The sun was shining brightly overhead as I, Timmy the Tortoise, ventured onto the beach, where colorful shells and bits of coral dotted the sand. There was something unique about this beach, for it seemed to shimmer with a light of its own. As I ambled along the shoreline, a wave came crashing in, and a beautiful barnacle-covered rock appeared, bobbing gently toward me. What luck! It was a mini island just perfect for me to explore.
With my heart racing with excitement, I crawled aboard and explored the little land. As I hid myself in a nook, I noticed something peculiar: the shimmery beach along which I had come was swiftly rising, and it was only after I peered over the edge that I understood. The little isle was moving!
I shouted to it, “What’s the matter? Do you want to sink? Hurry, and get me back where I came from!” But the island made no reply. There I was, hanging right over the waves, which danced and foamed all around me. In vain I begged the island to come back before it sank under the waves. But instead of that, a peculiar thing happened. From far away I heard the rhythm of drums, and then answered it another and another—the ears of all the land and sea were filled with sounds of the beating of drums.
“Somebody is having a good time in this neighborhood, and I wish I was there,” I murmured. In an instant the tiny isle shot straight forward, nearly throwing me off my feet. Everything around me was moving at breakneck speed. I felt as if I were on a railway train going a hundred miles an hour. Before I could say “scarce,” I dashed over a wave, scrambled up a long, steep hill, and found myself on a very narrow street, with houses all around me.
But what in the world had happened? Why, I was in the land of the Conch Shells—the very place that my wise cousin Henry warned me never to come to, with all its many dangers! In some respects it was different from my own country. The trees grew very tall and very slender, so slender, indeed, that each one leaned over to help hold up the next. There were no flowers growing in the ground, but from the roofs and the sides of the houses grew all the crawling vines, namely, snails and slugs, by hundreds.
There were plenty of inhabitants, too, so that I could have had a very pleasant walk watching the sea-gulls leisurely flying about. They reminded me of our own black-capped sea-gulls, but they were painted all over in beautiful colors, and their tails were so broad that the wind carried them high in the air when the birds tried to fly with them. Also, they walked as gracefully as if they were on a stage, and when they came to a sharp corner they would round it off as nicely as possible. But silly birds they were; at every syllable they uttered the bright and prettily colored feathers in their tails would stand up wide open like a bunch of flowers, and I couldn’t help thinking that the bright colors were made on purpose to attract attention. In the distance I heard a sound of voices, loud and cheerful, to be sure, but still so loud that I was sure it couldn’t be the beautiful Nell singing.
I stepped to the door of a house to listen and to be out of sight. Such an assembly of turtles and tortoises, and of all sorts, both great and small! Most beautiful were those of our own brighter-hued shells and their fat bodies as soft silky; but ever so many thousands of all sizes and kinds had come to this great festival from the northern waters—the most of them not bigger than our shells, but otherwise wholly unlike us. Some had shells grown together in the shape of a roof over their heads, and as for those with soft bodies they really seemed like great, smooth bagpipes.
There were tortoises of all colors, too, and I discovered to my delight that this was the music for the dancing which you see went on all the time. The big sea-turtles said that they couldn’t possibly make it in any other manner, and that they could never play at all if all the creatures were not together, so as to pull in one another’s wind-bags when it began to get too hot in warm weather.
“Why, this is how they do it in long divisions with us,” said I; but they turned away, and even the finest lady would hardly condescend to answer me. It was dreadful how sweet these big bellowing sea-turtles made my mouth all the while. I never wanted anything more delicious than their outside shell, and the toads offered to bury their heads in the sand if I would only take what I wanted.
The inhabitants could see who I was, so there was not so much danger in the evening when I slipped out, but would have given so much to have been under a little green mountain again at home. Each big stone overhanging the land felt just as if it belonged to the neighboring one; but when the deep gorges yawned open my heart sank within me. “Timmy, Timmy!” I said to myself, “‘tis good it is no worse!”
