so the salmon went up, after tom had warned them of the wicked old otter; and tom went down, but slowly and cautiously, coasting along the shore. he was many days about it, for it was many miles down to the sea; and perhaps he would never have found his way, if the fairies had not guided him, without his seeing their fair faces, or feeling their gentle hands.

and, as he went, he had a very strange adventure. it was a clear still september night, and the moon shone so brightly down through the water, that he could not sleep, though he shut his eyes as tight as possible. so at last he came up to the top, and sat upon a little point of rock, and looked up at the broad yellow moon, and wondered what she was, and thought that she looked at him. and he watched the moonlight on the rippling river, and the black heads of the firs, and the silver-frosted lawns, and listened to the owl's hoot, and the snipe's bleat, and the fox's bark, and the otter's laugh; and smelt the soft perfume of the birches, and the wafts of heather honey off the grouse moor far above; and felt very happy, though he could not well tell why. you, of course, would have been very cold sitting there on a september night, without the least bit of clothes on your wet back; but tom was a water-baby, and therefore felt cold no more than a fish.

suddenly, he saw a beautiful sight. a bright red light moved along the river-side, and threw down into the water a long tap-root of flame. tom, curious little rogue that he was, must needs go and see what it was; so he swam to the shore, and met the light as it stopped over a shallow run at the edge of a low rock.

and there, underneath the light, lay five or six great salmon, looking up at the flame with their great goggle eyes, and wagging their tails, as if they were very much pleased at it.

tom came to the top, to look at this wonderful light nearer, and made a splash.

and he heard a voice say:

"there was a fish rose."

he did not know what the words meant: but he seemed to know the sound of them, and to know the voice which spoke them; and he saw on the bank three great two-legged creatures, one of whom held the light, flaring and sputtering, and another a long pole. and he knew that they were men, and was frightened, and crept into a hole in the rock, from which he could see what went on.

the man with the torch bent down over the water, and looked earnestly in; and then he said:

"tak' that muckle fellow, lad; he's ower fifteen punds; and haud your hand steady."

tom felt that there was some danger coming, and longed to warn the foolish salmon, who kept staring up at the light as if he was bewitched. but before he could make up his mind, down came the pole through the water; there was a fearful splash and struggle, and tom saw that the poor salmon was speared right through, and was lifted out of the water.

and then, from behind, there sprang on these three men three other men; and there were shouts, and blows, and words which tom recollected to have heard before; and he shuddered and turned sick at them now, for he felt somehow that they were strange, and ugly, and wrong, and horrible. and it all began to come back to him. they were men; and they were fighting; savage, desperate, up-and-down fighting, such as tom had seen too many times before.

and he stopped his little ears, and longed to swim away; and was very glad that he was a water-baby, and had nothing to do any more with horrid dirty men, with foul clothes on their backs, and foul words on their lips; but he dared not stir out of his hole: while the rock shook over his head with the trampling and struggling of the keepers and the poachers.

all of a sudden there was a tremendous splash, and a frightful flash, and a hissing, and all was still.

for into the water, close to tom, fell one of the men; he who held the light in his hand. into the swift river he sank, and rolled over and over in the current. tom heard the men above run along, seemingly looking for him; but he drifted down into the deep hole below, and there lay quite still, and they could not find him.

tom waited a long time, till all was quiet; and then he peeped out, and saw the man lying. at last he screwed up his courage and swam down to him. "perhaps," he thought, "the water has made him fall asleep, as it did me."

then he went nearer. he grew more and more curious, he could not tell why. he must go and look at him. he would go very quietly, of course; so he swam round and round him, closer and closer; and, as he did not stir, at last he came quite close and looked him in the face.

the moon shone so bright that tom could see every feature; and, as he saw, he recollected, bit by bit, it was his old master, grimes.

tom turned tail, and swam away as fast as he could.

