The Sun's Babies Part 19

The whitebait crowded round to look.

"Why, it has moved!" cried one. "It seems to be coming round the corner of your head."

"I thought it felt strange," said f.a.n.n.y.

"What a comical shape you are!" said another little fish. "You seem to be growing flat."

"Oh, dear! I wonder whatever is the matter with me? I don't think I shall ever come up to the top again," sighed f.a.n.n.y.

The others tried to cheer her. "Don't be downhearted," they said.

"Perhaps you will feel better to-morrow. Maybe you have eaten something that disagrees with you."

"But what a pity! She is certainly losing her beautiful shape," they remarked to one another as they swam away. "And that eye is a most mysterious business."

They came back again a day or two later. f.a.n.n.y--could it be f.a.n.n.y?--was on the sand. She wriggled up to meet them, and they stared more and more. She was not now long and slim, but flat and wide. And her eye! It had gone quite round the corner, and was now on the same side of her head as her right eye. Strange to say, she looked perfectly happy.

"I am well again," she said. "See, my eye has gone round out of the way, and I am so flat that I can lie comfortably on this nice sea-floor. Isn't it splendid?"

"It is a very ugly change," said one.

"Oh, dear, do you think so?" asked poor f.a.n.n.y. "At any rate, the change is most convenient," she went on, brightening. "See--one lies on the sand, so. One's flatness allows one to wriggle partly under the sand, so as to escape one's enemies; and one's eyes are both on top, where they are most needed. You had better come down and grow flat, too."

"Not for the world!" cried the others in chorus. "What a life, lying in the sand! And what an ugly shape! Are you going to stay here always?"

"Yes," said f.a.n.n.y. "The food here suits me."

"Good-bye, then. We are off to the top," they said.

As they swam away one impudent little creature turned round and called: "Good-bye, f.a.n.n.y Flatface!" That is how poor f.a.n.n.y got the name.

"How are you to-day, f.a.n.n.y Flatface?" the thoughtless little fishes would call as they swam over her head. They thought it a clever thing to say.

She would bury herself in the sand and pretend not to hear, but it made her most unhappy. She thought of all the other fishes she had seen.

"None of them are flat," she said, "and none of them have two eyes on one side of the head. How dreadful I must look!" Lonely and miserable, she lay there for months, keeping herself well hidden from sight.

One day she left the spot, hardly knowing why, and floated with the tide into the estuary mouth. A sunny shallow seemed to draw her with the memory of early days. She swam boldly in. Yes, this was her old first home. What had become of her brothers and sisters? Would they receive her, now that she had changed so terribly?

The mud floor moved, and scores of flounders raised themselves and looked at her. Flat! As flat as herself! And each with two eyes on one side of the head. What comfort! She was no monstrosity, after all.

"Who are you?" they asked.

"f.a.n.n.y," she replied.

They all came out to look at her.

"Why, it really is f.a.n.n.y!" they exclaimed. "But how you have grown!

How bright your red spots are! And how softly silvered is your under-side! How white and strong your teeth! You are certainly the beauty of the family. Have you come to live with us?"

"Yes, oh yes," she answered joyfully. What happiness was hers, after the long months of shame and loneliness!

It was a pleasant life they led. By day, while the warm sun shone, they basked below the mud. At night they feasted on the shoals of shrimps and jointed darting creatures that filled the water over them.

As they slowly moved from bank to bank their upper skins changed colour with the colour of the floor on which they fed, and thus securely hid them from their enemies.

One day the whitebait, grown now to little herrings, came up the estuary. "Why, there is f.a.n.n.y Flatface," said one.

Her sister flounders rose beside her. The herrings gaped in wonder.

"So that was just your way of growing up!" they said at last.

"Just my way of growing up," said f.a.n.n.y cheerfully.

IX.--THE OYSTER BABIES

The Oyster-Mother was talking to her babies. "You are leaving me to make your own way in the sea," she said. "Keep in mind what I have so often told you, that everybody bigger than yourself is an enemy to be avoided. Here is something else to remember. When you are tired of swimming about, and wish to settle down to grow your sh.e.l.ls, choose a clean gravelly bank or a firm rock floor. Sand or mud, if you choose those, would sift into your sh.e.l.ls with every tide, and you would soon be choked. And when your sh.e.l.ls are made, never forget that an oyster's chief concern in life is to know when to shut up. A moment too late in that, and life is over for you."

