CHAPTER II.
UNDER THE WAVES
Pretty soon I must describe my playground, but first you must learn a few simple things about the place I love best of all places in the world, my home in the deep, deep sea.
Do you suppose that when the sky is dark and threatening up where you live, and when the wind is blowing like a hurricane, and the great waves lash about, acting as if mad, that there is great disturbance far below?
Do you suppose that when shipmasters are shouting out orders to the crew, and trying to keep their vessels from turning topsy-turvy or going down out of sight, that the fishes are scampering about wild, driven here and there by the fierce winds, and scared half to death by the fury of the storm?
Do you suppose there is a terrible roar of wind and wave that bangs us against each other at such times, and makes of the under-sea a raging bedlam?
Oh, by no means! There is nothing of the kind down in what Folks call "the lower ocean." It is calm and quiet as the surface of a pond on a pleasant summer day.
And yet, if you wonder how I first learned about the lashing and the thrashing of the waves above our heads when there is a storm, let me tell about the time when I was a naughty, wilful fish, bound to have my own way and do just as I pleased. It was when I was quite young, yet pretty well grown. And this makes me wonder if growing little men-Folks and women-Folks ever are determined to have their own way, no matter what the mother may say.
I have an idea it is what is called the "smart age," when the young, whether fish, flesh, or fowl, start up all at once, and think they know more than—"than all the ancients." I heard that expression used once, and it seemed somehow to fit in here.