Bedtime Tale: The Water Babies Ch 8/Part 1

The Water Babies by Charles Kingsley Chapter Eight and Last Part One Here begins the never-to-be-too-much-studied account of the nine hundred and ninety-ninth part of the wonderful things which Tom saw on his journey to the other end of nowhere,

Which all good little children are requested to read,

That,

If ever they get to the other end of nowhere,

As they may very probably do,

They may not burst out laughing,

Or try to run away,

Or do any other silly vulgar thing which may offend Mrs.

Be Done By As You Did.

Now,

As soon as Tom had left Peace Pool,

He came to the white lap of the Great Seamother,

Ten thousand fathoms deep,

Where she makes world-pap all day long,

For the steam giants to knead and the fire giants to bake,

Till it has risen and hardened into mountain loaves and island cakes.

And there Tom was very near being kneaded up in the world-pap and turned into a fossil water baby,

Which would have astonished the Geological Society of New Zealand some hundreds of thousands of years hence.

For,

As he walked along in the silence of the sea twilight,

On the soft white ocean floor,

He was aware of a hissing,

And a roaring,

And a thumping,

And a pumping,

As of all the steam engines in the world at once.

And when he came near,

The water grew boiling hot,

Not that that hurt him in the least,

But it also grew as foul as gruel,

And every moment he stumbled over dead shells,

And fish,

And sharks,

And seals,

And whales,

Which had been killed by the hot water.

Then at last he came to the Great Sea Serpent himself,

Lying dead at the bottom,

And as he was too thick to scramble over,

Tom had to walk around him three-quarters of a mile and more,

Which put him out of his path sadly.

And when he had got round,

He came to a place called Stop,

And there he stopped,

And just in time.

For he was on the edge of a vast hole in the bottom of the sea,

Up which was rushing and roaring,

Clear steam enough to work all the engines in the world at once.

So clear indeed,

That it was quite light at moments,

And Tom could see almost up to the top of the water above,

And down below into the pit,

For nobody knows how far.

But as soon as he bent his head over the edge,

He got such a rap on the nose from pebbles,

That he jumped back again.

For the steam as it rushed up,

Rasped away the sides of the hole,

And hurled it up into the sea,

In a shower of mud,

And gravel,

And ashes.

And then it spread all around,

And sank again,

And covered in the dead fish so fast,

That before Tom had stood there five minutes,

He was buried in silt up to his ankles,

And began to be afraid that he should have been buried alive.

And perhaps he would have been,

But that while he was thinking,

The whole piece of ground on which he stood,

Was torn off,

And blown upwards,

And away flew Tom a mile up through the sea,

Wondering what was coming next.

At last he stopped,

Thump,

And found himself tight in the legs of the most wonderful bogey which he'd ever seen.

It had I don't know how many wings,

As big as the sails of a windmill,

And spread out in a ring like them,

And with them it hovered over the steam,

Which rushed up,

As a ball hovers over the top of a fountain.

And for every wing above it had a leg below,

With a claw like the comb at a tip,

And a nostril at the root,

And in the middle it had no stomach,

And one eye.

And as for its mouth,

That was all on one side.

As the Madre Pora formed her buccal in his starfishes.

Well,

It was a very strange beast,

But no stranger than some dozens,

Which you may see.

What do you want here?

It cried quite peevishly,

Getting in my way.

And it tried to drop Tom,

But he held on tight to its claws,

Thinking himself safer where he was.

So Tom told him who he was,

And what his errand was,

And the thing winked its one eye and sneered.

I am too old to be taken in that way.

You are come after gold,

I know you are.

Gold?

What is gold?

And really Tom did not know,

But the suspicious old bogey would not believe him.

But after a while Tom began to understand a little.

For as the vapors came up out of the hole,

The bogey smelt them with his nostrils,

And combed them and sorted them with his combs.

And then,

When they steamed up through them against his wings,

They were changed into showers and streams of metal.

From one wing fell gold dust,

And from another silver,

And from another copper,

And from another tin,

And from another lead,

And so on.

And sank into the soft mud,

Into veins and cracks,

And hardened there.

Whereby it comes to pass that the rocks are full of metal.

But all of the sudden,

Somebody shut off the steam below,

And the hole was left empty in an instant.

And then down rushed the water into the hole,

In such a whirlpool that the bogey spun round and round,

As fast as a teetotum.

And that was all in his day's work,

Like a fair fall with the hounds.

So all he did was to say to Tom,

Now it's your time,

Youngster,

To get down,

If you are in earnest,

Which I don't believe.

You'll soon see,

Said Tom,

And away he went,

As bold as Baron Wunchausen,

And shot down the rushing cataract,

Like a sailman at Balsodere.