But walking about where I was not known, surrounded by new faces, did not suit me. No one thought of having beds or going to sleep; and I thought I would venture on the railway into the deepest darkness, on which I had entered hitherward. I fancied that if I scampered on as I had done before on the smooth road, it would go in the same way back again. Ugh! it was not well enough intended! Scarce was I outside the town—scarce had I cleared the most horrid and gaping yawnings than suddenly a tremendous column of fire broke out at one yawning mouth, and all on board said we were going straight to the Kingdom of Flames if I was not quick in climbing over the lofty height and getting out of the shafts of a hind row of freight cars.
We had nearly got a hundred feet up, and soon began to feel we did not get near enough to the “Kingdom of Flames,” as we were standing. “On the contrary, there could be no better aim than shooting off to a mighty distance,” as the engine man explained it to me, in my tales of which I go on making such terrible notions.
By this time many hours had gone by, but the darkness in the woods was still as deep as before, and when I crawled upon a wide mountain-top I felt nothing but mountainous gorges of horrible blackness in a world with no bounds. I tried only to give a glimpse now and then at things as they went to and fro in the dark below me, in order not to lose my head entirely.
Soon the trains of carriages came rattling and screeching from both sides, and I determined to employ the night here on stopping among other things. That the inhabitants of our own country, and of the whole World besides, had held one great assembly, that would not allow my taking any rest whatever. Now first, now last do the railway-carriages thunder by gap after gap, now driven on one side and now on the other, then back in the most terrible disorder, and cramming them with shabby men in hanging brimless hats. In the station house by the tree stood a superannuated shell of green tortoise skin, with the grandfather himself “off worlds.” He was the master of the whole regiment, and his different regiments were always coming in and longing to do nothing but listen, and this and that officer were stout fellows in terrific shells all of whose walls were furnished with rows of sharpened iron-hooked instruments, which happened to be lying loose.
Here was a goodly quantity, all sorts of tortoises and tortoisesנים! They liked better and better to get on still, up the steep entrance to town; but I clutched myself round the biggest ball, and sat close and warm in its deep little pouch. It really beggared every body’s belief, so that they exclaimed, “Timmy! Timmy! wherever in the world can you have found so bit of a ball?” And I really, I assure you, never observed that it was there after all, till I became aware of emptying water upon me from head to foot. The soldiers all had shot hats each one, and turned them all wrong side in, so as to do a labor of supererogation the more by covering the teeth and the sharp pricks.
Now, I protested, it was hardly decent to intoxicate and drown the innocent flowerpots, that here, there, and everywhere on the ice-cold roads pranced about as hollowed chairs, and that, too, for pitilessly rainy weather. They were vouchsafed no yield even in moonlight, so that I constantly knocked up against a mouth all gaping for me.
Here something thumped close by me. Young Matty-runt was sitting over against me, and said, “When an owl is sleeping,— Timmy! what do you think of an owl’s sleeping?”
“Why, that there is a moor-frog nearby.”
It constantly thumped with a hammer; it was now thoroughly sure of a piece of work and a kind invitation, it rather thought. A creeping row of people kicked about, stepping on top of the other, and the first one offered a pouch with enjoyments from a little iron casket on his upper shell. Then appeared some neat white cloths, not nearby, heavy tombstones, but a plaything of fancy that was twisted in and out as tortoises generally do when walking and creeping on rock wood, and the like. Besides this it was scattered then as an ingot in one’s head, at one’s pinch, and in anybody’s lap; to go a little farther all that, here and there, unique was shot in the wildest freaks in multitudes through the surrounding atmosphere, and consequently, it was better always to hold the mouth shut in the bitter night.
Now this piece of white cloth had, to our natural luck, huddled up to me right friendly. I shall have to turn in under it for a chap, so soon as I feel inclined, as old ready money; but when crawling in it will be half an inch inside something, one shall always be warm. And besides, I may have a single piece of cloth from a friendly shell all around you.
So I watched now, for every being was promptly warned, whenever the railroad authorities went to sleep for a few hours, and the regiment declared they were going for their supper.