The babies swam out of the sh.e.l.l. This was not their first expedition, but in former times they had stayed near their mother, ready to slip in at the first scent of danger. Now they were to take care of themselves. No babies could have looked less fitted to do it. So tiny were they that the whole three hundred of them, placed head to tail in a line, would not have measured longer than one's middle finger.

Boneless, sh.e.l.l-less, weaponless, their only safeguard was their water-like transparency. It seemed impossible that creatures so tender could live in the savage sea, where hungry monsters roamed incessantly in search of prey. Yet they were not afraid. Perhaps they were too young to think. Up they went. Near the surface of the sea they met a shoal of cousin babies.

"We are going to travel before we settle down," said the cousins.

"Will you join our party?"

"We shall be delighted," said the babies.

The shoal set off. There were millions now, darting here and there, their tiny round bodies flas.h.i.+ng like crystal globules through the water, their belts of swimming hairs wafting the microscopic creatures of the sea into their ever-ready mouths. For days they travelled, growing every hour a little larger, but still defenceless in the savage sea. Sometimes lurking enemies dragged off stragglers from the edges of the shoal; sometimes a great fish drove through their millions with his mouth wide open, swallowing all that came within his path. Then the ranks closed up again and went onward as before; but the shoal was smaller than at first, and the babies grew more watchful. At last they were tired, and a little frightened too.

"Let us find a settling-place and grow our sh.e.l.ls," said one.

They sank to the sea-floor. It was sand. That would not do. They drifted on. The sand gave place to mud. That would not do, either.

They drifted on again. At last a stretch of gravel, clean and firm, lay beneath them. "A splendid place," said the babies, joyfully, remembering their mother's words. Down they dropped, each one settling on a stone and there fixing himself for life.

Now came the marvellous making of those strong sh.e.l.ls which were to be their safe retreat from every enemy. Furnished by the rich seafood, a limy fluid formed in each soft baby's body, to ooze through tiny pores in his outer skin, and there to harden into sh.e.l.l. Day by day, week by week, the beautiful growth went on, till a two-walled house was made, with l.u.s.trous pearly lining and a powerful hinge to pull the edges of the walls together.

At first the sh.e.l.ls were thin. Hungry whelks, finding them, could bore round holes in them with their sharp-pointed sh.e.l.ls and so reach the juicy babies; wandering starfishes could clasp them in their long ray-arms and swallow sh.e.l.l and baby whole. But as the months and years pa.s.sed by, and the surviving babies grew to greater size, layer after layer was added to the sh.e.l.ls, until at last, rock-hard and strong, they kept out all intruders.

Now the oysters were secure. From helpless, sh.e.l.l-less, reckless babies they had grown to cautious, well-defended dwellers in the sea, living quiet lives in peace within their firm sh.e.l.l walls. When no enemy was near their sh.e.l.ls lay open; their fringed, delicate gills were hung out and waved to and fro to catch their food. But at the first alarm there was a quick withdrawing of the gills, an instantaneous closing of the sh.e.l.ly walls. To the enemy all was firm-locked, silent, hidden. The babies had grown into full knowledge; they had learned when to shut up.

f.a.n.n.y FLY

Rover the dog left a bone only half cleaned under the fence, and forgot to go for it again, so Mrs. Fly laid her eggs on it. In a day or two the eggs hatched out into tiny white creatures with no legs. They ate hard for a few days at the meat left on the bone, and then settled down and kept still while they changed into flies. When they broke their way out of their old skins you would hardly believe they had once been white and helpless, for now they were dark in colour, with wings that gleamed as they moved, and wonderful eyes and feelers and legs.

f.a.n.n.y Fly was one of them. She was a beauty. Her eyes were big and red-brown in colour, and so wonderfully made that she could see behind her just as well as in front. From each side of her chest two fine wings sprang out, gleaming with green and red; under them were her two balancers. On her back she wore a s.h.i.+ning purple cloak. She had six legs, all jointed so that she could bend them in any direction, and all furnished with the most wonderful things, claws and suckers for holding on to the roof, and tiny combs and brushes for keeping herself neat and clean.

She flew first to the garden and sucked honey with her short tongue from any flowers that were not too deep. Then through an open window she flew into the house. "Here I shall have a good time," she said; and a good time she certainly did have.