The sea all round them was smooth and calm and grey. Then it suddenly ruffled and went dark in patches under a little cold wind, the wind at dawn. Swiftly the sun looked up with a shout over the rim of the sea, red as if he had been drinking hot wine; and swiftly he leaped into the air and went off for his daily journey, turning all the edges of the waves golden and the shadows between them dark green. A ship was sailing on the margin of the sea and the sky, and it sailed right into the sun, so that its masts were black against the fire.
‘Where’s that going to?’ asked Roverandom.
‘O! Japan or Honolulu or Manila or Easter Island or Thursday or Vladivostok, or somewhere or other, I suppose,’ said the mer-dog, whose geography was a bit vague, in spite of his hundreds of years of boasted prowlings. ‘This is the Pacific, I believe; but I don’t know which part—a warm part, by the feel of it. It’s rather a large piece of water. Let’s go and look for something to eat!’
When they got back, some days later, Roverandom at once went to look for the wizard again; he felt he had given him a good long rest.
‘Please, Mr Artaxerxes, could you bother—‘ he began as usual.
‘No! I could not!’ said Artaxerxes, even more definitely than usual. This time he really was busy, though. The Complaints had come in by post. Of course, as you can imagine, all kinds of things go wrong in the sea, that not even the best PAM in the ocean could prevent, and some of which he is not even supposed to have anything to do with. Wrecks come down plump now and again on the roof of somebody’s sea-house; explosions occur in the sea-bed (O yes! they have volcanoes and all that kind of nuisance quite as badly as we have) and blow up somebody’s prize flock of goldfish, or prize bed of anemones, or one and only pearl-oyster, or famous rock and coral garden; or savage fish have a fight in the highway and knock mer-children over; or absent-minded sharks swim in at the dining-room window and spoil the dinner; or the deep, dark, unmentionable monsters of the black abysses do horrible and wicked things.
The mer-folk have always put up with all this, but not without complaining. They liked complaining. They used of course to write letters to The Weekly Weed, The Mermail, and Ocean Notions; but they had a PAM now, and they wrote to him as well, and blamed him for everything, even if they got their tails nipped by their own pet lobsters. They said his magic was inadequate (as it sometimes was) and that his salary ought to be reduced (which was true but rude); and that he was too big for his boots (which was also near the mark: they should have said slippers, he was too lazy to wear boots often); and they said lots besides to worry Artaxerxes every morning, and especially on Mondays. It was always worst (by several hundred envelopes) on Mondays; and this was a Monday, so Artaxerxes threw a lump of rock at Roverandom, and he slipped off like a shrimp from a net.
He was jolly glad when he got out into the garden to find that he was still unchanged in shape; and I dare say if he had not removed himself quick the wizard would have changed him into a sea-slug, or sent him to the Back of Beyond (wherever that is), or even to Pot (which is at the bottom of the deepest sea). He was very annoyed, and he went and grumbled to the sea-Rover.
‘You’d better give him a rest till Monday is over, at any rate,’ advised the mer-dog; ‘and I should miss out Mondays altogether, in future, if I were you. Come and have another swim!’
After that Roverandom gave the wizard such a long rest that they almost forgot about one another—not quite: dogs don’t forget lumps of rock very quickly. But to all appearances Roverandom had settled down to become a permanent pet of the palace. He was always off somewhere with the mer-dog, and often the mer-children came along as well. They were not as jolly as real, two-legged children in Roverandom’s opinion (but then of course Roverandom did not really belong to the sea, and was not a perfect judge), but they kept him happy; and they might have kept him there for ever and have made him forget little boy Two in the end, if it had not been for things that happened later. You can make up your mind whether Psamathos had anything to do with these events, when we come to them.
There were plenty of these children to choose from, at any rate. The old mer-king had hundreds of daughters and thousands of grandchildren, and all in the same palace; and they were all fond of the two Rovers, and so was Mrs Artaxerxes. It was a pity that Roverandom never thought of telling her his story; she knew how to manage the PAM in any mood. But in that case, of course, Roverandom would have gone back sooner and missed many of the sights. It was with Mrs Artaxerxes, and some of the merchildren that he visited the Great White Caves, where all the jewels that are lost in the sea, and many that have always been in the sea, and of course pearls upon pearls, are hoarded and hidden.
