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THE WONDERS OF THE LAST SEA:
VERY soon after they had left Ramandu's country they began to feel that they
had already sailed beyond the world. All was different. For one thing they all
found that they were needing less sleep. One did not want to go to bed. nor to
eat much, nor even to talk except in low voices. Another thing was the light.
There was too much of it. The sun when it came up each morning looked twice, if
not; three times, its usual size. And every morning (which gave Lucy the
strangest feeling of all) the huge white birds, singing their song with human
voices in a language no one knew, streamed overhead and vanished astern on their
way to their breakfast at Aslan's Table. A little later they came flying back
and vanished into the east.
"How beautifully clear the water is!" said Lucy to herself, as she leaned over
the port side early in the afternoon of the second day.
And it was. The first thing that she noticed was a little black object, about
the size of a shoe, travelling along at the same speed as the ship. For a moment
she thought it was something floating on the surface. But then there came
floating past a bit of stale bread which the cook had just thrown out of the
galley. And the bit of bread looked as if it were going to collide with the
black thing, but it didn't. It passed above it, and Lucy now saw that the black
thing could not be on the surface. Then the black thing suddenly got very much
bigger and flicked back to normal size a moment later.
Now Lucy knew she had seen something just like that happen somewhere else - if
only she could remember where. She held her hand to her head and screwed up her
face and put out her tongue in the effort to remember. At last she did. Of
course! It was like what you saw from a train on a bright sunny day. You saw the
black shadow of your own coach running along the fields at the same pace as the
train. Then you went into a cutting; and immediately the same shadow flicked
close up to you and got big, racing :long the grass of the cutting-bank. Then
you came out of the cutting and - Pick! - once more the black shadow had gone
back to its normal size and was running along the fields.
"It's our shadow! - the shadow of the Dawn Treader," said Lucy. "Our shadow
running along on the bottom of the sea. That time when it got bigger it went
over a hill. But in that case the water must be clearer than I thought! Good
gracious, I must he seeing the bottom of the sea; fathoms and fathoms down."
As soon as she had said this she realized that the great silvery expanse which
she had been seeing (without noticing) for some time was really the sand on the
sea-bed and that ail sorts of darker or brighter patches were not lights and
shadows on the surface but real things on the bottom. At present, for instance,
they were passing over a mass of soft purply green with a broad, winding strip
of pale grey in the middle of it But now that she knew it was on the bottom she
saw it much better. She could see that bits of the dark stuff were much higher
than other bits and were waving gently. "Just like trees in a wind," said Lucy.
"And do believe that's what they are. It's a submarine forest."
They passed on above it and presently the pale streak was joined by another pale
streak. "If I was down there," thought Lucy, "that streak would be just like a
road through the wood. And that place where it joins the other Would be a
crossroads. Oh, I do wish I was. Hallo! the forest is coming to an end. And I do
believe the streak really was a road! I can still see it going on across the
open sand. It's a different colour. And it's marked out with something at the
edges - dotted lines. Perhaps they are stones. And now it's getting wider."
But it was not really getting wider, it was getting nearer. She realized this
because of the way in which the shadow of the ship came rushing up towards her.
And the road she felt sure it was a road now - began to go in zigzags. Obviously
it was climbing up a steep hill. And when she held her head sideways and looked
back, what she saw was very like what you see when you look down a winding road
from the top of a hill. She could even see the shafts of sunlight falling
through the deep water on to the wooded valley - and, in the extreme distance,
everything melting away into a dim greenness. But some places - the sunny ones,
she thought - were ultramarine blue.
She could not, however, spend much time looking back; what was coming into view
in the forward direction was too exciting. The road had apparently now reached
the top of the hill and ran straight forward. Little specks were moving to and
fro on it. And now something most wonderful, fortunately in full sunlight - or
as full as it can be when it falls through fathoms of water - flashed into
sight. It was knobbly and jagged and of a pearly, or perhaps an ivory, colour.
She was so nearly straight above it that at first she could hardly make out what
it was. But everything became plain when she noticed its shadow. The sunlight
was falling across Lucy's shoulders, so the shadow of the thing lay stretched
out on the sand behind it. And by its shape she saw clearly that it was a shadow
of towers and pinnacles, minarets and domes.
"Why! - it's a city or a huge castle," said Lucy to herself "But I wonder why
they've built it on top of a high mountain?"
Long afterwards when she was back in England and talked all these adventures
over with Edmund, they thought of a reason and I am pretty sure it is the true
one. In the sea, the deeper you go, the darker and colder it gets, and it is
down there, in the dark and cold, that dangerous things live - the squid and the
Sea Serpent and the Kraken. The valleys are the wild, unfriendly places. The
sea-people feel about their valleys as we do about mountains, and feel about
their mountains as we feel about valleys. It is on the heights (or, as we would
say, "in the shallows") that there is warmth and peace. The reckless hunters and
brave knights of the sea go down into the depths on quests and adventures, but
return home to the heights for rest and peace, courtesy and council, the sports,
the dances and the songs.
