"Have you a passport?" asked the rat. "Out with your passport!"
But the tin soldier said not a word, and stood stock still, shouldering his arms. The boat shot past, and the rat came after. Ha! how he set his teeth, and cried to the sticks and the straws,—
"Stop him! stop him! he has not paid the toll! He has not shown his passport!"
But the stream got stronger and stronger. The tin soldier could already see daylight at the end of the tunnel, but at the same time he heard a roaring sound, which might well have made a bolder man than he tremble. Only think! where the tunnel ended, the water of the kennel was poured down into a great canal; which would be, for him, just as dangerous as for us to sail down a great waterfall!
He was now come so near to it that he could no longer stand upright. The boat drove on; the tin soldier held himself as stiff as he could; nobody could have said of him that he winked with an eye. The boat whirled round three times, and filled with water to the very edge—it must sink! The tin soldier stood up to his neck in water! Deeper and deeper sank the boat, the paper grew softer and softer! Now went the water above the soldier's head!—he thought of the little dancing lady, whom he should never see more, and it rung in the tin soldier's ear,—
"Fare thee well, thou man of war!
Death with thee is dealing!"
The paper now went in two, and the tin soldier fell through; and at that moment was swallowed by a large fish!
Nay, how dark it was now in there! It was darker than in the kennel archway, and much narrower. But the tin soldier was steadfast to his duty; and he lay there, shouldering his arms. The fish twisted about, and made the most horrible sort of movements; at last it became quite still; a flash of lightning seemed to go through it. Light shone quite bright, and some one shouted aloud, "Tin soldier!"
The fish had been caught, taken to market, sold, and brought into the kitchen, where the servant-girl cut it up with a great knife. She took the soldier, who was as alive as ever, between her two fingers, and carried it into the parlor, where she showed them all what a remarkable little man had been travelling about in the stomach of the fish! But the tin soldier was not proud. They set him upon the table, and there—Nay, how wonderfully things happen in this world!—the tin soldier was in the self-same room he had been in before; he saw the self-same child, and the self-same playthings on the table; the grand castle, with the pretty little dancing lady standing at the door. She was standing still upon one leg, with the other raised; she also was constant. It quite affected the tin soldier, he was ready to shed tin tears, only that would not have been becoming in him. He looked at her, and she looked at him, but neither of them said a word.