"oh dear me!" he thought, "now he will turn into a water-baby. what a nasty troublesome one he will be! and perhaps he will find me out, and beat me again."

so he went up the river again a little way, and lay there the rest of the night under an alder root; but, when morning came, he longed to go down again to the big pool, and see whether mr. grimes had turned into a water-baby yet.

so he went very carefully, peeping round all the rocks, and hiding under all the roots. mr. grimes lay there still; he had not turned into a water-baby. in the afternoon tom went back again. he could not rest till he had found out what had become of mr. grimes. but this time mr. grimes was gone; and tom made up his mind that he was turned into a water-baby.

he might have made himself easy, poor little man; mr. grimes did not turn into a water-baby, or anything like one at all. but he did not make himself easy; and a long time he was fearful lest he should meet grimes suddenly in some deep pool. he could not know that the fairies had carried him away, and put him, where they put everything which falls into the water, exactly where it ought to be. but, do you know, what had happened to mr. grimes had such an effect on him that he never poached salmon any more. and it is quite certain that, when a man becomes a confirmed poacher, the only way to cure him is to put him under water for twenty-four hours like grimes.

then tom went on down, for he was afraid of staying near grimes: and as he went, all the vale looked sad. the red and yellow leaves showered down into the river; the flies and beetles were all dead and gone; the chill autumn fog lay low upon the hills, and sometimes spread itself so thickly on the river that he could not see his way. but he felt his way instead, following the flow of the stream, day after day, past great bridges, past boats and barges, past the great town, with its wharfs, and mills, and tall smoking chimneys, and ships which rode at anchor in the stream; and now and then he ran against their hawsers, and wondered what they were, and peeped out, and saw the sailors lounging on board smoking their pipes; and ducked under again, for he was terribly afraid of being caught by man and turned into a chimney-sweep once more. he did not know that the fairies were close to him always, shutting the sailors' eyes lest they should see him, and turning him aside from millraces, and sewer-mouths, and all foul and dangerous things. poor little fellow, it was a dreary journey for him; and more than once he longed to be back in vendale, playing with the trout in the bright summer sun. but it could not be. what has been once can never come over again. and people can be little babies, even water-babies, only once in their lives.

besides, people who make up their minds to go and see the world, as tom did, must needs find it a weary journey. lucky for them if they do not lose heart and stop half-way, instead of going on bravely to the end as tom did. for then they will remain neither boys nor men, neither fish, flesh, nor good red-herring: having learnt a great deal too much, and yet not enough; and sown their wild oats, without having the advantage of reaping them.

but tom was always a brave, determined, little english bull-dog, who never knew when he was beaten; and on and on he held, till he saw a long way off the red buoy through the fog. and then he found, to his surprise, the stream turned round, and running up inland.

it was the tide, of course: but tom knew nothing of the tide. he only knew that in a minute more the water, which had been fresh, turned salt all round him. and then there came a change over him. he felt as strong, and light, and fresh, as if his veins had run champagne; and gave, he did not know why, three skips out of the water, a yard high, and head over heels, just as the salmon do when they first touch the noble rich salt water, which, as some wise men tell us, is the mother of all living things.

he did not care now for the tide being against him. the red buoy was in sight, dancing in the open sea; and to the buoy he would go, and to it he went. he passed great shoals of bass and mullet, leaping and rushing in after the shrimps, but he never heeded them, or they him; and once he passed a great black shining seal, who was coming in after the mullet. the seal put his head and shoulders out of water, and stared at him, looking exactly like a fat old greasy negro with a gray pate. and tom, instead of being frightened, said, "how d'ye do, sir; what a beautiful place the sea is!" and the old seal, instead of trying to bite him, looked at him with his soft sleepy winking eyes, and said, "good tide to you, my little man; are you looking for your brothers and sisters? i passed them all at play outside."

