Chapter IX: Under the Sea of Glass

Of course, when Dick found himself alone in the Wonderful Wood, he was as surprised as his two sisters had been, and just a wee bit frightened too; though, being a boy, he would not admit it, even to himself!

He trotted down the wood-path—which twisted and turned like a long snake—with his hands in his trousers pockets, and a very determined heart. He was extremely proud of having been chosen by Mother Goose for the task of rescuing her son, Humpty Dumpty, and thought that it showed how really sensible she was, after all. For of course, those things—rescuing prisoners, and all that—were always done by _men!_

He thought it a pity that neither she nor Bizzybuzz had given him any clearer directions about getting to the city of the Wicked King, but he hoped to meet plenty of people from whom he could ask the way. So he hurried on quite cheerfully, earnest and excited, into the depths of the Wonderful Wood. And very soon the wood grew lighter and thinner, and finally came to an end altogether, and lo and behold! there he was, on the shore of the Sea of Glass!

You see, Dick’s journey through the Wonderful Wood had been short, for all his adventures were to follow.

The Sea of Glass looked like a big green mirror, polished and clear and smooth. It did not look like water, nor ice, nor like anything except just what it was. Through the glass surface Dick could see faintly moving shadows and ripples. Evidently there was water underneath. As a matter of fact, it had once been a real, regular sea; only the Wicked King had put a glass lid over it, and screwed it on for all eternity.

Dick stared at the Sea of Glass for a minute very nervously and doubtfully; then, thinking of Humpty Dumpty, he stepped manfully out upon it. It was very slippery, but for a little while he got along fairly well by holding his hands out to balance himself and keeping his legs very far apart.

Then suddenly he stumbled a little and swayed, and as he did so, something slipped from his pocket, and fell with a sharp “cling!” on the glass. It was his jack-knife! He remembered that he had wanted to bring it with him, and that Bizzybuzz had promised it to him, and here it was! He stooped and picked it up, and then stopped a moment to open it and examine all its blades and corkscrews, and to be quite sure that it really was his own long-lost jack-knife.

Now, the one thing you must _not_ do on the Sea of Glass is to stand still. Dick felt his feet slip from under him, and put out his hands wildly. He lost his balance, fell, and the sharp blade of the open knife splintered down through the glass, with a sound like the smashing of three dozen fine wine-glasses.... The next moment, Dick, still holding the fatal knife, was falling down, down, down, through cold green water. Strange to say, he did not feel at all like drowning; but it was very cold and dark and unpleasant, and he heartily wished that he had never had a jack-knife.

Down—down—down he went, and passed a shoal of big fishes who made dreadful faces at him as he whizzed by. Suddenly, before he had entirely grasped what had happened to him, he found himself on solid ground again, at the bottom of the sea, rather jarred but otherwise unhurt, and was staring at the oddest sort of creature that he had ever seen.

This Creature was sitting just in front of him, in a sort of cave, lined with sea-shells and pink and white coral. On every side was growing sea-grass of scarlet and purple and green, and there were also sea-flowers and waving weeds of all kinds and colours. Quivering jelly-fish of pink and orange floated through the dim water, and star-fish lay about upon the pale, deep-sea sand. Sword-fish, porpoises, and other ocean things peered in upon the scene, with their queer, fixed goggle eyes. The light seemed to be filtered through a deep green shade.

The Creature himself was shaped like a man, but he was covered completely with silver-green scales, and had hair like long, lank sea-weed. His eyes were as cold and pale and glassy as those of the fishes, and his expression, slight as it was, was entirely disagreeable.

“This is most annoying,” he remarked, surveying Dick. “What are you?”

“Do you mean ‘Who are you?’” asked Dick.

“No,” said the Creature. “_What!_”

“Oh!” said Dick. “I am a little boy.”

“I never heard of it,” said the Creature. “I don’t think I like you. You may go!”

“Certainly!” replied Dick, meekly. “Do—do you mind telling me how?”

“I don’t care,” said the Creature. After that, conversation stopped for a while, and they merely stared at each other in silence. At last the Scaled One spoke again, this time very crossly:

“Why don’t you go?”

“I’d be _very_ glad to!” said poor Dick. “But you see, I don’t know how to go. Would it be too much trouble for you to tell me how to get to the City of the Wicked King?”

“_What!_” roared the Creature, so suddenly and violently that Dick jumped. “_I_ tell anyone anything about the Wicked King? Don’t you know that he is the deadliest enemy that I have?”

“Why, no!” answered Dick, a little disturbed by this outburst. “Won’t you tell me about it, please?”

His new acquaintance looked fiercely at him for a moment, and then became suddenly plunged in utter melancholy.

“Ah!” he sighed, while a tear oozed out of his eye and made a bubble in the green water, “’tis a sad tale! Listen, and hear the sorrowful story of the Sea Kobold!”

“Is that you?” asked Dick.

