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Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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The Blue Book Magazine, January 1932, with "Fintale the Merman"
This story was illustrated by Margery Stocking (1888-1993), whose
works are not in the public domain and cannot be reproduced here.
The joyous and surprising saga of an adventurer from that damp metropolis Mermanchester, who read his newspaper by the light of the lantern-fish, fought the deadly circular-sawfish—and had a love-affair with a gold-digging movie queen.
EVEN as charity covers a multitude of sins (a matter, one assumes, for the clergy), so the sea covers a multitude of freaks, misfits and outsizes—a matter, obviously, for a nature specialist like me.
Thus we have disporting themselves in the quiet and retired marine haunts which they frequent, that perambulating ink-container, the giant squid, the hammer-headed shark, the giant ray sometimes called the sea-bat, the manatee or sea-cow, the happy family of sharks,—including the white, the ground, the basking and other notable members of the family, all of whom love their fellow-denizens of the deep,—the whales and the whelks, the bottle-nosed dolphin and the John Dory; the oar-fish, the anchovy-sauce fish, and many another.
Of most of the foregoing everyone has some knowledge. For they do not as a rule confine themselves wholly to the deepest parts of the sea nor to the loneliest. But things are otherwise when we turn our inquiring minds to the deeper parts—to those gigantic abysses in the sea-floor whose colossal depths have never yet been plumbed, despite the well-nigh frantic efforts of those immersed in that branch of scientific research. It is at this point that science is reluctantly compelled to step quietly out and Bertram Atkey butts airily in.
It is here in these incredible depths that we find the more remarkable inhabitants of the ocean—for instance, the mighty wedge-fishes, who always work in pairs, one to act as a wedge in splitting the rocks in the crevices of which it seeks its prey, the other to act as hammer to drive its companion well home.
Here too in these profundities dwells the lantern-fish, who distributes free a many-candle-power glow through his hide wherever he goes, and the sea-rabbit, that quaint little furry fish, never yet seen by mortal man, but one or more of which is possessed by the children in every merperson's back yard. There also exists the mouth-fish, sometimes called the sea-politician, which is remarkable for swimming with its enormous mouth always stretched wide open to the uttermost limits, though nothing worth recording ever issues from that yawning cavern.
And this swift side-glance, as it were, at the marvels and mysteries of the Great Deeps would not be complete were it to refrain from mentioning that amusing little creature known as the leap-frog fish, which plays leapfrog all day long over its own back; the sea-goat, which eats chalk with passionate zest, drinks immense quantities of water and produces far better milk than any New Yorker has ever yet tasted; the music-fish, which twangs like a harp when irritated; and that most amazing crustacean the jigsaw lobster, a melancholy monster which remains in its cave all day solemnly taking itself apart and putting itself together again—never twice alike.
But the lord of this dim and fascinating realm is the Merman—for here is the metropolis of Merdom. Here, for incalculable aeons of time, has existed Mermanchester, with its teeming thousands of merfolk, the Mecca of all the art, fashion, beauty and talent in the Seven Seas. With a population of just under a million, Mermanchester is situated upon the lowest terrace of a mighty slope of craggy rock some miles below the surface—and to any but a dweller therein would seem a dream of beauty.
But many of those who live there think otherwise. There is a strong progressive party on the city council who claim that the place is behind the times, old-fashioned and out-of-date. Among these was that dashing young mergentleman with whom this story deals—Fintale. But Fintale's reasons for considering Mermanchester one of the dullest holes in the Deep were of a different nature from those of the progressive city councilors.
Fintale did not grieve because the sanitation system was old and out-of-date—it was the social system that bored Fintale. There were few if any of the pleasures of Mermanchester which the rich young merman had not tasted—and they were of such a simple nature that already, at the age of twenty-four, Fintale was weary of them.
The merman's trouble was of a rather complicated nature. At a period when a young merman's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love, Fintale had come to the conclusion that mermaids and mermatrons alike bored him into a trance. They possessed every attribute of beauty but one—variety. They all looked alike to Fintale. They all had golden hair, blue eyes and doll-like complexions; they were all fair, all beautiful, all graceful, and all their tails were the same shape. The babies were but exact copies in miniature of their mammas, and the mammas were more or less duplicates of their mammas, though perhaps more slender.
Now it is a curious fact that, like man, the merman is by nature contrary and never satisfied. Fintale's grandmamma, a very wealthy and experienced mermatron, to whom he bore his trouble, explained this to him, one evening as she sat upon a seaweed-padded rock combing her hair.
