Wet Magic
It was excellent advice and when all four had followed it, it was found possible to sit side by side on what may be called the floor of the net, only the squeezing of the net walls tended to jerk one up from one's place if one wasn't very careful.
By the time the rearrangement was complete, and they were free to look about them, the whole aspect of the world had changed. The world, for one thing, was much darker, in itself that is, though the part of it where the children were was much lighter than had been the sea where they were first netted. It was a curious scene—rather like looking down on London at night from the top of St. Paul's. Some bright things, like trams or omnibuses, were rushing along, and smaller lights, which looked mighty like cabs and carriages, dotted the expanse of blackness till, where they were thick set, the darkness disappeared in a blaze of silvery light.
Other light-bearers had rows of round lights like the portholes of great liners. One came sweeping toward them, and a wild idea came to Cathay that perhaps when ships sink they go on living and moving underwater just as she and the others had done. Perhaps they do. Anyhow, this was not one of them, for, as it came close, it was plainly to be perceived as a vast fish with phosphorescent lights in rows along its gigantic sides. It opened its jaws as it passed, and for an instant everyone shut their eyes and felt that all was over. When the eyes were opened again, the mighty fish was far away. Cathay, however, was discovered to be in tears.
"I wish we hadn't come," she said; and the others could not but feel that there was something in what she said. They comforted her and themselves as best they could by expressing a curious half-certainty which they had that everything would be all right in the end. As I said before, there are some things so horrible that if you can bring yourself to face them you see at once that they can't be true. The barest idea of poetic justice—which we all believe in
136