“Who else?” said the Scaly Creature. Then in mournful tones he began:

“I am the Sea Kobold. I own this sea, and everything in it. Once I owned the surface of the sea too, but that was long ago. I owned the pretty green waves with silver crests, that break in the bright daytime, and the big black ones that come at night in the dark of the moon. And I owned too the little pink ones that you see at sunset, when the West is burning up all the horrid things that have happened during the day.

“I took a fatherly interest in the little boats that floated there, and in the pretty, long-haired mermaids who swam up into the moonlight to sing love-songs to the sailors. The fishes that leaped and circled and shone in the purple light of dusk were all my friends, and the big and small winds knew me for their master. And I had a little son,—a beautiful, scaly son, born in the sea, and fated to inherit my power and my great sea-kingdom. But all that was very, very long ago!”

He wept.

“That was surely very nice,” said Dick, to encourage him.

“Nice! It was—” The Sea Kobold sought for a word.

“Bully?” suggested Dick.

“I never heard the adjective,” said the Sea Kobold, primly. “But I will accept it for the moment. It was bully!—What was I saying? Ah, yes! It is a _very_ sad story. The Wicked King lives, as you must know, on the further shore of this sea. He has a very pretty daughter, with whom Prince Humpty Dumpty used to be in love.”

“Humpty Dumpty!” exclaimed Dick, now all ears.

“Yes.—Don’t interrupt, please! It distracts my mind.—Well, the Wicked King wanted her to marry someone else,—a gentleman named Grump, I believe,—and forbade her to even see Humpty Dumpty. But of course the lovers would not obey him. He was so cruel and unkind always that his daughter did not think it wrong to do as he had told her not to; and, for my part, I did not, either.

“Humpty Dumpty came every night and sang love-songs to her, and one night he came in a beautiful little boat, made out of a big shell, with a sail spun entirely out of rose-leaves of different colours. And down by the shore he sang the very prettiest song that he had ever sung—or that any one else had ever sung, for that matter—and that I know, for I was listening. A _very_ pretty song it was, to be sure!

“We were great friends, he and I, and I held his boat between two quiet waves when he went on shore to meet the Princess. And down she came from the City Wall Gate, holding up her skirts daintily and looking as sweet as possible. And they got into the sea-shell boat, and I puffed a breeze to fill the rose-leaf sail, and off they sailed.

“But just then who should appear upon the shore but the Wicked King himself, and Grump with him! Grump—who was half a wizard and a _very_ disagreeable person, besides being very much in love with the little Princess—jumped into the sea and swam after the boat. The Wicked King stood on the shore and raved and threatened and swore.

“I tried my best to drown Grump, but he wouldn’t sink any more than a piece of cork, and in spite of all my efforts he overtook the boat and pulled it slowly back to the shore. Grump made some magic passes over the prow of the little sea-shell skiff, and—oh, ’tis too sad!—when the boat reached the shore, there was nothing in it but the Princess, crying like a baby, and beside her a big egg.

“They put poor Humpty Dumpty, in his new shape, on the City Wall, and shut the pretty little Princess up in a high tower. And then they took my little boy Mudge, and made him a prisoner too, just to punish me for having helped the young Prince. And last of all”—the Sea Kobold choked—“they put a glass lid over my sea, and screwed it down tight. And now I can never, never go up to the surface any more. And there are no more waves, and no more boats, and no more mermaids singing in the moonlight to the sailors, and—no—more—” The Sea Kobold dissolved into tears.

“Oh, cheer up!” said Dick, absent-mindedly. He was too much interested in the Sea Kobold’s story to pay much attention to his grief. “Do you happen to know just where the Princess is now?” he asked.

The Sea Kobold shook his head.

“No,” he answered. “I know that she is in the highest tower in the Red City.”

“The _highest tower_; that’s something to know, anyway,” said Dick, thoughtfully. He was glad to know that in the Red City he would have one person ready to help him if it were possible.

“And now,” he added, “would you—_would_ you be so kind, please, as to tell me how to get to the Red City?”

“I’m sure _I_ don’t know any way,” said the Sea Kobold, mournfully. “Since that glass cover was screwed on—By the bye, how did you get here?” he asked suddenly.

“I fell, and my knife broke a hole in the glass,” explained Dick. He showed the offending blade, and then shut and dropped it into his pocket.

“Well, go back through it, then,” said the Sea Kobold. “While we are on the subject, I may tell you that I am glad you have made a hole. I can go up now and then to look out, though, of course, I shall never dare to stay very long, for fear the Wicked King or Grump might see me and plan some fresh trouble for me. Now good-bye; I can’t be bothered with you any more.”

And he closed his fishy eyes and appeared to sleep.

Since there seemed nothing more to be gained by staying where he was, Dick turned his back on the Sea Kobold and his cave, and walked off among the rocks and the big ocean-trees that were scattered along the bottom of the sea.

He felt rather discouraged and lonely, for he could not imagine how he should ever get up again to the hole he had made in the glass. It occurred to him that he might climb one of the queer, tall, lanky sea-trees; but when he stopped to look, he could see that the top did not nearly reach to the surface. What was going to happen to him next? he wondered.

He soon found out.

X

_A Fish Tea-Party_