Another year passed by. Again with autumn days the parents left the nest to go to sea. From the waves a noble bird rose up to accompany them. His snowy plumage glistened in the sun, his wide-spread wings cut through the air with a majestic grace. It was the baby albatross, grown at last to his full strength. Sailing, gliding, rising high above the shining waves, dipping low on downward curve, he followed to the far-off shoreless tracts, there to live his life of tireless flight, the splendid marvel of the sea.
VIII.—FANNY FLATFACE
Where the waters of an estuary entered the sea were many wide and sunny shallows. Here the flounders fed, and here in early summer their little eggs, laid in the quiet water, rose up and floated at the top. Rocked on the gentle waves, warmed daily by the golden sun, the eggs hatched into flounder babies. Hundreds and thousands of them there were, crystal clear except for two black eyes, and so very small that they could only just be seen. The tide came in and swept them to and fro, and somehow Fanny lost the shoal and was carried out to sea. There the big waves jostled her about, the great sea creatures frightened her. She was lonely and sad and terrified. "Whatever will become of me?" she thought.
On the third day she fell in with a shoal of tiny whitebait, all about her own age and size. "I am lost; please let me swim with you," she begged.
"You poor little thing! Of course you may," they said. So for several days she swam with them towards the shore, playing and feeding in happy forgetfulness of all past misery. At this time she was so like the whitebait that no stranger could tell the difference. She had the same long slender body, the same round head and pointed tail. A week passed by. One day she said: "I must go down to the sand. Good-bye."
Before they had time to speak she had dropped from their midst. "How very extraordinary!" said the whitebait to each other. For a day or two they played about as usual, but by-and-by one said: "The thought of Fanny worries me. Suppose we go down to see what has happened to her?"
"A good idea," said the others.
They found her lying aslant near the bottom of the sea.
"Are you sick? Why don't you come up?" they asked. "You look very queer, lying on your side like that."