Lord Dolphin Part 4

Romans and Greeks, but especially the Greeks, used to cut "cameos" from the onyx-stone. And men skilled in cutting fine stones and jewels have cut most exquisite cameos, or faces, from the kind of conch-sh.e.l.l that has two layers, one dark, the other light.

The word "cameo" is said to mean one stone upon another. The "queen conch" is a splendid sh.e.l.l, with two distinct layers, one white, the other pink. Out of the white layer is carved perhaps the face of a woman, with a crown of flowers on her head, or it may be the head of a knight, with a helmet on.

But think of the fineness of the tools that must be used, the tiny files and chisels in carving the lovely, delicate sh.e.l.ls. The sh.e.l.l cameos with the pink lower stone and white upper figure, are most expensive of all; other sh.e.l.ls have brown or black lower layers, and these are not as choice.

But when you see your grandma or great-auntie wearing a lovely old-fas.h.i.+oned breastpin, bound around with gold, and holding a pink stone, s.h.i.+ning like crystal, with a white carved head or other figure standing out from the lower stone, you may know it is a very valuable ornament, and was probably made from one of the finest sh.e.l.ls found in the sea. Imitations are made from porcelain, but very likely grandma's or great-auntie's will be the real conch-sh.e.l.l.

Perhaps you did not know that there are fair and beautiful gardens in my watery home. You may have picked up sprays or bunches of seaweed when running along the beach, and some were perhaps quite pretty, while others had turned brown and looked much like leather.

Would you like to come with Lord Dolphin and take a swim through an ocean garden? You would doubtless see such a sight as you had never dreamed could be seen down in the blue water.

All right, I'll turn into a fairy G.o.dfather, clap you on to my back, give you the lungs of a mermaid, to prevent your choking in the water, and then, come on! Or, rather, I should say, come down!

"Why, why! A fairylike scene indeed!" you cry.

Now you have not taken on "the evil eye" in coming to the bottom of the sea, but you have taken a "fish eye." Folks usually hate fishy eyes, but no matter, you couldn't see the first thing down here with your own natural peepers, so be thankful that for a time you can see with eyes like mine.

Now, this is not a coral grove, it is a garden of flowers, and when you exclaim again, "Oh, but I had no idea of this!" I should have to reply, "Of course you hadn't; no more had I of the strange and beautiful things on the land, until I had to live there a little while."

Folks call these flowers, such as they have seen of them, weeds, seaweeds. And I suppose they have to come under that name, as they are not planted from seeds, but are a wild growth. Ah, but some great Planter or Gardener surely put all these wonderful shapes and splendid tints in the soft earth of a sea-garden. And it is all so blithe and gay!

Here are nearly all the shapes in bushes and almost trees that you have in your garden on land. And as to flowers, there are leaves, spires, cups, bells, ta.s.sels, very much such as you see in your garden at home.

See these beautiful crimson leaves, as large as the top of a small table, and cut in such fine, even scallops around the edges, and here is one with a great pad of yellow right on the crimson. My! My! is it not colored richly?

Here are leaves shooting out like rafts, thick, like the leaves of a rubber-tree, but larger and of a deep red. You might take a sail on one of them. And here is a bush, shooting upright from its muddy bed, all covered with pink sprays, on which are pink blossoms. Doesn't it make you think of a syringa bush? Only these flowers are pink.

Next comes this plant with a large olive green stem covered thickly with branches, bearing flowers resembling pink roses. Were this plant taken to the church some Sunday morning and placed on the pulpit-stand, you may believe that after the service Folks would go crowding about the altar, eager to find out its name and whence it came.

What a clucking of surprise there would be when it was told that not from any hothouse whatever, but from the depths of the ocean came the full, lovely sea-roses.

Are these sprays of pink coral? No, they are sea-rods and branches. If you pinch the thick stems, water will ooze out, for they are partly hollow, like the pond-lily stem.

I do not wonder you look with questioning surprise at that next plant.

It is like a ma.s.s of purple bushes, a very sweet growth rather hard to describe. All through the delicate branches are what look like small dark berries, seen through a mist of pinkish, hairy spires.

Don't start. These merry fishes darting through the next clump of bushes have only come to smell of the carnation pinks the bushes bear. Are they not strangely like your garden carnations?

See the fishes nip at those singular pink flowers with a thick fringe hanging from the edges. It is a shame to spoil them, but some fishes always seem to think that graceful fringe droops down on purpose for them to peck at.

Now if the baby were only here, you could seat him on these broad, flat leaves, with delicate spires all along the edges, and all of so deep a crimson they surely would attract any child.

What a queer flower! like the backbone of a fish with all the little bones at the side standing out stiff and pointed, and all in pinks and purples.

Right in the midst of another plot of thick, flat leaves rises a ma.s.s of pink sea-lilies, and they are beautiful; but do examine the next bed of leaves. Are they not curious? A thick, hollow-looking stem goes through the middle of them, and on one side of the stem they are a deep pink, on the other side, yellow.

