CHAPTER VII
"Now," said Tom, "I am ready to be off, if it's to the world's end."
"Ah!" said the fairy, "that is a brave, good boy. But you must go farther than the world's end if you want to find Mr. Grimes; for he is at the Other-end-of-Nowhere. You must go to Shiny Wall, and through the white gate that never was opened; and then you will come to Peace-pool, and Mother Carey's Haven, where the good whales go when they die. And there Mother Carey will tell you the way to the Other-end-of-Nowhere, and there you will find Mr. Grimes."
"Oh, dear!" said Tom. "But I do not know my way to Shiny Wall, or where it is at all."
"Little boys must take the trouble to find out things for themselves, or they will never grow to be men; so that you must ask all the beasts in the sea and the birds in the air, and if you have been good to them, some of them will tell you the way to Shiny Wall."
"Well," said Tom, "it will be a long journey, so I had better start at once. Good-bye, Miss Ellie; you know I am getting a big boy, and I must go out and see the world."
"I know you must," said Ellie; "but you will not forget me, Tom. I shall wait here till you come."
And she shook hands with him, and bade him good-bye. Tom longed very much again to kiss her; but he thought it would not be respectful, considering she was a lady born. So he promised not to forget her; but his little whirl-about of a head was so full of the notion of going out to see the world, that it forgot her in five minutes; however, though his head forgot her, I am glad to say his heart did not.
[Illustration: Tom looking up at a bird wearing glasses on a boulder.]
So he asked all the beasts in the sea, and all the birds in the air, but none of them knew the way to Shiny Wall. For why? He was still too far down south. But for that there was a remedy. And so he swam northward, day after day, till at last he met the King of the Herrings, with a currycomb growing out of his nose, and a sprat in his mouth for a cigar, and asked him the way to Shiny Wall; so he bolted the sprat head foremost, and said:
"If I were you, young gentleman, I should go to the Allalonestone, and ask the last of the Gairfowl. [Footnote: Gairfoul, or garefowl, was another name for the great auk. This bird was about thirty inches long, and its wings were so small in proportion to its body that it could not fly. There have been no great auks since about the middle of the nineteenth century.] She is of a very ancient clan, very nearly as ancient as my own; and knows a good deal which these modern upstarts don't, as ladies of old houses are likely to do."
Tom asked his way to her, and the King of the Herrings told him very kindly, for he was a courteous old gentleman of the old school, though he was horribly ugly, and strangely bedizened too, like the old dandies who lounge in clubhouse windows.
But just as Tom had thanked him and set off, he called after him, "Hi! I say, can you fly?"
"I never tried," said Tom. "Why?"
"Because, if you can, I should advise you to say nothing to the old lady about it. There; take a hint. Good-bye."
And away Tom went for seven days and seven nights due northwest, till he came to a great cod-bank, the like of which he never saw before.
And there he saw the last of the Gairfowl, standing up on the Allalonestone, all alone. And a very grand old lady she was, full three feet high, and bolt upright, like some old Highland chieftainess. She had on a black velvet gown, and a white pinner and apron, and a very high bridge to her nose (which is a sure mark of high breeding), and a large pair of white spectacles on it, which made her look rather odd; [Footnote: The great auks were dark above and white beneath, and had huge white spots about their eyes.] but it was the ancient fashion of her house.
And instead of wings, she had two little feathery arms, with which she fanned herself, and complained of the dreadful heat.
Tom came up to her very humbly, and made his bow; and the first thing she said was:
"Have you wings? Can you fly?"
"Oh, dear, no, ma'am; I should not think of such a thing," said cunning little Tom.
"Then I shall have great pleasure in talking to you, my dear. It is quite refreshing nowadays to see anything without wings. They must all have wings, forsooth, now, every new upstart sort of bird, and fly. What can they want with flying, and raising themselves above their proper station in life? In the days of my ancestors no birds ever thought of having wings, and did very well without; and now they all laugh at me because I keep to the good old fashion."
And so she was running on, while Tom tried to get in a word edgeways; and at last he did, when the old lady got out of breath, and began fanning herself again. And then he asked if she knew the way to Shiny Wall.