And when he got to the bottom,

He swam till he washed on shore,

Safe upon the other end of nowhere,

And he found it,

To his surprise,

As most other people do,

Much more like this end of somewhere,

Than he had been in the habit of expecting.

At first he went through waste paper land,

Where all the stupid books lie in heaps,

Uphill and downdale,

Like leaves in a winter wood.

And there he saw people digging and grubbing among them,

To make worse books out of bad ones,

And thrashing chaff to save the dust of it.

In a very good trade they drove there by,

Especially among children.

Then he went by the Sea of Slops,

To the Mountain of Messes,

And the Territory of Tuck,

Where the ground was very sticky,

For it was all made of bad toffee,

Not Everton toffee,

Of course,

And full of deep cracks and holes choked with wind-fallen fruit,

And green gooseberries,

And sloughs,

And crabs,

And windberries,

And hips,

And haws,

And all the nasty things which little children will eat,

If they can get them.

But the fairies hide them out of the way in the country as fast as they can,

And very hard work they have,

And of very little use of it.

For as fast as they hide away the old trash,

Foolish and wicked people make fresh trash full of lime and poisonous plants,

And actually go and steal receipts out of old Madam Science's big book to invent poisons for little children,

And sell them at wakes,

And fairs,

And tuck-shops.

Very well,

Let them go on.

Dr.

Letheby and Dr.

Hassel cannot catch them,

Though they are setting traps for them all day long.

But the fairy with the birch-rod will catch them all in time,

And make them begin at one corner of their shops,

And eat their way out the other,

By which time they will have got such stomach aches as will cure them of poisoning little children.

Next he saw all the little people in the world,

Writing all the little books in the world,

About all the other little people in the world,

Probably because they had no great people to write about.

And if the names of the books were not squeaky,

Nor the pump-lighter,

Nor the narrow,

Narrow world,

Nor the hills of the chatter-much,

Nor the children twat-a-day,

Why,

Then they were something else.

And all the rest of the little people in the world read the books,

And thought themselves each as good as the president,

And perhaps they were right,

For everyone knows his own business best.

But Tom thought he would sooner have a jolly good fairy-tale about Jack the Giant Killer,

Or Beauty and the Beast,

Which taught him something that he didn't know already.

And next he came to the center of creation,

The hub,

They call it there,

Which lies in latitude 42.

21 degrees south,

And longitude 108.

56 degrees east.

And there he found all the wise people,

Instructing mankind in the science of spirit-wrapping,

While their house was burning over their heads.

And when Tom told them of the fire,

They held an indignation meeting forthwith,

And unanimously determined to hang Tom's dog for coming into their country with gunpowder in his mouth.

Tom couldn't help saying that though they did fancy,

They had carried all the wit away with them out of Lincolnshire two hundred years ago.

Yet,

If they had had one such Lincolnshire nobleman among them as good as old Lord Yarborough,

He would have called for the fire engines before he hanged other people's dogs.

But it was of no use,

And the dog was hanged,

And Tom couldn't even have his carcass,

For they had abolished the Have His Carcass Act in that country,

For fear lest when rogues fell out,

Honest men should come by their own.

And so,

They would have succeeded perfectly,

As they always do,

Only that,

As they always do too,

They failed in one little particular viz with the dog,

It would not die,

Being a water dog,

But bit their fingers so abominably that they were forced to let him go,

And Tom likewise,

As British subjects.

Whereon they recommended rapping for the spirits of their fathers,

And very much astonished the poor old spirits were when they came,

And saw how,

According to the laws of Miss Be Done By As You Did,

Their descendants had weakened their constitution by hard living.

Then came Tom to the island of Rogue's Harbour,

There everyone knows his neighbour's business better than his own,

And a very noisy place it was,

As might be expected,

Considering that all the inhabitants were on the wrong side of the house,

And were always making wry mouths,

And crying that the fairies' grapes were sour.

There Tom saw ploughs drawing horses,

Nails driving hammers,

Birds' nests taking boys,

Books making authors,

Bulls keeping china shops,

Monkeys shaving cats,

Dead dogs drilling live lions,

Blind brigadiers shelved as principals of colleges,

Play actors not in the least shelved as popular preachers.

And in short,

Everyone said to do something which he had not learnt,

Because in what he had learnt,

Or pretended to learn,

He had failed.

There stands the pantheon of the great unsuccessful,

From the builders of the Tower of Babel,

To those of the Trafalgar Fountains,

In which politicians lecture on the Constitutions,

Which ought to have marched,

Conspirators on the Revolutions,

Which ought to have been succeeded,

Economists on the schemes which ought to have made everyone's fortune,

And projectors on the discoveries which ought to have set the Thames on fire.

There cobblers lecture on orthopody,

Whatsoever that may be,

Because they cannot sell their shoes.