"You are bored, Fintale, my dear boy, because you—like most mermen—possess an imperfect appreciation of beauty. All your life long you have been surrounded by wealth, luxury and beauty. Look at your mother and—er—me, and the result is that you are oppressed with a feeling of sameness. You swim down Grand Avenue, and you see so many beautiful faces and figures that if you suddenly came upon a black mermaid, with kinky hair, a figure like a manatee and a face like a walrus, you would fall in love with her instantly. You would say: 'What a little sea-peach she is! A perfect little beauty!' And you would believe it. Whereas what you would really mean is: 'What a little sea-change she is! A perfect little variation from the eternal normal.' And probably you would elope with her! Just because she is different."
Fintale wiggled a fin unbelievingly.
The old merlady nodded her head.
"In a place where every merwoman is beautiful, the ugly one is queen," she said wisely. "Because she's different."
She looked at Fintale shrewdly.
"You want a change," she said. "Why don't you and your friend Scaliend go off big-game hunting for a time? They say the net-fish are very plentiful this year over in the Great Ooze country."
But Fintale shook his head.
"There's no fun in gouging the life out of a few fish, Grandmamma. I want a change." The old merlady chuckled.
"Why don't you marry Gracilis Glyde? She's had a big fortune from her mother; she will have more from her father; and they say she has the temper of a wildcat-fish. She would probably make things interesting for you. And she's only waiting to be asked. She adores you, you know."
But Fintale shook his head, and swam off to his club.
He was very thoughtful that night—so lost in thought, indeed, that when some hours later he leisurely propelled himself home to the ancestral cave, he nearly lost his life to a wandering Orca, or killer whale, which dived like a leaden arrow for him.
He dodged mechanically—one learns the art of dodging very thoroughly in Mermanchester; and the killer had to satisfy himself with one of the street-lantern fish which hung motionless in its position along Grand Avenue, now deserted save for a belated reveler or two. (Mermanchester was lighted throughout by trained lantern-fish.)
But late though it was, Fintale did not immediately go to sleep on his return home. Instead, he carefully drew the thick portières of seaweed across the entrance to his bed-cave, curtly ordered the little lantern-fish to come and shine over his shoulder, and settled down to read—what, dear reader? Nothing more or less than a copy of the Daily Dope, that famous tabloid newspaper, a copy of which Fintale had found, undestroyed, in the wreck of a German submarine. It was dated some three months after the Armistice, and in spite of many missing parts made interesting reading. Saturated and blurred and falling to pieces as it was, Fintale had yet been able to read enough of it to know that life on land was not unattractive. There were restaurants, theaters, motors, the whirl of life; and above all there were those adorable, gracious, vivacious and so widely and beautifully varying creatures—the ladies.
Fintale leaned back, staring entranced at the photograph of a beauty-prize winner which gazed out from the sea-water-sopped page at him. She seemed to squint slightly, and her nose was a trifle out of plumb; her hair was scrambled, and compared with that of the mermaids, it looked as if it had been brushed with a currycomb. A strong committee of artists and painters had solemnly given their verdict that she was the most beautiful lady in the country, and Fintale agreed with them.
If only he could see these wonderful folk—if only he could get ashore—if only he could be the darling of one of these queens!
"Well, why don't you take a whirl at it, sir?" said a voice.
Fintale turned with a start. It was the lantern-fish who had spoken. "What's that?" said Fintale, overlooking the presumption of the menial. "What did you say?"
"Why not go up aloft, sir, and take a look at these land-beauties? You've got the time and the means. I know it's against the law, but if you say you're going on a big-game-fishing expedition, who'll be any the wiser?"
Fintale nodded.
"It's an idea," he said coldly, for he hated familiarity. "I'll consider it. You can go now."
The lantern-fish extinguished itself and swam away to rest, while Fintale settled down—not to sleep but to plan.
THREE days later he left Mermanchester, equipped for a
three-months' big-game-fishing expedition—that is to say,
he carried a large, sharp, uncomfortable trident.
Not a soul in Mermanchester dreamed whither he was bound. It was considered the correct and honorable thing for the well-to-do and otherwise idle young men of Merdom, whether in the capital or the provinces, periodically to issue forth and kill a few monsters. It was held at the bottom of the sea that the menfolk who had the best caves and the biggest sea-parks and so forth, really ought to do something for them. So Fintale had long ago put up a magnificent record in this direction, as he liked big-game fishing for sake of the sport. Nothing, when he was in normal mood, gave him greater pleasure than to introduce his trident into the digestive apparatus of that huge and greatly dreaded deep sea monster the sawfish. This was not the comparatively harmless sawfish familiar to anglers and amateur harpoon-throwers of Florida, Santa Catalina and such places—whose sawfish puts in his fine work with the yard or so of flat horn, studded at the edges with ivory teeth, which grows horizontally out of his face. No—the sawfish that Fintale hunted was the deep-sea circular sawfish, which, by revolving itself upon its own axis at some thousands of revolutions a minute, can and does—if only he catches one at the right angle— snick one in half like a radish.
