"Where am I going now?" he thought. "Yes, yes, that's the Goblin's fault. Ah! if the little lady only sat here with me in the boat, it might be twice as dark for what I should care."
Suddenly there came a great Water Rat, which lived under the drain.
"Have you a passport?" said the Rat. "Give me your passport."
But the Tin Soldier kept silence, and held his musket tighter than ever.
The boat went on, but the Rat came after it. Hu! how he gnashed his teeth, and called out to the bits of straw and wood:
"Hold him! hold him! He hasn't paid toll—he hasn't shown his passport!"
But the stream became stronger and stronger. The Tin Soldier could see the bright daylight where the arch ended; but he heard a roaring noise which might well frighten a bolder man. Only think—just where the tunnel ended, the drain ran into a great canal; and for him that would have been as dangerous as for us to be carried down a great waterfall.
Now he was already so near it that he could not stop. The boat was carried out, the poor Tin Soldier stiffening himself as much as he could, and no one could say that he moved an eyelid. The boat whirled round three or four times, and was full of water to the very edge—it must sink. The Tin Soldier stood up to his neck in water, and the boat sank deeper and deeper, and the paper was loosened more and more; and now the water closed over the soldier's head. Then he thought of the pretty little Dancer, and how he should never see her again; and it sounded in the soldier's ears:
Farewell, farewell, thou warrior brave,
For this day thou must die!
And now the paper parted, and the Tin Soldier fell out; but at that moment he was snapped up by a great fish.