpose, I never see a thing done so!”
They turned back and walked toward the town. Far away in the offing a whale sent up an enormous jet, a sea-gull screamed wildly above their heads.
“Going to say anything about this?” said Job at last.
“What would be the use?” said Master Torrey, sharply. “Half of them would not believe you; and who wants to set all the fools in the place chattering?”
“Not I! I’m not over-fond of answering questions. I’d rather ask ’em,” said Job. “Do you know, putting this and that together, and the story of the queer fish that hung round the ship, I’ve got a notion that poor fishy thing fell in love with that figger-head of ourn? You couldn’t expect such a critter as he was to have more sense than a landsman, and I expect the log fell on him when the brig went to pieces and killed him.”
“So much the better for him if he had given his soul to a wooden image,” said Master Torrey, bitterly. “Good-night;” and he left Job and walked slowly back to his handsome new house. Job looked after him wistfully. Just then old Ichabod came up and saluted the wood-carver.
“Do you know, Ichabod,” said Job, “that Master Torrey and I just found the figure-head of the poor Sea-nymph, all shattered to bits on the rocks? The waves brought her all this way to smash her at last.”
“I wish they had smashed her at first,” said Ichabod.
“Why?” said Job, with a curious look.
“Because,” said Ichabod, “she was an unlucky creature from the first. She was too much alive for a wooden image, and too wooden to be a live woman, much less a goddess.”
FINIS