They went too, another time, to visit the smaller seafairies in their little glass houses at the bottom of the sea. The sea-fairies seldom swim, but wander singing over the bed of the sea in smooth places, or drive in shellcarriages harnessed to the tiniest fishes; or else they ride astride little green crabs with bridles of fine threads (which of course don’t prevent the crabs from going sideways, as they always will); and they have troubles with the sea-goblins that are larger, and ugly and rowdy, and do nothing except fight and hunt fish and gallop about on sea-horses. Those goblins can live out of the water for a long while, and play in the surf at the water’s edge in a storm. So can some of the sea-fairies, but they prefer the calm warm nights of summer evenings on lonely shores (and naturally are very seldom seen in consequence).
Another day old Uin turned up again and gave the two dogs a ride for a change; it was like riding on a moving mountain. They were away for days and days; and they only turned back from the eastern edge of the world just in time. There the whale rose to the top and blew out a fountain of water so high that a lot of it was thrown right off the world and over the edge.
Another time he took them to the other side (or as near as he dared), and that was a still longer and more exciting journey, the most marvellous of all Roverandom’s travels, as he realised later, when he was grown to be an older and a wiser dog. It would take the whole of another story, at least, to tell you of all their adventures in Uncharted Waters and of their glimpses of lands unknown to geography, before they passed the Shadowy Seas and reached the great Bay of Fairyland (as we call it) beyond the Magic Isles; and saw far off in the last West the Mountains of Elvenhome and the light of Faery upon the waves. Roverandom thought he caught a glimpse of the city of the Elves on the green hill beneath the Mountains, a glint of white far away; but Uin dived again so suddenly that he could not be sure. If he was right, he is one of the very few creatures, on two legs or four, who can walk about our own lands and say they have glimpsed that other land, however far away.
‘I should catch it, if this was found out!’ said Uin. ‘No one from the Outer Lands is supposed ever to come here; and few ever do now. Mum’s the word!’
What did I say about dogs? They don’t forget illtempered lumps of rock. Well then, in spite of all these varied sight-seeings and these astonishing journeys, Roverandom kept it in his underneath mind all the time. And it came back into his upper mind, as soon as ever he got back home.
His very first thought was: ‘Where’s that old wizard? What’s the use of being polite to him! I’ll spoil his trousers again, if I get half a chance.’
He was in that frame of mind when, after trying in vain to have a word alone with Artaxerxes, he saw the magician go by, down one of the royal roads leading from the palace. He was of course too proud at his age to grow a tail or fins or learn to swim properly. The only thing he did like a fish was to drink (even in the sea, so he must have been thirsty); he spent a lot of time that might have been employed on official business conjuring up cider into large barrels in his private apartments. When he wanted to get about quickly, he drove. When Roverandom saw him, he was driving in his express—a gigantic shell shaped like a cockle and drawn by seven sharks. People got out of the way quick, for the sharks could bite.
‘Let’s follow!’ said Roverandom to the mer-
dog; and follow they did; and the two bad dogs dropped pieces of rock into the carriage whenever it passed under cliffs. They could nip along amazingly fast, as I told you; and they whizzed ahead, hid in weed-bushes and pushed anything loose they could find over the edge. It annoyed the wizard intensely, but they took care that he did not spot them.
Artaxerxes was in a very bad temper before he started, and he was in a rage before he had gone far, a rage not unmixed with anxiety. For he was going to investigate the damage done by an unusual whirlpool that had suddenly appeared—and in a part of the sea that he did not like at all; he thought (and he was quite right) that there were nasty things in that direction that were best left alone. I dare say you can guess what was the matter; Artaxerxes did. The ancient Sea-serpent was waking, or half thinking about it.
