And a very large pool it was, miles and miles across, though the air was so clear that the ice cliffs on the opposite side looked as if they were close at hand. All round it the ice cliffs rose, in walls and spires and battlements, and caves and bridges, and stories and galleries, in which the ice fairies live, and drive away the storms and clouds, that Mother Carey's pool may lie calm from year's end to year's end. And the sun acted policeman, and walked round outside every day, peeping just over the top of the ice wall, to see that all went right; and now and then he played conjuring tricks, or had an exhibition of fireworks, to amuse the ice fairies. For he would make himself into four or five suns at once, or paint the sky with rings and crosses and crescents of white fire, and stick himself in the middle of them, and wink at the fairies; and I daresay they were very much amused, for anything's fun in the country. And there the good whales lay, the happy, sleepy beasts, upon the still oily sea. They were all right whales, you must know, and finners, and razor-backs, and bottle-noses, and spotted sea unicorns with long ivory horns. But the sperm whales are such raging, ramping, roaring, rumbustious fellows, that, if Mother Carey let them in, there would be no more peace in Peacepool. So she packs them away in a great pond by themselves at the South Pole, two hundred and sixty-three miles south- southeast of Mount Erebus, the great volcano in the ice; and there they butt each other with their ugly noses, day and night from year's end to year's end. Tom swam up to the nearest whale, and asked the way to Mother Carey. "There she sits in the middle," said the whale. Tom looked; but he could see nothing in the middle of the pool but one peaked iceberg, and he said so. "That's Mother Carey," said the whale, "as you will find when you get to her. There she sits making old beasts into new all the year round." "How does she do that?" "That's her concern, not mine," said the old whale; and yawned so wide (for he was very large) that there swam into his mouth 943 sea moths, 13,846 jellyfish no bigger than pins' heads, a string of salpae nine yards long, and forty-three little ice crabs, who gave each other a parting pinch all round, tucked their legs under their stomachs, and determined to die decently, like Julius Caesar. "I suppose," said Tom, "she cuts up a great whale like you into a whole shoal of porpoises?" At which the old whale laughed so violently that he coughed up all the creatures; who swam away again, very thankful at having escaped out of that terrible whalebone net of his, from which bourne no traveler returns; and Tom went on to the iceberg, wondering.