There was something very heavy on the bridge now, so heavy that it made it creak, and men’s voices were shouting:
“Lift it up!—Ho, there!—Up!—Hold tight!—Up with it!—Up!—Push it along!—Lift it up!”
Then something indescribable happened. First it sounded as if sixty piles of wood were all being sawn at the same time; then a cleft opened in the water which went down to the bottom of the sea, and there, wedged between three stones, stood a black box, which sang and played and tinkled and jingled, close to the eel-mother and her son, who hastily disappeared in the lowest depths of the ocean.
Then a voice up above shouted:—
“Three fathoms deep! Impossible! Leave it alone. It isn’t worth while hauling the old lumber up again; it would cost more to repair than it’s worth.”
The voice belonged to the master of the mine, whose piano had fallen into the sea.
Silence followed; the huge fish with a fin like a screw swam away, and the silence deepened.
After sunset a breeze arose; the black box in the forest of seaweed rocked and knocked against the stones, and at every knock it played, so that the fishes came swimming from all directions to watch and to listen.
The eel-mother was the first to put in an appearance. And when she saw herself reflected in the polished surface, she said: “It’s a wardrobe with a plate-glass door.”
There was logic in her remark, and therefore all the others said: “It is a wardrobe with a plate-glass door.”