The philosophers demonstrate that England would be the freest and richest country in the world,

If she would only turn Papist again.

Penny-liners abuse the Thames,

Because they have not enough wit to get on its staff,

And young ladies walk about with lockets of Charles I's hair,

Or of somebody else's,

Inscribed with the neat,

Appropriate legend,

Which indeed is popular through all the land,

And which,

I hope you will learn to translate in due time,

And to prepend likewise.

When he got into the middle of the town,

They all set on him at once,

To show him his way,

Or rather,

To show him that he did not know his way,

For as for asking him what way he wanted to go,

No one ever thought of that.

But one pulled him hither,

And another poked him thither,

And a third cried,

You mustn't go west,

I tell you,

It is destruction to go west.

But I am not going west,

As you may see,

Said Tom.

And another,

The east lies here,

My dear,

I assure you this is the east.

But I don't want to go east,

Said Tom.

Well then,

At all events,

Whichever way you're going,

You're going wrong,

Cried they all with one voice,

Which was the only thing which they ever agreed about,

And all pointed at once to the thirty and two points of the compass,

Till Tom thought of the signposts in England had gotten together,

And fallen fighting.

And whether he would have ever escaped out of the town,

It is hard to say,

If the dog had not taken it into his head,

That they were going to pull his master to pieces,

And tackled them so sharply,

About the gastrocnemius muscle,

That he gave them some business of their own to think about,

And while they were rubbing their bitten calves,

Tom and the dog got safe away.

On the borders of that island,

He found Gotham,

Where the wise men live,

The same who dragged the pond,

Because the moon had fallen into it,

And planted a hedge around the cuckoo,

To keep spring all the year,

And he found them bringing up the town gate,

Because it was so wide,

That little folks could not get through,

And when he was asked why,

They told him that they were expanding their liturgy,

So he went on,

For it was no business of his,

Only he could not help saying that in his country,

If the kitten could not get in the same hole as the cat,

She might stay outside and meow.

But he saw the end of such fellows when he came to the island of the golden asses,

Where nothing but thistles grew,

For there they were all turning to mokes,

And ears with yard long.

For meddling with matters which they do not understand,

As Lucius did in the story,

And like him,

Mokes they must remain,

Till by the laws of development,

The thistles develop into roses,

Till then,

They must comfort themselves with the thought,

That the longer their ears are,

The thicker their hides,

And so a good beating doesn't hurt them.

Then came Tom to the great land of Hearsay,

In which are no less than thirty and odd kings,

Besides half a dozen republics,

And perhaps more by the next mail,

And there he fell with a deep,

Dark,

Deadly,

And destructive war,

Waged by the princes of those parts,

Both spiritual and temporal,

Against what do you think?

One thing I'm sure of,

That unless I told you,

You would never know,

Nor how they waged the war either,

For all their strategy and art military consisted in the safe and easy process of stopping their ears and screaming,

Oh,

Don't tell us,

And then they went running away.

So when Tom came into that land,

He found them all,

High and low,

Man,

Woman,

And child,

Running for their lives,

Day and night,

Continually,

And entreating not to be told what they didn't know,

Only the land being an island,

And they have a dislike to the water,

Being a musty lot for the most part.

They ran round and round the shore for ever,

Which,

As the island was exactly the same circumference as the planet on which we have the honor of living,

Was hard work,

Especially to those who had business to look after.

But before them,

As bandmaster and fugalman,

Ran a gentleman shearing a pig,

The melodious strains of which animal led them forever,

If not to conquest,

Still to fight,

And keep up their spirits mightily,

With the thought that they would at least have the pig's wool for their pains.

And running after them,

Day and night,

Came such a poor,

Lean,

Seedy,

Hard-worked old giant,

As ought to have been conquered up,

And had have a good dinner given him,

And a good wife found him,

And been set to play with their little children.

And then he would have been a very presentable old fellow after all,

For he had a heart,

Though it was considerably overgrown with brains.

He was made up principally of fish bones and parchment,

Put together with wire and Canada balsam,

And smelt strongly of spirits,

Though he never drank anything but water.

But spirits he used somehow,

There was no denying.

He had a great pair of spectacles on his nose,

And a butterfly net in one hand,

And a geological hammer in the other,

And was hung all over with pockets,

Full of collecting boxes,

Bottles,

Microscopes,

Telescopes,

Barometers,

Ordinance maps,

Scalpels,

Forceps,

Photographic accessories,

And so on.

He had a great apparatus,

An all-other tackle for finding out everything about everything,

And a little more,

Too.

And most strange of all,

He was running not forwards,

But backwards,

As fast as he could.

Away all the good folks ran from him,

Except Tom,

Who stood his ground and dodged between his legs,

And the giant,

When he had passed him,

Looked down and cried,

As if he was quite pleased and comforted.

