Clara F. Guernsey

“ When it retreated the dead merman and the figure-head were gone, and up from the sea came a low sobbing sound.
Master Torrey and Job stood watching, surprised and startled. Another minute, and up came a second huge wave, bearing upon its crest the oaken sea-nymph. On it rolled—a mountain of water. It dashed its burden upon the jagged rocks once, twice, thrice, and strewed the shattered fragments over sea and sand. Job drew a long breath.
“Waal,” said he, “there goes the best piece of wood I ever chipped. Tell ye what, philosophy won’t explain everything. ”

“ He had always been sweet-tempered, but now he felt as if he must have a quarrel with some one. He had a general impression that every living creature was his rival and enemy. He didn’t just know what he wanted, but he was determined to have it.
“Highty tighty!” said the sea-gull. “Don’t put yourself out. What have we here? A pretty wooden image, upon my word!” and the gull perched on the sea-nymph’s head and scratched his ear with one claw. The merman went almost wild at the sight. ”

“ Let us rise to more exalted feelings; let us glorify ourselves in discomfort; and if we see any one basely comfortable, let us make ourselves as disagreeable as possible, and raise him to our own platform. What possible difference does it make whether we live or die, or are cold and hungry? What odds does it make in this huge universe? Are we nothing but vultures screaming for prey? Let us cultivate silence, that I may have the talk all to myself;” and the sea-owl looked at Moby Dick in the most impressive and superior manner. ”

“ That figure is a mere painted figure-head, quite incapable of a rational thought or instructive conversation.”
“What we admire in woman is her affections, not her intellect,” said the merman.
“Look at me!” said Arethusa; and the tall nymph stood up before him in all her immortal beauty and shook down her golden hair till it swept her ankles.
“My dear Arethusa,” said Cymodoce, “let me ask you to consider if this is quite proper?”
Panope only smiled, and Arethusa took no sort of notice. ”

“ The sea-maiden smiled a queer little smile—half sad, half amused.
“Do you know,” she said, “that since men left off believing in them and building temples, the gods all declare that there never were such things as human creatures, and that it was all a delusion of ours? Keep this;” and she dropped the necklace into Lucy’s lap. “It belonged to one who will not care to wear it now. Farewell;” and the goddess bent down and lightly kissed the girl’s forehead, and the next instant Lucy was alone. ”

“ Job was an artist, and, what was more, he was a well-paid artist. He quite appreciated his own genius, and got almost any prices he liked to ask for his signs and figure-heads. Job was the fashion, and no ship of any pretension sailed from a harbor along the coast but carried one of his masterpieces on the bow.
As Master Torrey entered his shop he was just putting the last touches of paint on an oaken bust destined to adorn Captain Peabody’s little schooner, The Flora. ”

“ I knew an old sailor once that said he’d seen a mermaid, but I suppose you don’t want me to stick a curly fish’s tail on your figure-head?”
“No, indeed. Make her full length, like the most beautiful woman you know.”
“Hev’ you any idee how them young women used to dress. Master Torrey?” asked the wood-carver. “I’d like to go as near the nature of the critter as I could. I must say the notion takes my fancy. It’ll make kind of a variety, and it’s a pretty sort of an idee to name a ship after a thing that has its life out the sea.” ”

“ She’s to be bridesmaid, of course. It’s my belief she likes you. The sweetest mermaid in the sea, she is, except your sister.”
“She’s well enough for a mermaid,” said the merman, impatiently, for the ship was going farther and farther away.
“I think you ought to be ashamed of yourself,” said his friend, growing vexed at last. “I shall really think that absurd story of Moby Dick’s was true when he said you were in love with a wooden statue of a human being.”
“She’s not human,” snapped the merman, coloring scarlet; “she’s a nymph, an immortal.” ”

