By Charles Kingsley

I

1. And then, on the evening of a very hot day, Tom, the water-baby, saw a sight.

He had been very stupid all day, and so had the trout, for they would not move an inch to take a fly, though there were thousands on the water, but lay dozing at the bottom, under the shade of the stones; and Tom lay dozing, too, and was glad to cuddle their smooth, cool sides, for the water was quite warm and unpleasant.

2. But toward evening it grew suddenly dark, and Tom looked up and saw a blanket of black clouds lying right across the valley above his head, resting on the crags right and left. He felt not quite frightened, but very still, for everything was still. There was not a whisper of wind nor a chirp of a bird to be heard; and next a few great drops of rain fell plop into the water, and one hit Tom on the nose and made him pop his head down quickly enough.

3. And then the thunder roared, and the lightning flashed, and leaped across Vendale and back again, from cloud to cloud and cliff to cliff, till the very rocks in the stream seemed to shake; and Tom looked up at it through the water and thought it the finest thing he ever saw in his life.

4. But out of the water he dared not put his head; for the rain came down by bucketfuls, and the hail hammered like shot on the stream and churned it into foam; and soon the stream rose, and rushed down, higher and higher, and fouler and fouler, full of beetles and sticks and straws and worms and this, that, and the other.

Tom could hardly stand against the stream, and hid behind a rock. But the trout did not; for out they rushed from among the stones, and began gobbling the beetles and leeches in the most greedy and quarrelsome way.

6. And now, by the flashes of lightning, Tom saw a new sight—all the bottom of the stream alive with great eels, turning and twisting along, all down stream and away. They had been hiding for weeks past in the cracks of the rocks and in burrows in the mud, and Tom had hardly ever seen them, except now and then at night; but now they were all out, and went hurrying past him so fiercely and wildly that he was quite frightened.

7. And, as they hurried past, he could hear them say to each other: "We must run, we must run. What a jolly thunder storm! Down to the sea, down to the sea!"

And then the otter came by with all her brood, saying: "Come along, children; we will breakfast on salmon to-morrow. Down to the sea, down to the sea!"

8. "Down to the sea?" said Tom. "Everything is going to the sea, and I will go, too. Good-bye, trout." But the trout were so busy gobbling worms that they never turned to answer him; so that Tom was spared the pain of bidding them farewell.

9. And now, down the rushing stream, guided by the bright flashes of the storm; past tall birch-fringed rocks, which shone out one moment as clear as day, and the next were dark as night; past dark hovers under swirling banks; on through narrow strids and roaring cataracts, where Tom was deafened and blinded for a moment by the rushing waters; along deep reaches, where the white water lilies tossed and flapped beneath the wind and hail; past sleeping villages; under dark bridge arches, and away and away to the sea.

10. And Tom could not stop and did not care to stop; he would see the great world below, and the salmon, and the breakers, and the wide, wide sea.

II

11. And when the day came, Tom found himself out in the salmon river. And after a while he came to a place where the river spread out into broad, still, shallow reaches so wide that little Tom, as he put his head out of the water, could hardly see across.

12. And there he stopped. He got a little frightened. "This must be the sea," he thought. "What a wide place it is! If I go on into it, I shall surely lose my way or some strange thing will bite me. I will stop here and look out for the otter or the eels, or some one to tell me where I shall go."

13. So he went back a little way and crept into a crack of the rock, just where the river opened out into the wide shallows, and watched for some one to tell him his way; but the otter and the eels were gone on miles and miles down the stream.

14. There he waited, and slept, too, for he was quite tired with his night's journey; and when he woke, the stream was clearing to a beautiful amber hue, though it was still very high.

15. Tom went on down, and, as he went, all the vale looked sad. The red and yellow leaves showered down into the river; the flies and beetles were all dead and gone; the chill autumn fog lay low upon the hills, and sometimes spread itself so thickly on the river that he could not see his way.

16. But he felt his way instead, following the flow of the stream day after day, past great bridges, past boats and barges, past the great town with its wharves and mills and tall smoking chimneys, and ships which rode at anchor in the stream; and now and then he ran against their hawsers and wondered what they were, and peeped out and saw the sailors lounging on board, and ducked under again, for he was terribly afraid of being caught by man and turned into a chimney sweep once more.

17. Poor little fellow! It was a dreary journey for him; and more than once he longed to be back in Vendale, playing with the trout in the bright summer sun. But it could not be. What has been once can never come over again. And people can be little babies, even water-babies, only once in their lives.

18. Besides, people who make up their minds to go and see the world, as Tom did, must needs find it a weary journey. Lucky for them if they do not lose heart and stop half way, instead of going on bravely to the end, as Tom did.

19. But Tom was always a brave, determined little English bulldog, who never knew when he was beaten; and on and on he held, till he saw a long way off the red buoy through the fog. And then he found, to his surprise, the stream turned round and running up inland.

20. It was the tide, of course; but Tom knew nothing of the tide. He only knew that in a minute more the water, which had been fresh, turned salt all around him. And then there came a change over him. He felt strong and light and fresh, and gave, he did not know why, three skips out of the water, a yard high, and head over heels, just as the salmon do when they first touch the noble, rich salt water, which, as some wise men tell us, is the mother of all living things.

21. He did not care now for the tide being against him. The red buoy was in sight, dancing in the open sea; and to the buoy he would go, and to it he went. He passed great shoals of bass and mullet, leaping and rushing in after the shrimps, but he never heeded them nor they him; and once he passed a great, black, shining seal who was coming in after the mullet.

22. The seal put his head and shoulders out of water and stared at him. And Tom, instead of being frightened, said: "How d'ye do, sir? What a beautiful place the sea is!"

23. And the old seal, instead of trying to bite him, looked at him with his soft, sleepy, winking eyes and said: "Good tide to you, my little man; are you looking for your brothers and sisters? I passed them all at play outside."

24. "Oh, then," said Tom, "I shall have playfellows at last!" And he swam on to the buoy and got upon it—for he was quite out of breath—and sat there and looked round for water-babies; but there were none to be seen.

III

25. The sea breeze came in freshly with the tide and blew the fog away, and the little waves danced for joy around the buoy, and the old buoy danced with them. The shadows of the clouds ran races over the bright, blue bay, and yet never caught each other up; and the breakers plunged merrily upon the wide white sands and jumped up over the rocks to see what the green fields inside were like, and tumbled down and broke themselves all to pieces and never minded it a bit, but mended themselves and jumped up again.

26. And the terns hovered over Tom like huge, white dragon-flies with black heads; and the gulls laughed like girls at play; and the sea-pies, with their red bills and legs, flew to and fro from shore to shore and whistled sweet and wild. And Tom looked and looked and listened; and he would have been very happy if he could only have seen the water-babies.

27. Then, when the tide turned, he left the buoy and swam round and round in search of them; but in vain. Sometimes he thought he heard them laughing; but it was only the laughter of the ripples. And sometimes he thought he saw them at the bottom; but it was only white and pink shells.

28. And once he was sure he had found one, for he saw two bright eyes peeping out of the sand. So he dived down and began scraping the sand away, and cried: "Don't hide; I do want some one to play with so much!"

And out jumped a great turbot, with his ugly eyes and mouth all awry, and flopped away along the bottom, knocking poor Tom over. And he sat down at the bottom of the sea and cried salt tears from sheer disappointment.

29. To have come all this way and faced so many dangers, and yet to find no water-babies! How hard! Well, it did seem hard; but people, even little babies, cannot have all they want without waiting for it, and working for it, too, my little man, as you will find out some day.

IV

30. And Tom sat upon the buoy long days, long weeks, looking out to the sea and wondering when the water-babies would come back; and yet they never came.

31. Then he began to ask all the strange things which came in and out of the sea if they had seen any; and some said "Yes," and some said nothing at all. He asked the bass and the pollock; but they were so greedy after the shrimps that they did not care to answer him a word.

32. Then there came in a whole fleet of purple sea snails, floating along, each on a sponge full of foam, and Tom said: "Where do you come from, you pretty creatures? and have you seen the water-babies?"

33. And the sea snails answered: "Whence we come, we know not; and whither we are going, who can tell? We float out our life in the mid-ocean, with the warm sunshine above our heads and the warm Gulf Stream below; and that is enough for us. Yes, perhaps we have seen the water-babies. We have seen many strange things as we sailed along."

And they floated away, the happy, stupid things, and all went ashore upon the sands.

34. Then there came in a great, lazy sunfish, as big as a fat pig cut in half; and he seemed to have been cut in half, too, and squeezed in a clothes-press till he was flat; but to all his big body and big fins he had only a little rabbit's mouth, no bigger than Tom's; and when Tom questioned him he answered him in a little, squeaky, feeble voice:

35. "I'm sure I don't know; I've lost my way. I meant to go to the Chesapeake, and I'm afraid I've got wrong somehow. Dear me! it was all by following that pleasant warm water. I'm sure I've lost my way."

And when Tom asked him again, he could only answer: "I've lost my way. Don't talk to me; I want to think."

36. Then there came up a shoal of porpoises, rolling as they went—papas and mammas and little children—and all quite smooth and shiny, because the fairies French polish them every morning; and they sighed so softly as they came by that Tom took courage to speak to them; but all they answered was, "Hush, hush, hush!" for that was all they had learned to say.

37. And then Tom left the buoy and used to go along the sands and round the rocks, and come out in the night and cry and call for the water-babies; but he never heard a voice call in return. And at last, with his fretting and crying, he grew lean and thin.

38. But one day among the rocks he found a playfellow. It was not a water-baby, alas! but it was a lobster; and a very distinguished lobster he was, for he had live barnacles on his claws, which is a great mark of distinction in lobsterdom.

39. Tom had never seen a lobster before, and he was mightily taken with this one, for he thought him the most curious, odd, ridiculous creature he had ever seen; and there he was not far wrong, for all the ingenious men and all the scientific men and all the fanciful men in the world could never invent, if all their wits were boiled into one, anything so curious and so ridiculous as a lobster.

40. He had one claw knobbed and the other jagged; and Tom delighted in watching him hold on to the seaweed with his knobbed claw while he cut up salads with his jagged one, and then put them into his mouth after smelling at them like a monkey.

41. Tom asked him about water-babies. Yes, he said, he had seen them often. But he did not think much of them. They were meddlesome little creatures that went about helping fish and shells which got into scrapes. Well, for his part, he would be ashamed to be helped by little, soft creatures that had not even a shell on their backs. He had lived quite long enough in the world to take care of himself.

42. He was a conceited fellow, the old lobster, and not very civil to Tom. But he was so funny and Tom so lonely that he could not quarrel with him; and they used to sit in holes in the rocks and chat for hours.

Do not think of your faults, still less of others' faults; in every person who comes near you, look for what is good and strong; honor that; rejoice in it; and, as you can, try to imitate it; and your faults will drop off like dead leaves when their time comes.

RUSKIN