"oh, then," said tom, "i shall have playfellows at last," and he swam on to the buoy, and got upon it (for he was quite out of breath) and sat there, and looked round for water-babies: but there were none to be seen.

the sea-breeze came in freshly with the tide and blew the fog away; and the little waves danced for joy around the buoy, and the old buoy danced with them. the shadows of the clouds ran races over the bright blue bay, and yet never caught each other up; and the breakers plunged merrily upon the wide white sands, and jumped up over the rocks, to see what the green fields inside were like, and tumbled down and broke themselves all to pieces, and never minded it a bit, but mended themselves and jumped up again. and the terns hovered over tom like huge white dragon-flies with black heads, and the gulls laughed like girls at play, and the sea-pies, with their red bills and legs, flew to and fro from shore to shore, and whistled sweet and wild. and tom looked and looked, and listened; and he would have been very happy, if he could only have seen the water-babies. then when the tide turned, he left the buoy, and swam round and round in search of them: but in vain. sometimes he thought he heard them laughing: but it was only the laughter of the ripples. and sometimes he thought he saw them at the bottom: but it was only white and pink shells. and once he was sure he had found one, for he saw two bright eyes peeping out of the sand. so he dived down, and began scraping the sand away, and cried, "don't hide; i do want some one to play with so much!" and out jumped a great turbot with his ugly eyes and mouth all awry, and flopped away along the bottom, knocking poor tom over. and he sat down at the bottom of the sea, and cried salt tears from sheer disappointment.

to have come all this way, and faced so many dangers, and yet to find no water-babies! how hard! well, it did seem hard: but people, even little babies, cannot have all they want without waiting for it, and working for it too, my little man, as you will find out some day.

and tom sat upon the buoy long days, long weeks, looking out to sea, and wondering when the water-babies would come back; and yet they never came.

then he began to ask all the strange things which came in out of the sea if they had seen any; and some said "yes," and some said nothing at all.

he asked the bass and the pollock; but they were so greedy after the shrimps that they did not care to answer him a word.

then there came in a whole fleet of purple sea-snails, floating along, each on a sponge full of foam, and tom said, "where do you come from, you pretty creatures? and have you seen the water-babies?"

and the sea-snails answered, "whence we come we know not; and whither we are going, who can tell? we float out our life in the mid-ocean, with the warm sunshine above our heads, and the warm gulf-stream below; and that is enough for us. yes; perhaps we have seen the water-babies. we have seen many strange things as we sailed along." and they floated away, the happy stupid things, and all went ashore upon the sands.

then there came in a great lazy sunfish, as big as a fat pig cut in half; and he seemed to have been cut in half too, and squeezed in a clothes-press till he was flat; but to all his big body and big fins he had only a little rabbit's mouth, no bigger than tom's; and, when tom questioned him, he answered in a little squeaky feeble voice:

"i'm sure i don't know; i've lost my way. i meant to go to the chesapeake, and i'm afraid i've got wrong somehow. dear me! it was all by following that pleasant warm water. i'm sure i've lost my way."

and, when tom asked him again, he could only answer, "i've lost my way. don't talk to me; i want to think."

but, like a good many other people, the more he tried to think the less he could think; and tom saw him blundering about all day, till the coast-guardsmen saw his big fin above the water, and rowed out, and struck a boat-hook into him, and took him away. they took him up to the town and showed him for a penny a head, and made a good day's work of it. but of course tom did not know that.

then there came by a shoal of porpoises, rolling as they went—papas, and mammas, and little children—and all quite smooth and shiny, because the fairies french-polish them every morning; and they sighed so softly as they came by, that tom took courage to speak to them: but all they answered was, "hush, hush, hush;" for that was all they had learned to say.

and then there came a shoal of basking sharks, some of them as long as a boat, and tom was frightened at them. but they were very lazy good-natured fellows, not greedy tyrants, like white sharks and blue sharks and ground sharks and hammer-heads, who eat men, or saw-fish and threshers and ice-sharks, who hunt the poor old whales. they came and rubbed their great sides against the buoy, and lay basking in the sun with their backfins out of water; and winked at tom: but he never could get them to speak. they had eaten so many herrings that they were quite stupid; and tom was glad when a collier brig came by and frightened them all away; for they did smell most horribly, certainly, and he had to hold his nose tight as long as they were there.

and then there came by a beautiful creature, like a ribbon of pure silver with a sharp head and very long teeth; but it seemed very sick and sad. sometimes it rolled helpless on its side; and then it dashed away glittering like white fire; and then it lay sick again and motionless.