"Shiny Wall? Who should know better than I? We all came from Shiny Wall, thousands of years ago, when it was decently cold, and the climate was fit for gentlefolk; but now, we have quite gone down in the world, my dear, and have nothing left but our honour. And I am the last of my family. A friend of mine and I came and settled on this rock when we were young, to be out of the way of low people. Once we were a great nation, and spread over all the Northern Isles. But men shot us so, and knocked us on the head and took our eggs—why, if you will believe it, they say that on the coast of Labrador the sailors used to lay a plank from the rock on board the thing called their ship, and drive us along the plank by hundreds, till we tumbled down in the ship's waist in heaps, and then, I suppose, they ate us, the nasty fellows! Well—but— what was I saying? At last, there were none of us left, except on the old Gairfowlskerry, just off the Iceland coast, up which no man could climb. Even there we had no peace; for one day, when I was quite a young girl, the land rocked, and the sea boiled, and the sky grew dark, and all the air was filled with smoke and dust, and down tumbled the old Gairfowlskerry into the sea. The dovekies and marrocks, [Footnote: The dovekies and the marrocks, or marrots, are smaller birds belonging to the auk family.] of course, all flew away; but we were too proud to do that. Some of us were dashed to pieces, and the rest drowned, and so here I am left alone. And soon I shall be gone, my little dear, and nobody will miss me; and then the poor stone will be left all alone."
"But, please, which is the way to Shiny Wall?" said Tom.
"Oh, you must go, my little dear—you must go. Let me see—I am sure— that is—really, my poor old brains are getting quite puzzled. Do you know, my little dear, I am afraid, if you want to know, you must ask some of these vulgar birds about, for I have quite forgotten."
And the poor old Gairfowl began to cry tears of pure oil; and Tom was quite sorry for her, and for himself too, for he was at his wit's end whom to ask.
But there came by a flock of petrels, who are Mother Carey's own chickens; and Tom thought them much prettier than Lady Gairfowl, and so perhaps they were; for Mother Carey had had a great deal of fresh experience between the time that she invented the Gairfowl and the time that she invented them. They flitted along like a flock of black swallows, and hopped and skipped from wave to wave, lifting up their little feet behind them so daintily, and whistling to each other so tenderly, that Tom fell in love with them at once, and called to them to know the way to Shiny Wall.
"Shiny Wall? Do you want Shiny Wall? Then come with us, and we will show you. We are Mother Carey's own chickens, and she sends us out over all the seas, to show the good birds the way home."
Tom was delighted, and swam off to them, after he had made his bow to the Gairfowl. But she would not return his bow, but held herself bolt upright, and wept tears of oil.
Then the petrels asked this bird and that whether they would take Tom to Shiny Wall; but one set was going to Sutherland, and one to the Shetlands, and one to Norway, and one to Spitzbergen, and one to Iceland, and one to Greenland; but none would go to Shiny Wall. So the good-natured petrels said that they would show him part of the way themselves, but they were only going as far as Jan Mayen's Land; and after that he must shift for himself.
On the way, in a wrecked ship Tom found a little black and tan terrier dog, which began barking and snapping at him, and would not let him come near.
Tom knew the dog's teeth could not hurt him; but at least it could shove him away, and did; and he and the dog fought and struggled, and he did not want to throw the dog overboard; but as they were struggling, there came a tall green sea, and walked in over the weather side of the ship, and swept them both into the waves.
And the poor little dog?
Why, after he had kicked and coughed a little, he sneezed so hard, that he sneezed himself clean out of his skin, and turned into a water dog, and jumped and danced around Tom, and ran over the crests of the waves, and snapped at the jellyfish and the mackerel, and followed Tom the whole way to the Other-end-of-Nowhere.
Then they went on again, till they began to see the peak of Jan Mayen's
Land, standing up like a white sugar loaf, two miles above the clouds.
And there they fell in with a whole flock of mollymocks, [Footnote: The mollymocks, or mallemawks, are petrels, larger than the stormy petrels.] who were feeding on a dead whale.
