The Golden Key | Page 9

heard a low, sweet sound, quite different from the
rush and crackle of his wings. Before her was an open arch, and
through it came light, mixed with the sound of sea-waves.
She hurried out, and fell, tired and happy, upon the yellow sand of the
shore. There she lay, half asleep with weariness and rest, listening to
the low plash and retreat of the tiny waves, which seemed ever enticing
the land to leave off being land, and become sea. And as she lay, her
eyes were fixed upon the foot of a great rainbow standing far away
against the sky on the other side of the sea. At length she fell fast
asleep.
When she awoke, she saw an old man with long white hair down to his
shoulders, leaning upon a stick covered with green buds, and so
bending over her.
"What do you want here, beautiful woman?" he said.
"Am I beautiful? I am so glad!" answered Tangle, rising. "My
grandmother is beautiful."
"Yes. But what do you want?" he repeated, kindly.
"I think I want you. Are not you the Old Man of the Sea?"

"I am."
"Then grandmother says, have you any more fishes ready for her?"
"We will go and see, my dear," answered the old man, speaking yet
more kindly than before. "And I can do some thing for you, can I not?"
"Yes--show me the way up to the country from which the shadows
fall," said Tangle. For there she hoped to find Mossy again.
"Ah! indeed, that would be worth doing," said the old man. "But I
cannot, for I do not know the way myself. But I will send you to the
Old Man of the Earth. Perhaps he can tell you. He is much older than I
am."
Leaning on his staff, he conducted her along the shore to a steep rock,
that looked like a petrified ship turned upside down. The door of it was
the rudder of a great vessel, ages ago at the bottom of the sea.
Immediately within the door was a stair in the rock, down which the
old man went, and Tangle followed. At the bottom, the old man had his
house, and there he lived.
As soon as she entered it, Tangle heard a strange noise, unlike anything
she had ever heard before. She soon found that it was the fishes talking.
She tried to understand what they said; but their speech was so
old-fashioned, and rude, and undefined, that she could not make much
of it.
"I will go and see about those fishes for my daughter," said the Old
Man of the Sea.
And moving a slide in the wall of his house, he first looked out, and
then tapped upon a thick piece of crystal that filled the round opening.
Tangle came up behind him, and peeping through the window into the
heart of the great deep green ocean, saw the most curious creatures,
some very ugly, all very odd, and with especially queer mouths,
swimming about everywhere, above and below, but all coming towards
the window in answer to the tap of the Old Man of the Sea. Only a few

could get their mouths against the glass; but those who were floating
miles away yet turned their heads towards it. The Old Man looked
through the whole flock carefully for some minutes, and then turning to
Tangle, said,--
"I am sorry I have not got one ready yet. I want more time than she
does. But I will send some as soon as I can."
He then shut the slide.
Presently a great noise arose in the sea. The old man opened the slide
again, and tapped on the glass, whereupon the fishes were all as still as
sleep.
"They were only talking about you," he said. "And they do speak such
nonsense!--Tomorrow," he continued, "I must show you the way to the
Old Man of the Earth. He lives a long way from here."
"Do let me go at once," said Tangle.
"No. That is not possible. You must come this way first."
He led her to a hole in the wall, which she had not observed before. It
was covered with the green leaves and white blossoms of a creeping
plant.
"Only white-blossoming plants can grow under the sea," said the old
man. "In there you will find a bath, in which you must lie till I call
you."
Tangle went in, and found a smaller room or cave, in the further corner
of which was a great basin hollowed out of a rock, and half full of the
clearest sea-water. Little streams were constantly running into it from
cracks in the wall of the cavern. It was polished quite smooth inside,
and had a carpet