The Sun's Babies Part 16

And that is how Roy found the Palace again and Charlie did not. When the day after the full moon came, they both started out, but Roy's stone led him straight to the Palace, while Charlie's led him all the afternoon away from it. They were magic stones, and had power to punish and reward. So Roy was led to the Princess, and had all sorts of wonderful games with Little Hoppy, while Charlie, because he had not kept his word, was led astray and not allowed to follow Roy or find the Palace for himself. And he has never found it yet.

URCHINS IN THE SEA

Baby Urchin was vexed. "The grown-ups have all the fun," he said to his brothers and sisters. "Every day they play on the beach, while we are told to stay here amongst these stupid rocks and seaweeds. On the beach they have glorious times. I have often heard them talk about it.

Why shouldn't we go?"

"Yes, indeed," said the others. "Let us all go."

They swam eagerly from their playground between the rocks--the queerest babies you ever saw. They looked as if they were made of chalk and gla.s.s; and each had about twelve long arms, sticking straight out in every direction from the funny white body.

They were fast swimmers; they went gaily on, never thinking of possible dangers. But a hungry fish saw them, and came straight at them with wide-open mouth. Snap! The cruel jaws closed together, and a hundred Baby Urchins fell down the great throat. Then those who were left turned and swam for home as fast as their terrified arms could take them.

"You were very disobedient, and you all deserved to be eaten up," said the grown-up Urchins when they heard what had happened. "And besides, it is no use coming to the beach yet. You can't possibly roll on the beach with those long arms of yours."

"It seems to take such a long time to grow up," said Baby Urchin.

"Eat plenty," said the grown-ups, "then you will soon be like us."

Time pa.s.sed. The little Urchins did not again try to reach the beach, but they ate plenty and they grew big. Then they began to change.

Their funny arms grew shorter and shorter till they disappeared altogether; their bodies grew thicker; and then at last their sh.e.l.ls began to come.

"Now we are growing up!" cried Baby Urchin joyfully.

Their sh.e.l.ls grew fast, and so did the babies inside, changing their shape altogether. Up and down the round sh.e.l.ls ran rows of tiny holes, and in between the rows of holes scores of little white b.a.l.l.s grew out.

On the b.a.l.l.s movable spines grew, and through each hole peeped a new leg ready to stretch far out when it was needed for swimming or walking. Under the sh.e.l.l was the mouth; from it five strong white teeth hung down to crush the seaweed and break it up for food. On top of the sh.e.l.l were tiny eye specks.

At last they were ready. "Come on," cried Baby Urchin. "n.o.body can hurt us now." He led the way to the beach. They all followed, swimming with their legs and spines, and looking like hedgehogs in the sea.

What a time they had when they reached the beach! They swam in with a wave, rolled over and over on the beach, burrowed with their tiny spines in the soft sand, and then swam out with the next wave. "It is splendid to be grown up," they said.

WHERE WHITE WAVES PLAY

I.--RED-BILL

In a sand-strewn hollow of a rock ledge on a tiny island lay a seagull's egg, yellow and grey and brown, to match the yellow and grey and brown of the sand and rocks. White waves played beneath it, dancing each day to the foot of the ledge, and throwing handfuls of spray up its rocky side, but never breaking over the top. Sea winds whisked above it, but never blew it from its sandy bed. No hungry hawk spied it from his vigilant soaring place; no hunting dog found it.

Safe from harm, and quickened by the genial sun and the warmth of the mother's tender breast, the speck of life inside the egg grew slowly to a seagull baby.

When the baby first peeped out from the soft darkness of his mother's sheltering wings the world looked very wide and dazzling. Overhead the big blue sky shone brightly, suns.h.i.+ne flooded all the air; nearer home gleaming points of light, like little stars, flashed on all sides amidst the sand. He drew in his head.

"The light is too bright, mother," he said. "It hurts my eyes. But what is that sweet sound I hear?"

"Dear one, those are the white waves at play. They are the kind friends who carry your meals to sh.o.r.e. See--here is your father with a sea-worm for your breakfast. Open your bill and swallow."

He was the fluffy darling of his parents, their sole care and joy. Day after day, week after week, they waited on him, by turns guarding him and fis.h.i.+ng for him, bringing him soft delicious morsels of crab and pipi and tender fish. Under such faithful feeding he grew fast. Each day he looked over his ledge.

"The waves, mother!" he said. "The white, white waves! They are always calling. May I not go yet to the sea?"

"Not yet," his mother would reply. "Baby gulls must wait till feathers grow in place of down."

Feathers grew in place of down. Baby wings broadened and grew strong, and at last he could fly.