“ Anna Jane rose and took her father’s arm. Master Torrey followed them out of the shop without looking back or saying good-bye to his old friend. In a strange passion, Job caught up the axe and looked at the wooden nymph as if about to dash it in pieces. “What an old fool I am!” he said. “She ain’t only wood, and I’ll get my pay for her. Creation! it does beat all how contrary things turn out in this world!”
The figure-head of the Sea-nymph was carried through the streets in the midst of an admiring throng and fixed securely in its place on the beautiful new brig. ”

“ She stands holding out a silver vase. Every creature in the sea ought to fly to deliver her. If I was only as big and strong as you! These men are your enemies as well as mine and hers. I know how they kill you whales whenever they can. You can sink that ship if you like and deliver the goddess.”
The whale was so astonished that he had to go to the top of the water and blow. “My dear sir,” said he, diving down again, “you are under some strange mistake. That is nothing but wood, that figure on the ship, as sure as my name is Moby Dick.” ”

“ But I can’t adhere to facts till I get them, and to do that I don’t see but I shall have to tell you a little about Master Isaac Torrey, merchant of Salem, who was the means of putting this wonderful figure-head in the merman’s way. He was a merchant of Salem when Salem was a centre of trade, and sent many a brave ship to the Indies and the Mediterranean. He was thirty-four years old, and looked ten years younger. He was a man inclined to extravagance and luxury. He wore the handsomest waistcoats and the finest lace of any one in town. ”

“ Behind the garden was a very lofty and spacious grotto, where lived a family with whom the professor’s household was very intimate. The merman paused a minute, for some one in the garden was singing. The singer had a voice that would have made people on land go wild to hear her. If you can imagine a wood-thrush multiplied by fifty and singing articulate music, you can have some idea of the mermaid’s voice. But in the sea every one can sing, and they don’t care much more for it than we do here for public speaking. ”

“ Fancy, imagination, amusement, were ideas much too light and frivolous to be connected with anything so grave, solid and respectable as the intellectual drill for which alone Latin and Greek were intended. So when Isaac Torrey talked about the old gods as if they had been real existences, and spoke of Achilles, Hector and Andromache as though they had been live creatures, he rather startled the excellent young divinity student who was his tutor. ”

“ There, too, are the cities and villages of the merpeople, and many a pleasant home standing in the midst of the beautiful sea gardens, blossoming with strange flowers and bright with strange fruit.
The houses are grottoes and caves hollowed out of the rock, and for the most part very handsomely furnished, for there is a great deal of wealth among the sea people. They have not only all the mineral wealth of the sea, but they have all the treasures that have been lost in the deep ever since men first began to sail the waters. ”

“ I heard, indeed, of a sailor who had seen one in Passamaquoddy Bay, but I did not have the pleasure of conversing with this mariner myself, so I am unable to state as an absolute fact that a mermaid was seen.
If any of you are at the seaside in the summer, you can keep a sharp lookout, and there is no telling what you may see. You would find an alliance with a mer-person very advantageous if we may judge by the experience of Abdalla. Jewels in the sea are as common as pebbles with us, and in return for a little fruit a merman will give you bushels of precious stones. ”

“ A few years before the family left the English coast, a younger son had actually married a human girl who went back to her friends and deserted him on the shamefully false pretence that she wanted to go to church. The poor merman went out of his wits and died, and was ever afterward held up as an example to any of the younger ones who showed any signs of similar weakness. To care anything for human creatures is counted disgraceful in mer society, and the older members of the family for the most part felt it their duty to express the greatest possible animosity to the whole human race. ”

“ The Sea-nymph snapped her cable, and drove out of the harbor before the tempest. The merman followed her. By the glare of the lightning he could see that the figure stood in its old place holding out her silver vase. “What wonderful courage!” he thought, for he did not know it was nailed there. The masts went crashing into the sea. The sailors threw overboard everything they could to lighten the ship. One of them sprang forward with an axe and began to cut away the figure-head. The merman swam, balancing himself on the crest of the waves; every one was too busy to notice him ”