Fintale had killed hundreds of them—from babies of ten feet in circumference to mammoths of eighty feet round. He may have been something of a mernut, but nobody ever denied that he had pluck. He was the youngest by ten years of the mermen who had ever killed one of that other awful sea-brute, the rope- or net-fish, the terror of merfolk. This singular and highly intelligent denizen of deeps unknown to all save students like me is a thin, long fish shaped like a piece of box-cord. It is as thick in its thickest part as the thin end of an ordinary beer-pump handle, and in its thinnest part is as thin as the thick end of an automatic corkscrew. The adults are rarely more than twelve thousand feet long and hardly ever less than ten thousand. They know the system of knots, including the granny, the half-hitch, the bowline, the carrick bend and many others. They patiently weave themselves into a comfortably large-meshed net of half an acre or so in size, and cunningly hang themselves up in the lanes among the great gardens of kelp, waiting for something to turn up—usually a pair of merlovers. Only the most experienced hunters can hope to kill these. But Fintale had done it. He had come upon a young one who had woven himself up with the wrong kind of stitch and was awkward.
It will be seen, therefore, that the young merman's departure was in no way remarkable and attracted no comment—excepting a private one from Gracilis Clyde, who bad-temperedly caught her maid a back-slash with her tail when she heard that Fin had gone hunting again.
BLITHELY the young merman shot through the water on his
journey. He had thought long about the adventure, and he had
carefully studied the faces of a number of men whose photographs
had been reproduced in that now perished copy of the Daily
Dope.
"I suppose each one of those men is the darling of one of those beautiful land queens," he told himself, as he sizzed through the green water. "And I don't think I need fear to compete with them. I'm sure I'm as graceful and good-looking as they are."
For he was young yet, and he had much to learn....
He came up not far from Bar Harbor upon a strip of narrow beach which ran down to the sea from the stone-built terrace at the bottom of an expensive-looking lawn and garden belonging to a seaside villa, small but very elaborately built. The sun-blinds, the flowers and the bright-hued garden-furniture formed a feast of color which delighted Fintale.
He lay for a while in the warm shallows admiring it all. Then he paddled in. A small boy skulking apparently in some sort of ambush behind a boat— presumably for sea-gulls—perceived Fintale and went gray-green, then blackish purple, in the face with excitement. His eyes bulged out until they seemed to be growing on stalks. He pulled himself together with a grunt, and deftly planted a catapult pebble on Fintale's arm. The merman uttered a sharp yelp of astonishment, wondering where on earth or in hell the pebble had come from. He took two or three vigorous strokes and came ashore with a run. The boy's nerve failed him and so he went away. He was tired of that part of the beach apparently—at any rale he left it at a speed which Fintale, watching him, thought remarkable for land traveling in one so young. The boy speedily became a dwindling speck in the direction of the town, where he subsequently earned for himself the reputation of being a thorough-paced liar by saying he had seen a man-fish.
Then Fintale's attention was distracted permanently from the fleeing boy, for down the short flight of stone steps which led rom the terrace to the sands came a vision of such exquisite beauty that Fintale gasped with the sheer pleasure of beholding it.
It was she—that queen of whom Fintale had dreamed so intensely, and whom he had come from such an immense depth and distance to find. She was so dazzling that, unused to the land of the humans though Fintale was, he knew instinctively that he was lucky to have come to this spot at the first landing.
She was about to go swimming—evidently an early morning dip. She had given her wrap to a maid at the terrace and came tripping across the sands in the prettiest of bathing suits—a dainty trifle in pale blue and white that cost some sixty-odd dollars.
She did not notice Fintale, lying by the boat, so that he was able to watch her undisturbed. She was, he saw, of quite a different type of beauty from the mermaids. She wore no cap, and Fintale saw that she possessed deep red-glowing hair, very prettily bobbed.
Bobbed hair was a novelty to Fintale—for a mermaid would as soon think of having her tail bobbed as her hair. He thought he had never seen anything so charming.
