If you will believe it, he was gone a week, then back he came, his eyes as big as saucers. You see, I know how to say some things that Folks do; by and by you will find out how I learned them.
Master Dolphy had a story to tell. He made us understand in fish-language that he had found a wonderful, wonderful cave, where a party of mermaids had collected a lot of shells, oh, enough to fill a great house!
Now, I can't tell a thing as to the truth about mermaids. But "they say," that is, Folks and fishes say, that they are strange, fascinating creatures, with the head, shoulders, arms, and breast of a beautiful woman, and part of the body and the tail of a fish. Sometimes they are called sea-nymphs; others call them sirens.
Have you ever lived by the sea? And on stormy evenings, when rain was rattling on the window-pane, and the wind went screaming around the house, have you ever imagined there were queer calls, and have you seen strange shapes thrown up by the waves?
Or have you ever heard an old sailor or an old fisherman tell stories of the deep? If not, you cannot take in the kind of spell or enchantment that lingers about the sea after listening to these sounds or hearing these stories. They are all mixed up with the "myth" stories you heard of a little way back.
But these stories have been told ever since the world was young. And the mermaids are said to be daughters of the river-god that have lived ever in the deep and sounding ocean.
And they were strange and weird—that is, wild, unnatural, and witching. They would appear in both calm and stormy weather.
Sirens were sometimes thought to be different from mermaids, but we fishes know them to be one and the same thing—that is, if they exist at all. It used to be said that a mermaid murmured, but that a siren sang, with dangerous sweetness. Both murmur and both sing, one as much as the other.
They will all at once be seen poised on perilous rocks, their long and splendid hair floating back in the wild wind, their eyes shining like stars, their faces bright and glorious, their white arms and gleaming shoulders rising like snow from midst the dark and stormy waves.
Ah! the singing, the beckoning, and the coaxing of a mermaid! Let me tell you how they work.