What?

Who are you?

And you actually don't run away,

Like all the rest?

But he had to take his spectacles off.

Tom remarked,

In order to see him plainly.

Tom told him who he was,

And the giant pulled out a bottle and a cork,

And instantly,

He collected him with.

But Tom was too sharp for that,

And dodged between his legs and in front of him,

And then the giant could not see him at all.

No,

No,

No,

Said Tom.

I've not been round the world,

And through the world,

And up to Mother Carrie's haven,

Besides being caught in a net.

To be bottled up by any old giant like you.

And when the giant understood what a traveller Tom had been,

He made a truce with him at once,

And would have kept him there to this day to pick his brains,

So delighted was he at finding anyone to tell him what he did not know.

Ah,

You lucky little dog,

Said he at last,

Quite simply,

For he was the simplest,

Pleasantest,

Honestest,

Kindliest,

Old,

Dumb-in-a-knee Sampson of a giant that had ever turned the world upside down without intending it.

Ah,

You lucky little dog,

If I'd only been where you have been,

To see what you have seen.

Well,

Said Tom,

If you want to do that,

You had best put your head under water for a few hours as I did,

And turn into a water baby,

Or some other baby,

And then you might have a chance.

Turn into a baby,

Eh?

If I could do that,

And know what was happening to me for but one hour,

I should know everything then,

And be at rest.

But I can't.

I can't be a little child again,

And I suppose if I could,

It would be no use,

Because then I should know nothing about what was happening to me.

Ah,

You lucky little dog,

Said the poor old giant.

But why do you run after all these poor people,

Said Tom,

Who liked the giant very much?

My dear,

It's they that have been running after me,

Father and son,

For hundreds and hundreds of years,

Throwing stones at me till they have knocked off my spectacles fifty times,

And calling me a malignant.

Goodness knows only what they mean,

For I never read poetry,

And hunting me round and round,

Though catch me they can't,

For every time I go over the same ground,

I go the faster,

And grow the bigger,

While all I want is to be friends with them,

And to tell them something to their advantage,

Like Mr.

Joseph Addy,

Only somehow they're so strangely afraid of hearing it.

But I suppose I am not the man of the world,

And have no tact.

But why don't you turn around and tell them so?

Because I can't.

You see,

I am one of the sons of Epimetheus,

And must go backwards,

If I am to go at all.

But why don't you stop,

And let them come up to you?

Why,

My dear,

Only think.

If I did,

All the butterflies would fly past me,

And then I should catch no more new species,

And should grow rusty and moldy and die.

And I don't intend to do that,

My dear,

For I have a destiny before me,

They say,

Though what it is I don't know,

And I don't care.

Don't care,

Said Tom?

No.

Do the duty which lies nearest you,

And catch the first beetle you come across,

Is my motto.

And I have thriven by it for some hundred years.

Now I must go on.

Dear me,

While I've been talking to you,

At least nine new species have escaped me.

And on went the giant behind before,

Like a bull in a china shop,

Till he ran into the steeple of a great idol temple.

For they are all idolaters in those parts,

Of course,

Else they would have never been afraid of giants.

And knocked the upper half clean off,

Hurting himself horribly about the small of the back.

But little he cared,

For as soon as the ruins of the steeple were well between his legs,

He poked and peered among the falling stones,

And shifted his spectacles,

And pulled out his pocket magnifier and cried,

This what I have found is most important.

And down he sat on the nave of the temple,

Not being a man of the world.

Whereon the roof caved in bodily,

He smashed the idols,

And sent all the priests flying out of doors and windows like rabbits out of a burrow when a ferret goes in.

But he never heeded,

For out of the dust flew a bat,

And the giant had him in a moment.

Dear me,

This is even more important.

And now when I look at it,

It may be the only variety produced in this climate.

And having bagged his bat,

Up he got and on he went,

While all the people ran,

Being in none the better humor for having their temple smashed for the sake of three obscure species and a Buddhist bat.

Well,

Thought Tom,

This is a very pretty quarrel,

With a good deal to be said on both sides,

But it's no business of mine.

And no more it was,

Because he was a water baby,

And had the original so by the right ear,

Which you will never have,

Unless you be a baby,

Whether of the water,

The land,

Or the air,

Matters not,

Provided you can only keep on continually being a baby.

So the giant ran round after all the people,

And the people ran round after the giant,

And they are running unto this day,

For aught I know,

Or do not know,

And will run till either he or they or both turn into little children.

And then as Shakespeare says,

And therefore it must be true,

Jack shall have Jill,

Not shall go ill,

The man shall have his mare again,

And all go well.

And that is the end of our story this evening.

Until next time,

Sweet dreams.

You