Thus the day wore away: the sweet hymn floated through the silence until the Child was nearly wearied out with pleasure; and the Nautilus, and the Velella, and the Volute turned their course homeward.
The gold, and emerald, and rose had faded from the sea before the little party reached the shore; but then in the darkness began the greatest sight of the day.
It was a festival on the sea; and everywhere, as far as the Child's sight could reach, the waters were one illumination. Every one of the little crystal fleet of medusæ who had shone by day in the sunlight now lighted its own tiny sun. All around the Child floated canopies, and balloons, and globes, and boats of living fire, lamps of all forms and colours flashing, gleaming, shining steadily with a soft radiance, lighting the sea fathoms down; opal, and ruby, and emerald, and amber, falling around the fairy raft in foam-flakes of fire as they glided silently through the waves. And everywhere through the silence and the night the happy living creatures sang as they shone that old sweet solemn Song. So they reached the little creek by the rock-pool, and the Child's old friends were many of them awake to welcome him home; but he was wearied out with enjoyment, and tripped as fast as he could up to his little bed in the cave. There he lay down and fell asleep with his heart full of love and gratitude to all the creatures; but he had not yet learned the words of the Song.
CHAPTER VI.
Sunbeam after sunbeam peeped into the cave the next morning, but could not wake the Child, until at length they poured in in a flood, and the little sleeper's eyes unclosed to see every nook and corner of his dwelling lighted up, and every projecting ledge, and point, and stalactite flashing back the rays. Then he rubbed his eyes, and rose, and went out to take his breakfast on the mossy bank, feeling still half in a dream. The birds had finished their morning songs; the flowers had drunk in their breakfast of dew-drops, and were standing upright in the full daylight; everything seemed so busy and wide awake that the Child would have had to take his breakfast alone had it not been for a sober bee, which kept buzzing in and out of the blossoms, and a blue butterfly which fluttered silently around them, now and then poising on the open disk of a flower which scarcely bent beneath its weight.
The Child sat watching them in silence, until, through the silvery tinkling of the stream and the rustling of the wind, he caught for the first time near his cave the sound of soft familiar music floating around. It was the sweet solemn Song to which he had listened in the rock-pools and far out on the deep sea. Then he thought, "I wonder if they know the words far away in the depths of the wood."
He turned from the sea, and followed the stream with his eyes until the sparkling waters were lost in the shade of the trees and the long grass. Along the green glade which bordered the brook the sunshine lay in broad patches, so that the wood looked less dim and dark, and more inviting than he had ever seen it before: and he said to the butterfly, "Where do you live?"
The blue fairy creature drew its tube out of the nectar-cup of the flower it was sipping from, and fluttering its brilliant wings, said, "My home is everywhere where the flowers grow and the sun shines; and at night I fold my wings together and go to roost on some flower-cup which has feasted me in the day. I do not think whence I come or whither I go: I knew enough once of what it was to stay at home, in those dark days when I crept along the cold earth and was entombed in my hard mummy-case; now I am free of air and sky—a citizen of the heavens, and every breath is a joy, and every sunbeam a home."
"Then you cannot guide me into the wood," said the Child; and the butterfly fluttered and soared away till it lost itself in a sunbeam.
"But I can," said the busy sober bee, seated on a flower, which rocked to and fro beneath the weight of his little solid body; "I shall soon be going home to our village, and you can follow me."