He had been in a sound sleep for years, but now he was turning. When he was uncoiled he would certainly have reached a hundred miles (some people say he would reach from Edge to Edge, but that is an exaggeration); and when he is curled up there is only one cave other than Pot (where he used to live, and many people wish him back there), only one cave in all the oceans that will hold him, and that is very unfortunately not a hundred miles from the mer-king’s palace.
When he undid a curl or two in his sleep, the water heaved and shook and bent people’s houses and spoilt their repose for miles and miles around. But it was very stupid to send the PAM to look into it; for of course the Sea-serpent is much too enormous and strong and old and idiotic for any one to control (primordial, prehistoric, autothalassic, fabulous, mythical, and silly are other adjectives applied to him); and Artaxerxes knew it all only too well.
Not even the Man-in-the-Moon working hard for fifty years could have concocted a spell large enough or long enough or strong enough to bind him. Only once had the Man-in-the-Moon tried (when specially requested), and at least one continent fell into the sea as a result.
Poor old Artaxerxes drove straight up to the mouth of the Sea-serpent’s cave. But he had no sooner got out of his carriage than he saw the tip of the Sea-serpent’s tail sticking out of the entrance; larger it was than a row of gigantic water-barrels, and green and slimy. That was quite enough for him. He wanted to go home at once before the Worm turned again—as all worms will at odd and unexpected moments.
It was little Roverandom that upset everything! He did not know anything about the Sea-serpent or its tremendousness; all he thought about was baiting the illtempered wizard. So when a chance came—Artaxerxes was standing staring stupid-like at the visible end of the serpent, and his steeds were taking no particular notice of anything—he crept up and bit one of the sharks’ tails, for fun. For fun! What fun! The shark jumped straight forward, and the carriage jumped forward too; and Artaxerxes, who had just turned round to get into it, fell on his back. Then the shark bit the only thing it could reach at the moment, which was the shark in front; and that shark bit the next one; and so on, until the last of the seven, seeing nothing else to bite—bless me! the idiot, if he did not go and bite the Sea-serpent’s tail!
The Sea-serpent gave a new and very unexpected turn! And the next thing the dogs knew was being whirled all over the place in water gone mad, bumping into giddy fishes and spinning sea-trees, scared out of their lives in a cloud of uprooted weeds, sand, shells, slugs, periwinkles, and oddments. And things got worse and worse, and the serpent kept on turning. And there was old Artaxerxes, clinging on to the reins of the sharks, being whirled all over the place too, and saying the most dreadful things to them. To the sharks, I mean. Luckily for this story, he never knew what Roverandom had done.
I don’t know how the dogs got home. It was a long, long time before they did, at any rate. First of all they were washed up on the shore in one of the terrible tides caused by the Sea-serpent’s stirrings; and then they were caught by fishermen on the other side of the sea and jolly nearly sent to an Aquarium (a disgusting fate); and then having escaped that by the skin of their feet they had to get all the way back themselves as best they could through perpetual subterranean commotion.
And when at last they got home there was a terrible commotion there too. All the mer-folk were crowded round the palace, all shouting at once:
‘Bring out the PAM!’ (Yes! they called him that publicly, and nothing longer or more dignified.) ‘Bring out the PAM! BRING OUT THE PAM!’
And the PAM was hiding in the cellars. Mrs Artaxerxes found him there at last, and made him come out; and all the mer-folk shouted, when he looked out of an attic-window:
‘Stop this nonsense! STOP THIS NONSENSE! STOP THIS NONSENSE!’
And they made such a hullabaloo that people at all the seasides all over the world thought the sea was roaring louder than usual. It was! And all the while the Seaserpent kept on turning, trying absentmindedly to get the tip of his tail in his mouth. But thank heavens! he was not properly and fully awake, or he might have come out and shaken his tail in anger, and then another continent would have been drowned. (Of course whether that would have been really regrettable or not depends on which continent was taken and which you live on.)
But the mer-folk did not live on a continent, but in the sea, and right in the thick of it; and very thick it was getting. And they insisted that it was the mer-king’s business to make the PAM produce some spell, remedy, or solution to keep the Sea-serpent quiet: they could not get their hands to their faces to feed themselves or blow their noses, the water shook so; and everybody was bumping into everybody else; and all the fish were seasick, the water was so wobbly; and it was so turbid and so full of sand that everyone had coughs; and all the dancing was stopped.
