“‘Her beauty,’ he said to me, ‘was radiant, and her long yellow hair floated behind her in the water till I was ravished; on’y the wust of it was, that all below the waist wasn’t lady at all, but ling or some other kind of fish.’
“But Jack wouldn’t look at the ling part at all, only just at the mermaid’s face and hair and hands.
“However dark it might have been, you could have seen to read by the light of the diamonds around her brow and neck.
“They soon came to a rock of quartz and porphyry, and next minute Jack found himself in a hall of such dazzling delight that he had to rub his eyes and pinch himself hard to make sure he was not in a dream. This was the mermaids’ and sea-fairies’ great ballroom.
“Tier upon tier of galleries rose up towards the beautiful, star-studded ceiling, and every gallery was filled with beautiful ladies. Jack knew that they all ended in ling, but the tails could not be seen.
“There was light and loveliness everywhere, and flowers everywhere—”
“Go on, ’Ansey. Your story is better than the Revelations, better even than ‘Jack the Giant Killer.’”
“I must stop, siss, because even I don’t know much more, only that the music was so ravishing that Jack himself danced till he couldn’t dance a bit more.”
“And did he sit down?”
“No; he thought he would like a smoke, so he floated away down to the entrance to a cave at the far, far end.