They had passed the city and the sea-bed was still rising. It was only a few
hundred feet below the ship now. The road had disappeared. They were sailing
above an open park-like country, dotted with little groves of brightlycoloured
vegetation. And then - Lucy nearly squealed aloud with excitement-she had seen
People.
There were between fifteen and twenty of them, and all mounted on sea-horses -
not the tiny little sea-horses which you may have seen in museums but horses
rather bigger than themselves. They must be noble and lordly people, Lucy
thought, for she could catch the gleam of gold on some of their foreheads and
streamers of emerald- or orange-coloured stuff fluttered from their shoulders in
the current. Then:
"Oh, bother these fish!" said Lucy, for a whole shoal of small fat fish,
swimming quite close to the surface, had come between her and the Sea People.
But though this spoiled her view it led to the most interesting thing of all.
Suddenly a fierce little fish of a kind she had never seen before came darting
up from below, snapped, grabbed, and sank rapidly with one of the fat fish in
its mouth. And all the Sea People were sitting on their horses staring up at
what had happened. They seemed to be talking and laughing. And before the
hunting fish had got back to them with its prey, another of the same kind came
up from the Sea People. And Lucy was almost certain that one big Sea Man who sat
on his sea-horse in the middle of the party had sent it or released it; as if he
had been holdng it back till then in his hand or on his wrist.
"Why, I do declare," said Lucy, "it's a hunting party. Or more like a hawking
party. Yes, that's it. They ride out with these little fierce fish on their
wrists just as we used to ride out with falcons on our wrists when we were Kings
and Queens at Cair Paravel long ago. And then they fly them - or I suppose I
should say swim them - at the others."
She stopped suddenly because the scene was changing. The Sea People had noticed
the Dawn Treader. The shoal of fish hard scattered in every direction: the
People themselves were coming up to find out the meaning of this big, black
thing which had come between them and the sun. And now they were so close to the
surface that if they had been in air, instead of water, Lucy could have spoken
to them. There were men and women both. All wore coronets of some kind and many
had chains of pearls. They wore no other clothes. Their bodies were the colour
of old ivory, their hair dark purple. The King in the centre (no one could
mistake him for anything but the King) looked proudly and fiercely into Lucy's
face and shook a spear in his hand. His knights did the same. The faces of the
ladies were filled with astonishment. Lucy felt sure they had never seen a ship
or a human before - and how should they, in seas beyond the world's end where no
ship ever came?
"What are you staring at, Lu?" said a voice close beside her.
Lucy had been so absorbed in what she was seeing that she started at the sound,
and when she turned she found that her arm had gone "dead" from leaning so long
on the rail in one position. Drinian and Edmund were beside her.
"Look," she said.
They both looked, but almost at once Drinian said in a low voice:
"Turn round at once, your Majesties - that's right, with our backs to the sea.
And don't look as if we were talking about anything important."
"Why, what's the matter?" said Lucy as she obeyed.
"It'll never do for the sailors to see all that," said Drinian. "We'll have men
falling in love with a seawoman, or falling in love with the under-sea country
itself, and jumping overboard. I've heard of that kind of thing happening before
in strange seas. It's always unlucky to see these people."
"But we used to know them," said Lucy. "In the old days at Cair Paravel when my
brother Peter was High King. They came to the surface and sang at our
coronation."
"I think that must have been a different kind, Lu," said Edmund. "They could
live in the air as well as under water. I rather think these can't. By the look
of them they'd have surfaced and started attacking us long ago if they could.
They seem very fierce."
"At any rate," said Drinian, but at that moment two sounds were heard. One was a
plop. The other was a voice from the fighting top shouting, "Man overboard!"
Then everyone was busy. Some of the sailors hurried aloft to take in the sail:
others hurried below to get to the oars; and Rhince, who was on duty on the
poop, began to put the helm hard over so as to come round and back to the man
who had gone overboard. But by now everyone knew that it wasn't strictly a man.
It was Reepicheep.
"Drat that mouse!" said Drinian. "It's more trouble than all the rest of the
ship's company put together. If there is any scrape to be got into, in it will
get! It ought to be put in irons - keel-hauled - marooned - have its whiskers
cut off. Can anyone see the little blighter?"
All this didn't mean that Drinian really disliked Reepicheep. On the contrary he
liked him very much and was therefore frightened about him, and being frightened
put him in a bad temper - just as your mother is much angrier with you for
running out into the road in front of a car than a stranger would be. No one, of
course, was afraid of Reepicheep's drowning, for he was an excellent swimmer;
but the three who knew what was going on below the water were afraid of those
long, cruel spears in the hands of the Sea People.
