"Undine, Undine," sobbed the little chap; "I want my boat, I want my boat!"
His sister could not reach it, and the two stood, hand-in-hand, helpless on the beach, while the little boat drifted away. Bravely did our Undine, when she heard the call, dash forward to do battle with the naughty little ripples, who called out angrily, "Shut up! Wash it out to sea! Swamp it! He was spoiling our game."
They were too strong for poor Undine, and would have destroyed the little boat, or washed it away, had not the kind Zephyr, hearing all the noise, swept down from the cliffs, filled the sails of the toy boat and wafted it to shore. After this she blew the naughty little ripples away, and they went into rock pools and sulked by themselves.
When the Zephyr had returned to the cliffs the big, rough ripple who had knocked over the little boy cried out fiercely: "When I am a wave I shall kill all the boys I can and swamp their boats. That is what my big brother is taught to do, and he is a wave and goes out to sea."
The Zephyr often heard this sort of talk among the ripples, and when Undine asked her why they said these things, she kissed her gently and told her not to be angry even with the ripples, who did not know what they were saying, and begged her when she grew up to be kind and good to everyone, for then she would be happy.
However, she was not altogether happy just at first, for the other ripples were not at all pleased with her, and would not speak to her. The little boy was carried off the beach by his sister, so Undine was left all alone, and hid herself under some dark brown seaweed in the cleft of a rock and cried herself to sleep, when she dreamed that the pretty little boy was a beautiful wave, and was dancing with her, hand-in-hand, over the wide ocean.
The next day she was moved into the billow class. The Master was the South Wind. He had just come home from college. He taught them cresting and breaking on rocks. He was a bright, clever fellow, but he told them nothing about being good and kind as the Zephyr had done. After a week in the billow class, Undine and several of her young friends were moved up into the wavelet class. This was taught by a young wave, and here they learned rushing, leaping, rolling, and marching in open order. The young wave told them exciting stories of wrecks and drowning men, and repeated to them all that nonsense about Britannia wanting to rule the waves, and insisted on the duty of all good waves to go about fighting men, and killing as many as possible. This he called "Patriotism," and Undine listened to his eloquent stories until she had nearly forgotten all that the kind Zephyr had tried to teach her. But the fierce young wave could not change Undine's real nature, and she remained, at heart, a kind and gentle wave. Outwardly she grew tall and strong, and her mother and father and all her brothers and sisters still called her "Undine The Beautiful."
At the end of a month she passed all her examinations, and was a first-class wave ready to go to sea. That was a great day when they all left school. Old Lobster Pot and his good wife Mora came to fetch them away. The South Wind made an oration in Latin about the duty of waves to fight for their country.
It began, Anna virumque cano, and old Lobster Pot said it was very original and clever. The Zephyr sighed to see all these young waves, full of bright hope and eager fancies, passing out of the quiet bay into the open Channel and the wide world.
They sailed along in open order among the fishing boats, and yachts, and steamers. The nasty, rough ripple that had knocked down the little boy, and tried to steal his boat, had grown into a handsome big wave. Surger, they called him, because of his handsome head and fine flowing surge when he broke over the sand banks. He was very fond of Undine now, and kept close to her, as they sailed up the channel. It was a glorious day. The sun shone brightly, the gulls swooped down and floated for a few moments on Undine's shoulders, and then soared away down the breeze. The boats leaped merrily in front of them.