"These are the fellows to show you the way," said Mother Carey's chickens; "we cannot help you farther north. We don't like to get among the ice pack, for fear it should nip our toes; but the mollys dare fly anywhere."
So the petrels called to the mollys; but they were so busy and greedy, gobbling and packing and spluttering and fighting over the blubber, that they did not take the least notice.
"Come, come," said the petrels, "you lazy, greedy lubbers, this young gentleman is going to Mother Carey, and if you don't attend to him, you won't earn your discharge from her, you know."
"Greedy we are," said a great, fat old molly, "but lazy we ain't; and as for lubbers, we're no more lubbers than you. Let's have a look at the lad."
And he flapped right into Tom's face, and stared at him in the most impudent way (for the mollys are audacious fellows, as all whalers know), and then asked him where he hailed from, and what land he sighted last.
And when Tom told him, he seemed pleased, and said he was a good plucked one to have got so far.
"Come along, lads," he said to the rest, "and give this little chap a cast over the pack, for Mother Carey's sake. We've eaten blubber enough for to-day, and we'll e'en work out a bit of our time by helping the lad."
So the mollys took Tom up on their backs, and flew off with him, laughing and joking—and oh, how they did smell of train oil!
And now they came to the edge of the pack, and beyond it they could see Shiny Wall looming, through mist, and snow, and storm. But the pack rolled horribly upon the swell, and the ice giants fought and roared, and leapt upon each other's backs, and ground each other to powder, so that Tom was afraid to venture among them, lest he should be ground to powder too.
But the good mollys took Tom and his dog up, and flew with them safe over the pack and the roaring ice giants, and set them down at the foot of Shiny Wall.
"And where is the gate?" asked Tom.
"There is no gate," said the mollys.
"No gate?" cried Tom, aghast.
"None; never a crack of one, and that's the whole of the secret, as better fellows, lad, than you have found to their cost; and if there had been, they'd have killed by now every right whale [Footnote: A right whale is a whale which yields much whalebone and much oil; it is so called because it is the "right" whale to take.] that swims the sea."
"What am I to do, then?"
"Dive under the floe, to be sure, if you have pluck,"
"I've not come so far to turn now," said Tom; "so here goes for a header."
"A lucky voyage to you, lad," said the mollys; "we knew you were one of the right sort. So good-bye." "Why don't you come too?" asked Tom.
But the mollys only wailed sadly, "We can't go yet, we can't go yet," and flew away over the pack.
So Tom dived under the great white gate which never was opened yet, and went on in black darkness, at the bottom of the sea, for seven days and seven nights. And yet he was not a bit frightened. Why should he be? He was a brave English lad, whose business is to go out and see all the world.
And at last he saw the light, and clear, clear water overhead; and up he came a thousand fathoms, among clouds of sea moths, which fluttered round his head. There were moths with pink heads and wings and opal bodies, that flapped about slowly; moths with brown wings that flapped about quickly; yellow shrimps that hopped and skipped most quickly of all; and jellies of all the colours in the world, that neither hopped nor skipped, but only dawdled and yawned, and would not get out of his way. The dog snapped at them till his jaws were tired; but Tom hardly minded them at all, he was so eager to get to the top of the water, and see the pool where the good whales go.
And a very large pool it was, miles and miles across, though the air was so clear that the ice cliffs on the opposite side looked as if they were close at hand. All round it the ice cliffs rose, in walls and spires and battlements, and caves and bridges, and stories and galleries, in which the ice fairies live, and drive away the storms and clouds, that Mother Carey's pool may lie calm from year's end to year's end. And the sun acted policeman, and walked round outside every day, peeping just over the top of the ice wall, to see that all went right; and now and then he played conjuring tricks, or had an exhibition of fireworks, to amuse the ice fairies. For he would make himself into four or five suns at once, or paint the sky with rings and crosses and crescents of white fire, and stick himself in the middle of them, and wink at the fairies; and I daresay they were very much amused, for anything's fun in the country.