"where do you come from?" asked tom. "and why are you so sick and sad?"

"i come from the warm carolinas, and the sandbanks fringed with pines; where the great owl-rays leap and flap, like giant bats, upon the tide. but i wandered north and north, upon the treacherous warm gulf-stream, till i met with the cold icebergs, afloat in the mid ocean. so i got tangled among the icebergs, and chilled with their frozen breath. but the water-babies helped me from among them, and set me free again. and now i am mending every day; but i am very sick and sad; and perhaps i shall never get home again to play with the owl-rays any more."

"oh!" cried tom. "and you have seen water-babies? have you seen any near here?"

"yes; they helped me again last night, or i should have been eaten by a great black porpoise."

how vexatious! the water-babies close to him, and yet he could not find one.

and then he left the buoy, and used to go along the sands and round the rocks, and come out in the night—like the forsaken merman in mr. arnold's beautiful, beautiful poem, which you must learn by heart some day—and sit upon a point of rock, among the shining seaweeds, in the low october tides, and cry and call for the water-babies; but he never heard a voice call in return. and at last, with his fretting and crying, he grew quite lean and thin.

but one day among the rocks he found a play-fellow. it was not a water-baby, alas! but it was a lobster; and a very distinguished lobster he was; for he had live barnacles on his claws, which is a great mark of distinction in lobsterdom, and no more to be bought for money than a good conscience or the victoria cross.

tom had never seen a lobster before; and he was mightily taken with this one; for he thought him the most curious, odd, ridiculous creature he had ever seen; and there he was not far wrong; for all the ingenious men, and all the scientific men, and all the fanciful men, in the world, with all the old german bogy-painters into the bargain, could never invent, if all their wits were boiled into one, anything so curious, and so ridiculous, as a lobster.

he had one claw knobbed and the other jagged; and tom delighted in watching him hold on to the seaweed with his knobbed claw, while he cut up salads with his jagged one, and then put them into his mouth, after smelling at them, like a monkey. and always the little barnacles threw out their casting-nets and swept the water, and came in for their share of whatever there was for dinner.

but tom was most astonished to see how he fired himself off—snap! like the leap-frogs which you make out of a goose's breast-bone. certainly he took the most wonderful shots, and backwards, too. for, if he wanted to go into a narrow crack ten yards off, what do you think he did? if he had gone in head foremost, of course he could not have turned round. so he used to turn his tail to it, and lay his long horns, which carry his sixth sense in their tips (and nobody knows what that sixth sense is), straight down his back to guide him, and twist his eyes back till they almost came out of their sockets, and then made ready, present, fire, snap!—and away he went, pop into the hole; and peeped out and twiddled his whiskers, as much as to say, "you couldn't do that."

tom asked him about water-babies. "yes," he said. he had seen them often. but he did not think much of them. they were meddlesome little creatures that went about helping fish and shells which got into scrapes. well, for his part, he should be ashamed to be helped by little soft creatures that had not even a shell on their backs. he had lived quite long enough in the world to take care of himself.

he was a conceited fellow, the old lobster, and not very civil to tom; and you will hear how he had to alter his mind before he was done, as conceited people generally have. but he was so funny, and tom so lonely, that he could not quarrel with him; and they used to sit in holes in the rocks, and chat for hours.

and about this time there happened to tom a very strange and important adventure—so important, indeed, that he was very near never finding the water-babies at all; and i am sure you would have been sorry for that.

i hope that you have not forgotten the little white lady all this while. at least, here she comes, looking like a clean white good little darling, as she always was, and always will be. for it befell in the pleasant short december days, when the wind always blows from the south-west, till old father christmas comes and spreads the great white table-cloth, ready for little boys and girls to give the birds their christmas dinner of crumbs—it befell (to go on) in the pleasant december days, that sir john was so busy hunting that nobody at home could get a word out of him. four days a week he hunted, and very good sport he had; and the other two he went to the bench and the board of guardians, and very good justice he did.