Here are flowers shaped like horns and trumpets. What a forest of pinks, greens, and yellows! And here are the greens. Such greens as you have never seen before.

Now suppose you were going to have a party. What decorations you could have if only the ocean blooms would keep fresh for you to use. There would be ma.s.ses of fine furze that would be perfectly beautiful to crowd over the pictures; silky threads that, placed on creeping green plants, would look lovely carried along the table; yellow flowers in the midst of ma.s.ses of fine sea-mosses, and sea-ferns would make your little mates wonder where the fresh, strange things grew.

And there could he yards and yards of ribbons. Ribbons? Yes, long, long sprays of yellowish green sea-ribbon, four or five inches wide, going down to narrower ones not more than an inch in width.

Perhaps you would like some sea-thistles. Here they are, in thick bunches, fine and hairy, in faint, fair shades of green. And what can this be that looks so much like a sponge? Ah, it is a tuft of moss with green spires shooting up in the middle.

Take care! Here are bunches of cactus with p.r.i.c.kly leaves. Look out!

don't catch your toe in those sea-ferns. Even that sweet green maiden-hair fern might pin down your foot so firmly that it would take a fish's sharp tooth to set you free.

You may ask, why are not these beautifully colored and curiously shaped things brought on sh.o.r.e and sold, as they might be, for much money? And why are they not at least put where Folks can see, learn about them, and admire them?

But wait a moment; what would be the effect if any one took a bunch of your garden roses, pinks, or lilies, put them under water, and kept them there? They would very soon be a drooping, shapeless ma.s.s. They are formed for a different element, and could not nourish under water, especially salt water.

Just so ocean-flowers, and sea-tints can only live in their own element, which is not air, but water. And the faces on our water-pansies--for we have them--would soon fade in what to them would be lifeless air, just as the garden pansies would lose their bright faces in the salt sea.

Great quant.i.ties of seaweeds float ash.o.r.e and are often dried and used as fuel, or perhaps are put around garden plants to make them grow.

But nothing that grows on the land, or in the water, can exchange places one with the other and keep alive. It is all very curious, and more than I can understand. Yet every creature and every plant is fitted to the place it grows in, and is natural to it. The food, the flowers, and the land for the use of Folks, and the food, the plants, and the water for the use of fishes, are just what the nature of each requires. What wisdom!

CHAPTER VI.

MY TREASURE GROUNDS

Are you tired? No? Well, that is no great wonder. It is ever so much easier to glide through the water on the broad back of a great fish than to ride horseback, or in a car.

My sails or fins flap quietly to and fro, the water parts readily to make us a path, no rough winds blow away your hat, there is no danger way down here that a boat will bang against us, and roll you off into a cavern or a cave.

Now I am taking you into deeper water, which still is not so very deep, but I want to show you some other strange things in the world I live in.

Here we go sailing in and out of rocks, but do not be alarmed, I know them all. Perhaps you wonder what it is that we keep pressing against, something soft and smooth that sends extra sprays of water over us. What can it be?

Well, now, put on your thinking-cap. What does your mother wash the baby with? What does Michael wash the carriage with? And what is that object in the wire holder in the bath-tub?

"Ah, a sponge!" you exclaim. Yes, and here is where they grow. "What, sponges grow?" you ask. Certainly. And just as with the coral, it took Folks a long time to find out whether sponges were plants, shrubs, or insects.

Now it is decided that the sponge is an animal growth. And the same as with coral, the tiny creature that it starts from dies, and out from the skeleton, or frame, branches the sponge that sometimes grows very large, and sometimes is of a kind that remains small. One may be as big as a mop, others no larger than an egg.

Down in the blue Mediterranean Sea are found the best sponges that grow.

They are called "h.o.r.n.y sponges," and grow in great ma.s.ses, fine, yet tough and durable. A sponge from the Mediterranean, called the "Turkey sponge," will cost three times as much as a coa.r.s.er, more brittle one from other waters. They are porous, or full of little holes and hollows.

We fishes like to bang against the sponges and feel the sudden spray dash over us. Water we have all around and about us, but a shower-bath is not as common a thing.

When you buy a sponge, it is round, flat, or cone-shaped. Now see what they look like under water. Here is a little tree, you say. Oh, no, it is only a ma.s.s of sponges piled together and branching out as they grow.

Here are fans, arches, tiny caves, and many different shapes forming a sponge-garden. Queer, isn't it? Oh, lots of things are queer until you learn about them.

Would you like to see how I wash myself? Don't laugh so loud, you might scare the fishes. I know very well that it seems to you as if I was was.h.i.+ng or bathing all the time, but there! Some kind of a water-bug has plumped right down onto my head, and left a lot of sticky sand on it, that the water does not wash away.