"The waves still call, mother," he pleaded.

"Come, then," said his mother at last, and down they all went to the sea, and the joy of life began.

He was as yet only a mottled brown baby, not nearly so handsome as his dove-backed parents with their b.r.e.a.s.t.s of snow. But his pink webbed toes oared their way gleefully through the clear water, and his little brown bill learned to snap the fleeing fish as cunningly as the crimson beaks of the older birds.

What a life that was! They soared over restless waves on scarcely-moving wings, swooping low and dropping where the flash of fins proclaimed a feast. They circled tiny bays whose seaweed carpets clothed the floors in rainbow hues; or rode like fairy craft upon the ever-rolling breakers on the shelving sh.o.r.es. When fierce winds blew, they wheeled and screamed like spirits of the storm, laughing to see the surface of the sea torn up and flung against the high coast rocks.

Slowly, as the months rolled by, the little Red-bill's feathers changed from mottled brown to pearly grey and s.h.i.+ning white; scarlet flamed on bill and feet. The full bright beauty of his kind was on him.

Mating season came. "Little love," he said to his chosen one, "I know an island where our egg will be safe and our baby sheltered. There, where white waves sing and dance all day, he shall be loved and tended as I was loved and tended."

II.--THE SEA-SQUIRT WHO STOOD ON HIS HEAD

Far out into the waters of a quiet bay stretched a wooden jetty, old and rotting and scarcely ever used. The browned and blackened timbers that showed above the water-line were by no means beautiful, but at their feet was fairyland. Here, in pale green clearness, forests of delicate seaweeds bent their gold and amber beads to the gentle movement of the water; swift-finned fishes, gay in scarlet and silver and bronze, swam the forest pathways and chased each other in and out cool shaded bowers beneath the filmy branches; most beautiful of all, myriads of long-tubed sea-squirts waved their pink and crimson b.a.l.l.s from the jetty piles, like great closed poppies in the sea.

How they waved! Up and down, backwards and forwards. Not moved by the water, but moving in the water, though never freed from the jetty piles. After all, these were not flowers, but animals.

Continually they opened their pink, round mouths to let the water pa.s.s through their bodies, in the hope that each fresh mouthful might contain a meal. Again and again, squirt! They were forced to throw out some fragment of sh.e.l.l or rock which had floated in and caused annoyance.

At the foot of one pile there was some excitement, for a baby sea-squirt was setting out to see the world. He was impatient to be off, but his mother was giving him a great deal of advice. If you had seen him lying in the water you would never have recognised him as the sea-squirt's son. No mother and son were ever more unlike. She was big, with a thick-skinned tube half a yard long, and a ball at the top shaped like a quince; he was tiny and soft, and looked like a baby tadpole. She was gaily coloured; he was colourless and jelly-like.

She was fixed to the jetty pile; he could swim. Yet, in spite of these great differences, mother and son they were.

"Dear child," she said, "whatever you do, never stand on your head."

"Of course not," he replied; "I shall never wish to."

"But you will wish to," cried his mother. "You won't be able to help it. It runs in the family. Listen, son. Once I was like you; I could swim and move about to find my food. Before me, all our grandfathers and grandmothers for millions of years back were for a part of their lives like you. If they had never stood on their heads they might have grown eyes and backbones and fins, and become as great and clever as the fishes. But because those old grandparents became lazy and stood on their heads till they grew to the rocks, we in turn have all grown lazy, and we in turn have been punished by the loss of our swimming powers. If you could only break loose from the family's bad habit, you might start a glorious free race of sea-squirts. All the most successful creatures in the sea are those that have backbones and eyes.

You have the beginnings of these two things in you, but if you stand on your head you will lose them, as I have done. You will become fixed and helpless like the seaweeds. Promise me never to stand on your head. Promise me that you will keep moving."

"Yes, mother. Oh, yes. Good-bye. Good-bye." The impatient little fellow could wait no longer.

"How grown-ups talk!" he thought. "As if I should ever wish to stand on my head!"

He swam about for several hours, enjoying himself exceedingly in this great wet world. At last he came to the end pile of the jetty. Here, to his great astonishment, there suddenly came upon him the most overpowering desire to stand on his head. To stand on his head! The very thing his mother had foretold. Well, she was right, after all, so perhaps she was right in advising him to keep moving. "I will swim on," he said.

He swam on bravely. But before him was the wide open sea, with no comfortable piles to rest against. And oh! how he longed to rest.

Just to put that heavy head of his down against something firm--how delightful that would be! That was a splendid pile, that last one! So strong and wide. It could not matter if he rested just a few minutes.