it befell (to go on a second time) that sir john, hunting all day, and dining at five, fell asleep every evening, and snored so terribly that all the windows in harthover shook, and the soot fell down the chimneys. whereon my lady, being no more able to get conversation out of him than a song out of a dead nightingale, determined to go off and leave him, and the doctor, and captain swinger the agent, to snore in concert every evening to their hearts' content. so she started for the seaside with all the children, in order to put herself and them into condition by mild applications of iodine. she might as well have stayed at home and used parry's liquid horse-blister, for there was plenty of it in the stables; and then she would have saved her money, and saved the chance, also, of making all the children ill instead of well (as hundreds are made), by taking them to some nasty smelling undrained lodging, and then wondering how they caught scarlatina and diphtheria: but people won't be wise enough to understand that till they are dead of bad smells, and then it will be too late; besides, you see, sir john did certainly snore very loud.

but where she went to nobody must know, for fear young ladies should begin to fancy that there are water-babies there! and so hunt and howk after them (besides raising the price of lodgings), and keep them in aquariums, as the ladies at pompeii (as you may see by the paintings) used to keep cupids in cages. but nobody ever heard that they starved the cupids, or let them die of dirt and neglect, as english young ladies do by the poor sea-beasts. so nobody must know where my lady went. letting water-babies die is as bad as taking singing birds' eggs; for, though there are thousands, ay, millions, of both of them in the world, yet there is not one too many.

now it befell that, on the very shore, and over the very rocks, where tom was sitting with his friend the lobster, there walked one day the little white lady, ellie herself, and with her a very wise man indeed—professor ptthmllnsprts.

he was, as i said, a very great naturalist; a very worthy, kind, good-natured little old gentleman; and very fond of children; and very good to all the world as long as it was good to him. only one fault he had, which cock-robins have likewise, as you may see if you look out of the nursery window—that, when any one else found a curious worm, he would hop round them, and peck them, and set up his tail, and bristle up his feathers, just as a cock-robin would; and declare that he found the worm first; and that it was his worm; and, if not, that then it was not a worm at all.

he had met sir john at scarborough, or fleetwood, or somewhere or other (if you don't care where, nobody else does), and had made acquaintance with him, and become very fond of his children. now, sir john know nothing about sea-cockyolybirds, and cared less, provided the fishmonger sent him good fish for dinner; and my lady knew as little: but she thought it proper that the children should know something. for in the stupid old times, you must understand, children were taught to know one thing, and to know it well; but in these enlightened new times they are taught to know a little about everything, and to know it all ill; which is a great deal pleasanter and easier, and therefore quite right.

so ellie and he were walking on the rocks, and he was showing her about one in ten thousand of all the beautiful and curious things which are to be seen there. but little ellie was not satisfied with them at all. she liked much better to play with live children, or even with dolls, which she could pretend were alive; and at last she said honestly, "i don't care about all these things, because they can't play with me, or talk to me. if there were little children now in the water, as there used to be, and i could see them, i should like that."

"children in the water, you strange little duck?" said the professor.

"yes," said ellie. "i know there used to be children in the water, and mermaids too, and mermen. i saw them all in a picture at home, of a beautiful lady sailing in a car drawn by dolphins, and babies flying round her, and one sitting in her lap; and the mermaids swimming and playing, and the mermen trumpeting on conch-shells; and it is called 'the triumph of galatea;' and there is a burning mountain in the picture behind. it hangs on the great staircase, and i have looked at it ever since i was a baby, and dreamt about it a hundred times; and it is so beautiful that it must be true."

but the professor had not the least notion of allowing that things were true, merely because people thought them beautiful.

now little ellie was, i suppose, a stupid little girl; for she only asked the same question over again.

