“O Jack!” she said at last; “if you can’t dream any better, I must call the Craken.”
“Very well,” said Jack. “I’m almost wrapped up and smothered in bats’ wings, so call anything you please.”
Thereupon Mopsa whistled softly, and in a minute or two he saw, almost spanning the river, a hundred yards off, a thing like a rainbow, or a slender bridge, or still more, like one ring or coil of an enormous serpent; and presently the creature’s head shot up like a fountain, close to the boat, almost as high as a ship’s mast. It was the Craken; and when Mopsa saw it, she began to cry, and said, “We are caught in this crowd of creatures, and we cannot get away from the land of dreams. Do help us, Craken.”
Some of the bats that hung to the edges of the boat had wings as large as sails, and the first thing the Craken did was to stoop its lithe neck, pick two or three of them off, and eat them.
“You can swim your boat home under my coils where the water is calm,” the Craken said, “for she is so extremely old now, that if you do not take care she will drop to pieces before you get back to the present time.”
Jack knew it was of no use saying anything to this formidable creature, before whom the river-horses and the elephants were rushing to the shore; but when he looked and saw down the river rainbow behind rainbow—I mean coil behind coil—glittering in the sun, like so many glorious arches that did not reach to the banks, he felt extremely glad that this was a dream, and besides that, he thought to himself, “It’s only a fabled monster.”
“No, it’s only a fable to these times,” said Mopsa, answering his thought; “but in spite of that we shall have to go through all the rings.”
They went under one—silver, green, and blue, and gold. The water dripped from it upon them, and the boat trembled, either because of its great age, or because it felt the rest of the coil underneath.
A good way off was another coil, and they went so safely under that, that Jack felt himself getting used to Crakens, and not afraid. Then they went under thirteen more. These kept getting nearer and nearer together, but, besides that, the fourteenth had not quite such a high span as the former ones; but there were a great many to come, and yet they got lower and lower.
Both Jack and Mopsa noticed this, but neither said a word. The thirtieth coil brushed Jack’s cap off, then they had to stoop to pass under the two next, and then they had to lie down in the bottom of the boat, and they got through with the greatest difficulty; but still before them was another! The boat was driving straight towards it, and it lay so close to the water that the arch it made was only a foot high. When Jack saw it, he called out, “No! that I cannot bear. Somebody else may do the rest of this dream. I shall jump overboard!”