Artaxerxes groaned, but he had to do something. So he went to his workshop and shut himself up for a fortnight, during which time there were three earthquakes, two submarine hurricanes, and several riots of the merpeople. Then he came out and let loose a most prodigious spell (accompanied with soothing incantation) at a distance from the cave; and everybody went home and sat in cellars waiting—everybody except Mrs Artaxerxes and her unfortunate husband. The wizard was obliged to stay (at a distance, but not a safe one) and watch the result; and Mrs Artaxerxes was obliged to stay and watch the wizard.
All the spell did was to give the Serpent a terrible bad dream: he dreamed that he was covered all over with barnacles (very irritating, and partly true), and also being slowly roasted in a volcano (very painful, and unfortunately quite imaginary). And that woke him!
Probably Artaxerxes’ magic was better than was supposed. At any rate, the Sea-serpent did not come out—luckily for this story. He put his head where his tail was, and yawned, opened his mouth as wide as the cave, and snorted so loud that everyone in the cellars heard him in all the kingdoms of the sea.
And the Sea-serpent said: ‘Stop this NONSENSE!’
And he added: ‘If this blithering wizard doesn’t go away at once, and if he ever so much as paddles in the sea again, I shall COME OUT; and I shall eat him first, and then I shall knock everything to dripping smithereens. That’s all. Good night!’
And Mrs Artaxerxes carried the PAM home in a fainting fit.
When he had recovered—and that was quick, they saw to that—he took the spell off the Serpent, and packed his bag; and all the people said and shouted:
‘Send the PAM away! A good riddance! That’s all. Good-bye!’
And the mer-king said: ‘We don’t want to lose you, but we think you ought to go.’ And Artaxerxes felt very small and unimportant altogether (which was good for him). Even the mer-dog laughed at him.
But funnily enough, Roverandom was quite upset. After all, he had his own reasons for knowing that Artaxerxes’ magic was not without effect. And he had bitten the shark’s tail, too, hadn’t he? And he had started the whole thing with that trouser-bite. And he belonged to the Land himself, and felt it was a bit hard on a poor land-wizard being baited by all these sea-folk.
Anyway he came up to the old fellow and said: ‘Please, Mr Artaxerxes—!’
‘W
ell?’ said the wizard, quite kindly (he was so glad not to be called PAM, and he had not heard a ‘Mister’ for weeks). ‘Well? What is it, little dog?’
‘I beg your pardon, I do really. Awfully sorry, I mean. I never meant to damage your reputation.’ Roverandom was thinking of the Sea-serpent and the shark’s tail, but (luckily) Artaxerxes thought he was referring to his trousers.
‘Come, come!’ he said. ‘We won’t bring up bygones. Least said, soonest mended, or patched. I think we had both better go back home again together.’
‘But please, Mr Artaxerxes,’ said Roverandom, ‘could you bother to turn me back into my proper size?’
‘Certainly!’ said the wizard, glad to find somebody that still believed he could do anything at all. ‘Certainly!
But you are best and safest as you are, while you are down here. Let’s get away from this first! And I am really and truly busy just now.’
And he really and truly was. He went into the workshops and collected all his paraphernalia, insignia, symbols, memoranda, books of recipes, arcana, apparatus, and bags and bottles of miscellaneous spells. He burned all that would burn in his waterproof forge; and the rest he tipped into the back-garden. Extraordinary things took place there afterwards: all the flowers went mad, and the vegetables were monstrous, and the fishes that ate them were turned into sea-worms, sea-cats, sea-cows, sea-lions, sea-tigers, sea-devils, porpoises, dugongs, cephalopods, manatees, and calamities, or merely poisoned; and phantasms, visions, bewilderments, illusions, and hallucinations sprouted so thick that nobody had any peace in the palace at all, and they were obliged to move. In fact they began to respect the memory of that wizard after they had lost him. But that was long afterwards. At the moment they were clamouring for him to depart.
Tales From the Perilous Realm Page 8