In Midsummer Days and Other Tales | Page 5

voices were shouting:
"Lift it up!--Ho, there!--Up!--Hold tight!--Up with it!--Up!--Push it
along!--Lift it up!"
Then something indescribable happened. First it sounded as if sixty
piles of wood were all being sawn at the same time; then a cleft opened
in the water which went down to the bottom of the sea, and there,
wedged between three stones, stood a black box, which sang and
played and tinkled and jingled, close to the eel-mother and her son,
who hastily disappeared in the lowest depths of the ocean.
Then a voice up above shouted:--
"Three fathoms deep! Impossible! Leave it alone. It isn't worth while
hauling the old lumber up again; it would cost more to repair than it's
worth."
The voice belonged to the master of the mine, whose piano had fallen
into the sea.
Silence followed; the huge fish with a fin like a screw swam away, and
the silence deepened.
After sunset a breeze arose; the black box in the forest of seaweed
rocked and knocked against the stones, and at every knock it played, so
that the fishes came swimming from all directions to watch and to
listen.
The eel-mother was the first to put in an appearance. And when she
saw herself reflected in the polished surface, she said: "It's a wardrobe
with a plate-glass door."
There was logic in her remark, and therefore all the others said: "It is a

wardrobe with a plate-glass door."
Next a rock-fish arrived and smelt at the candlesticks, which had not
yet come off. Tiny bits of candle ends were still sticking in the sockets.
"That's something to eat," it said, "if only it weren't for the whipcord!"
Then a great bass came and lay flat on the pedal; but immediately there
arose such a rumbling in the box that all the fishes hastily swam away.
They got no further on that day.
At night it blew half a gale, and the musical box went thump, thump,
thump, like a pavier's beetle, until sunrise. When the eel-mother and all
the rest of them returned, they found that it had undergone a change.
The lid stood open like a shark's mouth; they saw a row of teeth, bigger
than they had ever seen before, but every other tooth was black. The
whole machine was swollen at the sides like a seed-fish; the boards
were bent, and the pedal pointed upwards like a foot in the act of
walking; the arms of the candlesticks looked like clenched fists. It was
a dreadful sight!
"It's falling to pieces," screamed the bass, and spread out a fin, ready to
turn.
And now the boards fell off, the box was open, and one could see what
it was like inside; and that was the prettiest sight of all.
"It's a trap! Don't go too near!" said the eel-mother.
"It's a hand-loom!" said the stickleback, who builds a nest for itself and
understands the art of weaving.
"It's a gravel-sifter," said a red-eye, who lived below the lime-quarry.
It may have been a gravel-sifter. But there were a great many fallals
and odds and ends which were not in the least like the sifter which they
use for riddling sand. There were little manichords which resembled
toes in white woollen stockings, and when they moved it was just as if

a foot with two hundred skeleton toes were walking; and it walked and
walked and yet never left the spot.
It was a strange thing. But the game was up, for the skeleton no longer
touched the strings; it played on the water as if it were knocking at a
door with its fingers, asking whether it might come in.
The game was up. A school of sticklebacks came and swam right
through the box, and when they trailed their spikes over the strings, the
strings sounded again; but they played in a new way, for now they were
tuned to another pitch.
***
On a rosy summer evening soon afterwards two children, a boy and a
girl, were sitting on the landing-bridge. They were not thinking of
anything in particular, unless it was a tiny piece of mischief, when all at
once they heard soft music from the bottom of the sea, which startled
them.
"Do you hear it?"
"Yes, what is it? It sounds like scales."
"No, it's the song of the gnats."
"No, it's a mermaid!"
"There are no mermaids. The schoolmaster said so."
"The schoolmaster doesn't know."
"Oh! do listen!"
They listened for a long time, and then they went away, home.
Presently two newly arrived summer guests sat down on the bridge; he
looked into her eyes, which reflected the golden sunset and the green
shores. Then they heard the sounds of music; it sounded as if somebody

were playing on musical glasses, but