“ From that evening Goody Cobb was never seen in Salem town.
Job Chippit continued his walk, thoughtfully whittling a little stick. Before long he overtook Master Isaac Torrey, who was walking along the shore with his head down, seeming to notice nothing but the sand at his feet. Master Torrey had quite left off his wild ways. He made no more foolish, fanciful speeches about nymphs and goddesses, and such nonsense. “Anna Jane had made a sensible man of him,” said his father-in-law. “He was greatly improved,” said every one, with the exception of Ichabod Sterns and Job Chippit. ”

“ But every once in a while a member of this race would show the oddest fancy for the shore and a kind of longing after human society—a longing which of course they never could gratify, for they could not live out of the water, and if they had been able to desert the sea, the forked ends of their long tails would have been of no use on land. ”

“ What would be the use to a critter that passes its life swimming round the sea?”
“I see you understand. You’ll make her a beauty, Job?”
“I’ll do my best. You’ll want her to be a light-complected young woman, I guess.”
“They say the Nereides had green hair, but Virgil says Arethusa’s was golden, so we may make our nymph’s that color,” said Master Torrey, turning away to the window.
“Jes’ so; I’ll go right to work. I must get Lucy Peabody to put on a white gown and come and let me look at her a little. She’ll do it. She’s a real accommodating girl, is Lucy.” ”

“ Where do you mean to go for your vacation?”
“I thought I should go North along the coast,” said the young merman. “I can’t help having a curiosity about the land, and if I am in a way to observe any human creatures, I may pick up some facts to support your theory that they are undeveloped walruses.”
“Any one can see that who has ever seen them floundering about in the water,” said the old professor, scornfully.
“But the men drown and the walruses don’t.”
“That’s because the men have not yet acquired the habit of not being drowned,” said the professor. “When are you going?” ”

“ Every school of whales of any pretension has one. If she was a sea goddess, do you suppose she’d stand there in all weathers? Besides, there are no nymphs.”
72
“Then you won’t sink the ship?” said the merman.
“Certainly not; she’s only a merchant ship. If she was a whaler, I would with pleasure. I’ve done it before now, but that was in self-defence. I’m not going to drown a lot of folks because you have lost your wits. Come, come, my young friend, go home to your family. I dare say your mother don’t know you’re out. You are too tired to swim after that ship, and you are hurt besides. ”

“ The most of women is capable of being coaxed if you only go to work the right way. I don’t know how it might have been with gals in the sea, but it ain’t best to be too dreadful diffident with the land kind always,” returned Job, with a sly smile. “But about this figure of ourn. I suppose it ought to have some kind of a light gown on, and hadn’t they—them nimps?—got no emblem, nor nothing of that sort, like Neptune’s trident? I’m going to make a Neptune for a ship Peleg Brag’s got. ”

“ The book was in opposition to a theory put forth by a learned merman in the Baltic Sea that human beings were undeveloped mermen. The professor, however, declared that they were no such thing, but simply undeveloped walruses. He began his first chapter by saying that, while he had the highest respect for the Baltic merman’s acquirements, intellect, penetration and general infallibility, he nevertheless felt himself obliged to declare that none but an idiot or a madman could come to the conclusion of the learned man aforesaid. ”

“ She is a goddess, a nymph, an angel!”
“Well, you are a muff,” said the gull, with immense contempt. “If I ever! Look here! if you don’t want a harpoon in you, you had better quit.”
“I’ll wring your neck,” said the merman, in a rage.
“Skee-ee-eek!” screamed the gull. “Will you have it now or wait till you get it? Take your own way, if you only know what it is;” and the gull lifted his wings and swept off over the water, laughing frantically. The wooden lady kept looking over the sea.
66
“What noble composure! what breeding!” thought the merman. “She scorns to notice a creature like that. ”

“ He saw nothing but that, and, in fact, he didn’t see that either, for he saw it as if it were alive.
62
“Oh I wish I knew her name or what she is!” said the merman to himself. “She can’t be human. She is too beautiful.” He swam round and round and read the words “The Sea-nymph” painted under the figure. He gave a jump almost out of the water. “It is a nymph,” he said—“one of the Nereides or Oceanides. I thought they had left this world long ago. What can she be doing on that ship?” ”