And there the good whales lay, the happy, sleepy beasts, upon the still oily sea. They were all right whales, you must know, and finners, and razor-backs, and bottle-noses, and spotted sea unicorns with long ivory horns. But the sperm whales are such raging, ramping, roaring, rumbustious fellows, that, if Mother Carey let them in, there would be no more peace in Peacepool. So she packs them away in a great pond by themselves at the South Pole, two hundred and sixty-three miles south- southeast of Mount Erebus, the great volcano in the ice; and there they butt each other with their ugly noses, day and night from year's end to year's end.
Tom swam up to the nearest whale, and asked the way to Mother Carey.
"There she sits in the middle," said the whale.
Tom looked; but he could see nothing in the middle of the pool but one peaked iceberg, and he said so.
"That's Mother Carey," said the whale, "as you will find when you get to her. There she sits making old beasts into new all the year round."
"How does she do that?"
"That's her concern, not mine," said the old whale; and yawned so wide (for he was very large) that there swam into his mouth 943 sea moths, 13,846 jellyfish no bigger than pins' heads, a string of salpae nine yards long, and forty-three little ice crabs, who gave each other a parting pinch all round, tucked their legs under their stomachs, and determined to die decently, like Julius Caesar.
"I suppose," said Tom, "she cuts up a great whale like you into a whole shoal of porpoises?"
At which the old whale laughed so violently that he coughed up all the creatures; who swam away again, very thankful at having escaped out of that terrible whalebone net of his, from which bourne no traveler returns; and Tom went on to the iceberg, wondering.
And when he came near it, it took the form of the grandest old lady he had ever seen—a white marble lady, sitting on a white marble throne. And from the foot of the throne there swam away, out and out into the sea, millions of newborn creatures, of more shapes and colours than man ever dreamed. And they were Mother Carey's children, whom she makes out of the sea water all day long.
She sat quite still with her chin upon her hand, looking down into the sea with two great, grand blue eyes, as blue as the sea itself. Her hair was as white as the snow, for she was very, very old—in fact, as old as anything which you are likely to come across, except the difference between right and wrong. And when she saw Tom, she looked at him very kindly.
"What do you want, my little man? It is long since I have seen a water baby here."
Tom told her his errand, and asked the way to the Other-end-of-Nowhere.
"You ought to know yourself, for you have been there already,"
"Have I, ma'am? I'm sure I forgot all about it."
"Then look at me."
And as Tom looked into her great blue eyes, he recollected the way perfectly.
Now, was not that strange?
"Thank you, ma'am," said Tom. "Then I won't trouble your ladyship any more; I hear you are very busy."
"And now, my pretty little man," said Mother Carey, "you are sure you know the way to the Other-end-of-Nowhere?" Tom thought; and behold, he had forgotten it utterly.
"That is because you took your eyes off me."
Tom looked at her again, and recollected; and then looked away, and forgot in an instant.
"But what am I to do, ma'am? For I can't keep looking at you when I am somewhere else."
"You must do without me, as most people have to do, for nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths of their lives; and look at the dog instead; for he knows the way well enough, and will not forget it. Besides, you may meet some very queer-tempered people there, who will not let you pass without this passport of mine, which you must hang round your neck and take care of; and, of course, as the dog will always go behind you, you must go the whole way backward."
"Backward!" cried Tom. "Then I shall not be able to see my way."
"On the contrary, if you look forward, you will not see a step before you, and be certain to go wrong; but if you look behind you, and watch carefully whatever you have passed, and especially keep your eye on the dog, who goes by instinct, and therefore can't go wrong, then you will know what is coming next, as plainly as if you saw it in a looking- glass."
Tom was very much astonished; but he obeyed her, for he had learnt always to believe what the fairies told him.
Tom was very sorely tried; for though, by keeping the dog to heels (or rather to toes, for he had to walk backward), he could see pretty well which way the dog was hunting, yet it was much slower work to go backwards than to go forwards.
But I am proud to say that, though Tom had not been to Cambridge—for if he had he would have certainly been senior wrangler—he was such a little dogged, hard, gnarly, foursquare brick of an English boy, that he never turned his head round once all the way from Peacepool to the Other-end-of-Nowhere; but kept his eye on the dog, and let him pick out the scent, hot or cold, straight or crooked, wet or dry, up hill or down dale; by which means he never made a mistake, or had to retrace a single step.