"but why are there not water-babies?"

i trust and hope that it was because the professor trod at that moment on the edge of a very sharp mussel, and hurt one of his corns sadly, that he answered quite sharply, forgetting that he was a scientific man, and therefore ought to have known that he couldn't know; and that he was a logician, and therefore ought to have known that he could not prove a universal negative—i say, i trust and hope it was because the mussel hurt his corn, that the professor answered quite sharply:

"because there ain't."

which was not even good english, my dear little boy; for, as you must know, the professor ought to have said, if he was so angry as to say anything of the kind—because there are not: or are none: or are none of them; or because they do not exist.

and he groped with his net under the weeds so violently, that, as it befell, he caught poor little tom. he felt the net very heavy; and lifted it out quickly, with tom all entangled in the meshes.

"dear me!" he cried. "what a large pink holothurian; with hands, too! it must be connected with synapta."

and he took him out.

"it has actually eyes!" he cried. "why, it must be a cephalopod! this is most extraordinary!"

"no, i ain't!" cried tom, as loud as he could; for he did not like to be called bad names.

"it is a water-baby!" cried ellie; and of course it was.

"water-fiddlesticks, my dear!" said the professor; and he turned away sharply.

there was no denying it. it was a water-baby: and he had said a moment ago that there were none. what was he to do?

he would have liked, of course, to have taken tom home in a bucket. he would not have put him in spirits. of course not. he would have kept him alive, and petted him (for he was a very kind old gentleman), and written a book about him, and given him two long names, of which the first would have said a little about tom, and the second all about himself.

there was a wise old heathen once, who said, "maxima debetur pueris reverentia"—the greatest reverence is due to children; that is, that grown people should never say or do anything wrong before children, lest they should set them a bad example.—but some people, and i am afraid the professor was one of them, interpret that in a strange, curious, one-sided, left-handed, topsy-turvy, inside-out-behind-before fashion; for they make it mean, that you must show your respect for children, by never confessing yourself in the wrong to them, even if you know that you are so, lest they should lose confidence in their elders.

fish in reeds

now, if the professor had said to ellie, "yes, my darling, it is a water-baby, and a very wonderful thing it is; and it shows how little i know of the wonders of nature, in spite of forty years' honest labour. i was just telling you that there could be no such creatures; and, behold! here is one come to confound my conceit and show me that nature can do, and has done, beyond all that man's poor fancy can imagine. so, let us thank the maker, and inspirer, and lord of nature for all his wonderful and glorious works, and try and find out something about this one;"—i think that, if the professor had said that, little ellie would have believed him more firmly, and respected him more deeply, and loved him better, than ever she had done before. but he was of a different opinion. he hesitated a moment. he longed to keep tom, and yet he half wished he never had caught him; and at last he quite longed to get rid of him. so he turned away and poked tom with his finger, for want of anything better to do; and said carelessly, "my dear little maid, you must have dreamt of water-babies last night, your head is so full of them." now tom had been in the most horrible and unspeakable fright all the while; and had kept as quiet as he could, though he was called a holothurian and a cephalopod; for it was fixed in his little head that if a man with clothes on caught him, he might put clothes on him too, and make a dirty black chimney-sweep of him again. but, when the professor poked him, it was more than he could bear; and, between fright and rage, he turned to bay as valiantly as a mouse in a corner, and bit the professor's finger till it bled.

"oh! ah! yah!" cried he; and glad of an excuse to be rid of tom, dropped him on to the seaweed, and thence he dived into the water and was gone in a moment.

"but it was a water-baby, and i heard it speak!" cried ellie. "ah, it is gone!" and she jumped down off the rock to try and catch tom before he slipped into the sea.

too late! and what was worse, as she sprang down, she slipped, and fell some six feet with her head on a sharp rock, and lay quite still.

the professor picked her up, and tried to waken her, and called to her, and cried over her, for he loved her very much: but she would not waken at all. so he took her up in his arms and carried her to her governess, and they all went home; and little ellie was put to bed, and lay there quite still; only now and then she woke up and called out about the water-baby: but no one knew what she meant, and the professor did not tell, for he was ashamed to tell.

and, after a week, one moonlight night, the fairies came flying in at the window and brought her such a pretty pair of wings that she could not help putting them on; and she flew with them out of the window, and over the land, and over the sea, and up through the clouds, and nobody heard or saw anything of her for a very long while.