Adventure and adventurers -- Juvenile fiction; Fairy tales; Fantasy literature; Mermaids -- Juvenile fiction
Then came the great giant Cormoran, who was 18 feet high and 3 yards
wide, and his wife Cormelian, who was just as big, and they brought
from the hills great gray rocks which they piled up, one on the other,
hundreds of feet high, until they had made a mountain. And on the top
of this they built their castle, where they lived until the giant's
wife died and was buried under the Chapel rock.
Then Jack the Giant Killer climbed up the mountain, and after a hard
fight Cormoran was killed, and there were no more giants in the land.
Next came the Small People, who cut down most of the forest, and built
cottages for themselves, ploughed the fields and made gardens.
But one day a great enchanter came that way, and his strange dress and
long gray beard frightened the women and children, and they shut their
doors in his face whenever he asked for a drink, for he had walked far
and was tired and thirsty.
At last he found the principal man of the Small People, a little old
crusty fellow and very miserly. And when the great enchanter asked him
for a drink of water, the Small Man told him he didn't keep a hotel for
beggars. And this made the great enchanter so angry that he struck the
ground with his staff, so that it made a deep hole, and then he went
upon his journey.
Soon a little spring of water bubbled up through the hole, and by and
by a stream burst forth that swelled to a river, and after a time the
whole land was drowned, and only the high mountain remained above the
water.
But the Small People who were buried under the water didn't die. They
lived on just the same, waiting for the enchanter to return and lift
the spell, and the land to rise, again with all the people on it.
When the old fisherman had finished his story, he said, "I will take
you in my boat to see the Small People deep down in the water.
"Yes, come with me in my boat and you shall see the Wonderland under
the Sea."
As soon as the old fisherman had hoisted the sail, away they went out
to sea over a wide path of moonlight like a silver road leading
straight out to the sky where it dipped down to the water.
All of a sudden Mary Louise noticed something come close up under the
side of the boat, and remain there staring straight at her. She bent
over until she nearly touched the water, when what she had taken for a
fish appeared to be a very odd-looking little man. He was even shorter
than she, very broad about the shoulders, with funny little arms and
feet that were brought together at the heels, with the toes turned
straight out when he stood up, making them look like a fish's tail.
His eyes were big and round, without any eyelids or eyebrows. But his
mouth was the funniest part, and when he opened it, he looked like a
fish trying to talk. He was dressed in silvery white, shaded to blue
and green.
With a sudden nod, he pointed to the road which opened behind him down
through the depths of the water until lost in the distance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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