THE WATER BABIES
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-south-east 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.
But here there were only good, quiet beasts, lying about like the black hulls of sloops, and blowing every
252
