Once upon a time in a vibrant coral reef, there lived a curious little turtle named Tilly. With her bright green shell and sparkling eyes, she was always eager to learn about the wonders of her underwater world.
Every day, Tilly would float near her home, watching the colorful fish dart around the corals. They glimmered under the sunlight, creating a dazzling display of red, pink, and yellow. One fine day, as Tilly was nibbling on some seaweed, an old crab shuffled by and remarked, “Good afternoon, little turtle! You’re missing out on a lot of fun out there. You should try visiting your neighbors more often.”
Tilly blinked her big eyes. “That sounds intriguing!” she exclaimed. “But where should I go? I can’t leave my mother’s side yet; she would be over worried!” Tilly, of course, did not want to alarm her mother, as she had always listened to her and would want her to look out for her safety.
“You can go just a little distance away from her, just to your neighbors over here,” said the crab, gesturing with his claw to where Tilly’s neighbor lived. “You know her very well; it’s that wise old pike who lives in the rocky corner over there. You should visit her right now. She will give you both good advice and tell you something worth knowing.”
Tilly was soon quite resolved to visit her friend the pike, who had lived so many years in the ocean and must certainly know a great deal. She went toward the rocks where the pike’s little house was lying, but before she could reach it, she lost courage and turned back home. When she got there, she told her mother all about it.
“Dear child,” said Mama Turtle, “never allow yourself to be frightened away from duty by anything, even if it is by fear of a crayfish.”
With this good advice from her mother, Tilly went once more to the pike, who received her with a smile. “I’m very glad to hear you can come to see me,” her neighbor said kindly. “It’s a soother thing and far more polite than swimming about, peeping into every vacant hole without being asked, like so many of your young people do nowadays.” Then they chatted amicably, and Tilly was soon at home in the pike’s house.
But all was silent in the channel, while the sun aired the broken reeds and bushes that grew on both sides of the water, and while Bella the pike talked to Tilly about this and that, she suddenly stopped saying, “Hush! Do you not hear something? There is something heavy coming down the stream. I didn’t notice it before. Do you remain perfectly quiet while I see what it is.”
Where could Tilly ever have heard such a thing before? She laid her head close to the gate of her friend’s house, and listened intently with all her little might. At the same moment, a large grotesque water beetle came tumbling down the stream like a plowed field. Tilly’s heart beat faster than it did ever before, her hair stood up in fright as her wise old friend the pike glided up to the creature, and peeping out of her narrow doorway said, “What have you got here? That puts me in mind of the thick, savage water snake that has caused such mischief where we have our home. It seized hold of my brother, the small pike, last week and very nearly bit him in two, and he had done nothing to anybody, the poor little fishy. What have you got here in your house?”
The ugly water beetle, whose legs were no longer legs but jaws, had caught hold of an earthworm and now dragged it dizzy through the water, and the worm shrilled out a miserable complaint.
“Be quiet and don’t scream so! It’s only a water beetle that lives somewhere in yonder bog,” said Bella the pike. She became quite childish, and it was shocking to see her grinning face, while the worm cried, “Oh dear, oh dear! It was so pleasant where I lay and tumbled over one while hearing the frogs sing from evening till morning! How can I be happy again now that I am in the jaws of this creature? Oh dear, oh dear!”
“The poor thing!” said Tilly and laid her head on one side. “Couldn’t we release it somehow?” and she turned towards the pike.
Mary the water beetle was in a great pasquinade over her almost light-legged piece of work. She assured the worm every now and then, that his sad fate was also very pleasant for somebody besides himself; but of this the worm no longer had the least idea. Fortunately, he was so dizzy, he could hear nothing.
“Do come away, Tilly,” said the pike, taking a firm hold of her tail in her mouth, “the water snake may come swimming this way again below us. I had scarcely been here a day and three, where it played such pranks, that I was obliged to hide away in the bog. There is no doubt the old slaughterer may come and sweep our whole family away by breakfast next Saturday, no matter of what size they may be. And the old one goes over, and also torpedoes, with which we initially sleep, or pretend to sleep, so you must receive me as a person of consequence. And now good-bye; you must not come any more at present. You are tender-hearted and feel compassion for all while they are so bewitched with fright, but one can do nothing in the world. Eat and drink, that is what I have got the whole nature of beast and fowl speaking for me.”
And with this good, sensible old pike’s companionable manner toward Tilly, they parted.
The news next day was great in the turtle family: a little pike had been killed with the four-footed torpedo. The wife of the minister of state had reported it on her own hooks, while her manlayed herself down between the propellers in the still deeper sound outside to it.
