A fierce pang overcame the poor mother, overwhelmed and shook her. She had seen her darling; her eyes had beheld her heart’s desire; she had seen and beheld him, but not hugged him, not kissed him! The pang shook her from head to foot. Should she be true to Plunk or no? Should she let the Bee go and win to her child, or pass through the cavern to the Unknown Sea for the sake of the Big Bass?
But even as the pang shot through the Woman, the tears gushed forth from her heart; the power of speech returned to her, and ’twas in living words that she answered the Golden Bee:
“Don’t sting me, O Golden Bee! I shall not let you go, because I must pass through your cavern. I have wept for my child and buried him in my heart. I have not come here for my own happiness, but for a small matter—for the Big Bass that lives in the Unknown Sea.”
Thus said the Woman, and passed into the cavern. She rested in the cavern; she took her ease in the boat, and there she waited for nightfall and moonrise.
Eh, my dearie, but the sea was quiet that day, with the winds at rest in the sky, and the fearsome Snake asleep in the first cavern, and the monstrous Bird asleep in the second, and the wearied Woman in the third!
So the day went quietly by; evening came, and the moon rose. When the moon rode high in the heavens, the Woman sailed out upon the Unknown Sea at midnight, and in the midst of the Sea she let down her little bone hook.
III
That very evening the little King bade Plunk knit him a nice set of silken reins. “First thing to-morrow morning I shall harness you to my little carriage, and you shall give me a ride on the golden sands.”
Dearie me, considered poor Plunk, and where was he to hide from the Dawn-Maiden when she would go down into the sea in the morning and behold him thus to-morrow harnessed to a cart by his own son?
All the Sea King’s court slept. The Sea King slept. The wilful little King slept—only Plunk was awake and knitting away at the reins. He knitted fiercely, like one who is thinking hard. When it seemed to him that the strings were strong enough, Plunk said to himself: