Wet Magic - E. Nesbit (read novels website TXT) 📗

as you think, either. Mother will be awfully frightened if we’re not home to tea. She’ll think we’re drowned.”

“Well, you are drowned,” said Maia brightly. “At least that’s what I believe you land people call it when you come down to us and neglect to arrange to have the spell of return said for you.”

“How horrible,” said Mavis. “Oh, Cathay,” and she clutched her sister tightly.

“But you needn’t stay drowned,” said the Princess. “Someone’s sure to say the spell somehow or other. I assure you that this is true; and then you will go home with the speed of an eel.”

They felt, somehow, in their bones that this was true, and it consoled them a little. Things which you feel in your bones are most convincing.

“But Mother,” said Mavis.

“You don’t seem to know much about magic,” said Maia pityingly: “the first principle of magic is that time spent in other worlds doesn’t count in your own home. No, I see you don’t understand. In your home it’s still the same time as it was when you dived into the well in the cave.”

“But that’s hours ago,” said Bernard; and she answered:

“I know. But your time is not like our time at all.”

“What’s the difference?”

“I can’t explain,” said the Princess. “You can’t compare them any more than you can compare a starlight and a starfish. They’re quite, quite different. But the really important thing is that your Mother won’t be anxious. So now why not enjoy yourselves?”

And all this time the other Princess had been holding up the jar which was the source of all the rivers in all the world.

“Won’t she be very tired?” asked Reuben.

“Yes, but suppose all the rivers dried up⁠—and she had to know how people were suffering⁠—that would be something much harder to bear than tiredness. Look in the pool and see what she is doing for the world.”

They looked, and it was like a colored cinematograph; and the pictures melted into one another like the old dissolving views that children used to love so before cinematographs were thought of.

They saw the Red Indians building their wigwams by the great rivers⁠—and the beavers building their dams across the little rivers; they saw brown men setting their fish traps by the Nile, and brown girls sending out little golden-lighted love-ships on the Ganges. They saw the stormy splendor of the St. Lawrence, and the Medway’s pastoral peace. Little streams dappled with sunlight and the shadow of green leaves, and the dark and secret torrents that tear through the underworld in caverns and hidden places. They saw women washing clothes in the Seine, and boys sailing boats on the Serpentine. Naked savages dancing in masks beside tropical streams overshadowed by strange trees and flowers that we do not know⁠—and men in flannels and girls in pink and blue, punting in the backwaters of the Thames. They saw Niagara and the Zambesi Falls; and all the time the surface of the pool was smooth as a mirror and the arched stream that was the source of all they saw poured ceaselessly over their heads and fell splashing softly into its little marble channel.

I don’t know how long they would have stayed leaning their elbows on the cool parapet and looking down on the changing pictures, but suddenly a trumpet sounded, drums beat, and everyone looked up.

“It’s for the review,” said Maia, through the rattle of the drums. “Do you care for soldiers?”

“Rather,” said Bernard, “but I didn’t know you had soldiers.”

“We’re very proud of our troops,” said the Princess. “I am Colonel of the Lobster Battalion, and my sister commands the Crustacean Brigade; but we’re not going on parade today.”

The sound of drums was drawing nearer. “This way to the parade ground,” said the Princess, leading the way. They looked at the review through a big arch, and it was like looking into a very big aquarium.

The first regiment they saw was, as it happened, the 23rd Lobsters.

If you can imagine a Lobster as big as a Guardsman, and rather stouter, you will have some idea of the splendid appearance of this regiment. Only don’t forget that Lobsters in their natural regimentals are not red. They wear a sort of steel-blue armor, and carry arms of dreadful precision. They are terrible fellows, the 23rd, and they marched with an air at once proud and confident.

Then came the 16th Swordfish⁠—in uniform of delicate silver, their drawn swords displayed.

The Queen’s Own Gurnards were magnificent in pink and silver, with real helmets and spiked collars; and the Boy Scouts⁠—“The Sea Urchins” as they were familiarly called⁠—were the last of the infantry.

Then came Mermen, mounted on Dolphins and Sea Horses, and the Cetacean Regiments, riding on their whales. Each whale carried a squadron.

“They look like great trams going by,” said Francis. And so they did. The children remarked that while the infantry walked upright like any other foot soldiers, the cavalry troops seemed to be, with their mounts, suspended in the air about a foot from the ground.

“And that shows it’s water,” said Bernard.

“No, it doesn’t,” said Francis.

“Well, a whale’s not a bird,” said Bernard.

“And there are other things besides air and water,” said Francis.

The Household Brigade was perhaps the handsomest. The Grand Salmoner led his silvery soldiers, and the 100th Halibuts were evidently the sort of troops to make the foes of anywhere “feel sorry they were born.”

It was a glorious review, and when it was over the children found that they had been quite forgetting their desire to get home.

But as the back of the last Halibut vanished behind the seaweed trees the desire came back with full force. Princess Maia had disappeared. Their own Princess was, they supposed, still performing her source-service.

Suddenly everything seemed to have grown tiresome.

“Oh, I do wish we could go home,” said Kathleen. “Couldn’t we just find the door and go out?”

“We might look for the door,” said Bernard cautiously, “but I don’t see how we could get up into the cave again.”

“We can swim all right,