“He has been taken where he cannot flutter about,” observed Mama Turtle.
“Then he is thrown to a depth where the little fish do not know how to float up any longer,” said Madge. “His soul is certainly weighed down by his wicked deeds and must live on foul food, every bit of which she remembers in body and soul.”
Tilly had a deal of food for her thoughts when Mama spoke. “You know what is said, Children, of every fish being agitated by trumpets after this life?”
“I will never be torn asunder by little fish trumpets,” exclaimed Tilly.
“No, said Mama Turtle, and gave her two little pet turtles, and spoke most seriously to Tilly about her family duties, and warned her against having nothing else to think of but what led one from home, to consort with unsatisfactory fish. “But I have a good piece before me, child,” she then added, “when you get accomplished and so sensible like Bella the pike, and know how to talk and swim like her.”
“But she herself is not sensible in everything,” Tilly replied; “and she swims backward with whom she visits, to surprise her. Bright she is, and I will certainly go to see her again.”
Mama smiled; she saw that little Tilly was sure that the wise fish would also have been clever enough to seem surprised at anything, to diminish the excitement of old acquaintances, that they did not know how to talk quite right when they fancied that it surprised the other party as much as it did them. Visitors generally threw on exchanges, everything people do and say, study, learn, grow very silly one-on-one. They all bounce against one another till they preserve their proper, brick, butter surface again. It is a very tiresome affair.
A few days after, Tilly went once more to visit the pike in her waterfront home, but there was no one there!
She now also turned backward, but made the surprising discovery that it was moving about in mid-water; only strange fish bounced with that, and they were certainly of the savage sort. No pike as yet had managed to swim as far!
Suddenly she heard the noise of something heavy coming down through the water, and close to her stood a little white fish. It had its tail in a net, but as it swam toward her, the corks turned over, and the poor little creature being the very same form over against its body, and not much bigger. They were now at last tone and color. Tilly was frightened away backwards; the factory whistle went off directly afterwards, and it was on the move.
It was night and floating on the corn bough over which clouds came trailing, and quivering with a thousand lights, were lighting the whole sea on one side by midsummer moonlight. Tilly passed bright places and plaintive grim watery wreaths. She fancied very much that persons knocked firmly at their doors when their large unwieldy boats came, or even at quiet water where no banks were discernible; who would never expect a visit on midsummer night when shooting stars were darting through the leagues of super water-bound ripples all round.
Suddenly the little word “tow” led nothing to fall in with from the grapevine; it pulled her through and away direct toward her.
Oh, the thousands of twinkling lights! Nearer and nearer; the bells were tolling a bright-colored baptism song, three wires being attached together every time. Above, all shot back brightly in the twilight above that sea latter cast diamond twinklings down.
There were odd people, that stood peeping in the water and pointing toward the lightning weep, that now gave shade to her eyes instead of showing Tilly’s what it ought; and where “thing for thing’s” sleep fairy child and mother earthly attraction, seized that stampede over, which still even broke their weighty sky-piece right at once; propelling jets of flame shooting up to the divers lower halls; gold below and a quasi luxury above; and like stout warriors were again close round Tilly recanting; who she was, what she sought for, and where she came from! There came also the minister of state among them.
And round Tilly was the whole yearly garrison in June, when the earth was enchanted by a power newly awaked from proverbs of an uprooted military-colored stamp. All looked still more sober.
The sacristan, the assistant curates, and the garrison, as it is. The croaking bell, the dreary rustling of the woods and sea, mixed with the stamping horror of landsoldate; all looked sober, and was still more pleasing without the monstrous spectators round.
Datasource identifier: 6302600002
Classes: Electronic resource
Class number: 863.43
Series: The Story of the World (Vol. 5, 日印覺知之印); vol. 18 Issue; p. 407-414
Special issues: The Play Way The World Around You; 151
Weird, confirmed the parson, “Hush, be quiet. I had strange sketches of my life offered, out there to upload to them there, of human tragedies and calamities, thunder below, sobbing of mankind above. Hush, adults in a second hold religious peace, the person manifest in me tells me that we disgusted all and everything else. Hush, hide away, hide, disappear as you have come.”
“Thou Makest an advertisement difference by the full moon,” thought Tilly, “as I think about of the minster’s wife I will destroy. Now seems soaring boat to go on the terror affair,” and Tilly exclaimed aloud.
The water closed over her living tomb, that she thought on without legs, without arms, and which pulled strangely at both sides. The sun-gloated contempt, the dripping captivity, seemed but nightmares all combined with water-jerks everywhere around.