In a few minutes the Dawn Treader had come round and everyone could see the
black blob in the water which was Reepicheep. He was chattering with the
greatest excitement but as his mouth kept on getting filled with water nobody
could understand what he was saying.
"He'll blurt the whole thing out if we don't shut him up," cried Drinian. To
prevent this he rushed to the side and lowered a rope himself, shouting to the
sailors, "All right, all right. Back to your places. I hope I can heave a mouse
up without help." And as Reepicheep began climbing up the rope not very nimbly
because his wet fur made him heavy - Drinian leaned over and whispered to him,
"Don't tell. Not a word."
But when the dripping Mouse had reached the deck it turned out not to be at all
interested in the Sea People.
"Sweet!" he cheeped. "Sweet, sweet!"
"What are you talking about?" asked Drinian crossly. "And you needn't shake
yourself all over me, either."
"I tell you the water's sweet," said the Mouse. "Sweet, fresh. It isn't salt."
For a moment no one quite took in the importance of this. But then Reepicheep
once more repeated the old prophecy:
"Where the waves grow sweet, Doubt not, Reepicheep, There is the utter East."
Then at last everyone understood.
"Let me have a bucket, Rynelf," said Drinian.
It was handed him and he lowered it and up it came again. The water shone in it
like glass.
"Perhaps your Majesty would like to taste it first," said Drinian to Caspian.
The King took the bucket in both hands, raised it to his lips, sipped, then
drank deeply and raised his head. His face was changed. Not only his eyes but
everything about him seemed to be brighter.
"Yes," he said, "it is sweet. That's real water, that. I'm not sure that it
isn't going to kill me. But it is the death I would have chosen - if I'd known
about it till now."
"What do you mean?" asked Edmund.
"It - it's like light more than anything else," said Caspian.
"That is what it is," said Reepicheep. "Drinkable light. We must be very near
the end of the world now."
There was a moment's silence and then Lucy knelt down on the deck and drank from
the bucket.
"It's the loveliest thing I have ever tasted," she said with a kind of gasp.
"But oh - it's strong. We shan't need to eat anything now."
And one by one everybody on board drank. And for a long time they were all
silent. They felt almost too well and strong to bear it; and presently they
began to notice another result. As I have said before, there had been too much
light ever since they left the island of Ramandu - the sun too large (though not
too hot), the sea too bright, the air too shining. Now, the light grew no less -
if anything, it increased - but they could bear it. They could look straight up
at the sun without blinking. They could see more light than they had ever seen
before. And the deck and the sail and their own faces and bodies became brighter
and brighter and every rope shone. And next morning, when the sun rose, now five
or six times its old size, they stared hard into it and could see the very
feathers of the birds that came flying from it.
Hardly a word was spoken on board all that day, till about dinner-time (no one
wanted any dinner, the water was enough for them) Drinian said:
"I can't understand this. There is not a breath of wind. The sail hangs dead.
The sea is as flat as a pond. And yet we drive on as fast as if there were a
gale behind us."
"I've been thinking that, too," said Caspian. "We must be caught in some strong
current."
"H'm," said Edmund. "That's not so nice if the World really has an edge and
we're getting near it."
"You mean," said Caspian, "that we might be just well, poured over it?"
"Yes, yes," cried Reepicheep, clapping his paws together. "That's how I've
always imagined it - the World like a great round table and the waters of all
the oceans endlessly pouring over the edge. The ship will tip up stand on her
head - for one moment we shall see over the edge - and then, down, down, the
rush, the speed -"
"And what do you think will be waiting for us at the bottom, eh?" said Drinian.
"Aslan's country perhaps," said the Mouse, its eyes shining. "Or perhaps there
isn't any bottom. Perhaps it goes down for ever and ever. But whatever it is,
won't it be worth anything just to have looked for one moment beyond the edge of
the world."
"But look -here," said Eustace, "this is all rot. The world's round - I mean,
round like a ball, not like a table."
"Our world is," said Edmund. "But is this?"
"Do you mean to say," asked Caspian, "that you three come from a round world
(round like a ball) and you've never told me! It's really too bad of you.
Because we have fairy-tales in which there are round worlds and I always loved
them. I never believed there were any real ones. But I've always wished there
were and I've always longed to live in one. Oh, I'd give anything - I wonder why
you can get into our world and we never get into yours? If only I had the
chance! It must be exciting to live on a thing like a ball. Have you ever been
to the parts where people walk about upside-down?"
Edmund shook his head. "And it isn't like that," he added. "There's nothing
particularly exciting about a round world when you're there.