And her face was perfect—with figure to match. Fintale was sure of that, quite sure. Had he lived on earth a little longer, he would perhaps have been less frantically enthusiastic. That is to say, he would have been more accustomed to the sight of that bobbed red-gold hair, that flowerlike face, that graceful figure—for Miss Dorene Daream had been a famous beauty for at least five years, and every half-inch of her features, at every angle, was familiar to everyone in the country who had ever bought picture postcards, read an illustrated paper, studied advertisements of soap, fountain pens, memory systems, perfumes, cigarettes, and so forth, been to the theaters or movies, or, in short, seen anything or been anywhere.
Dorene had just completed a long spell of work in "Gosh!" the famous jazz revue, and had now come down, with the swallows, to her villa to recuperate, though it is but fair to state that that overworked individual her publicity manager had told a wide circle of press acquaintances that she had really left town in order to avoid the attentions of his ex-Majesty the was-King of Garlica, who had recently landed in New York with a carpetbag containing a piece of his crown, a telescopic alpenstock, an odd pair of socks, a knuckle of ham and a half a Dutch cheese. Some said he hoped to marry Dorene; others said that he hoped to get the berth of chauffeur with her. Everyone was very much worried as to which was right.
But these things Fintale did not know and would not have understood if anyone had told him of them. All the merman knew was that Dorene was the sweetest thing that he had ever seen—and he wanted only to be her darling.
Dorene was a good and graceful swimmer for a woman—but compared with the lissome merladies gliding dreamily through their native element she was about as competent as a mermaid would be on a bicycle or a pair of skates.
Before she was more than twenty yards out of her depth, Fintale awoke from his dreams with a violent start to the belief that she was drowning. He was sure of it from the way in which she splashed and threw her arms about. He was not used to the human method of swimming—and so, in a flash, he was shooting toward her.
Now it is not to be denied that Johnny Weissmuller is a grand little swimmer; and Annette Kellerman had the gift of getting up a pretty good gait through the water; the seal, too, is good at it; and there are few who will contradict the statement that the salmon is at home in the water; but for really fine work you have got to hand it to the merman. He glides through the waves like a wave—he is one of them, in fact, though faster.
Fintale poured himself through the water at a speed which rendered him indistinguishable from a dolphin. In a fraction of time he was out to Dorene. For a moment she was startled. But there was nothing the matter with her nerves, and she recovered herself in an instant.
"I entreat your pardon, beautiful lady," said Fintale— English, quite fittingly, is the language used in Merdom. "Do not fear. Fintale is here, and he will save you from drowning."
Dorene looked at him for a moment. She evidently thought he was an ordinary human swimmer.
"Thanks, but I'm not in any danger," she said coldly. "Please don't touch me."
Instantly Fintale swerved clear of her—and then she saw with whom she was dealing. She opened her mouth in a little gasp, inadvertently took in a spurt of water, gasped again, and turning round, headed for the beach.
She landed, Fintale following her.
"How dare you bother me when I am swimming?" she demanded, surveying him. He looked rather effective. The upper half of him was by no means bad. He looked a gentleman—the front half of him, at any rate. His tail, long, extremely graceful and tapering, was really a beautiful thing in dark, glowing green, shot with wonderful living flames of silver, gold and many tints of blue and blue-green, splashed with purple and silver, and over all a shimmering elusive sheen of old rose. It was, in short, some tail, and would have made a peacock depressed for days.
"Why—why—you're a merman!" said Miss Daream accusingly, with wonder in her eyes.
Fintale admitted it, and proceeded to apologize abjectly for attempting to foist an entirely superfluous rescue from drowning upon her.
And here it may be remarked that Fin took from the start an entirely wrong attitude with her. He shouldn't have been meek. It was a fatal mistake. Nor should he have wagged his beautiful tail so very humbly at her. He practically handed himself over to her as a free gift. He was wrong—thousands of men had done that; thousands were waiting to do so. For she was a popular beauty—with the soul of a keen business-man and a consuming ambition to retire as soon as she was worth a modest half-million or so. She was in love—had been in love for years, with a casual person who kept what he called a poultry farm on Long Island and spent most of his daytime smoking a big briar pipe in the stable doctoring one or the other of an ancient hunter's legs, and his evenings in reading the classics with a large tankard at his elbow. A queer-tempered, good-looking man, who had collected a varied assortment of shrapnel splinters in his arm in 1918, and had retired to meditate and keep hens and study bees and the classics. A pretty good judge of things, on the whole. He treated Dorene much as he might treat a mosquito that was too exquisitely pretty to be killed but was apt to be rather a nuisance buzzing around. She adored him for it. She invariably went to him with a full account of her "part" every time she appeared in a new revue or musical comedy, and used to spend a most thrilling evening listening to him while he told her just exactly what Sophocles, Cicero, Marcus Aurelius and a few old gentlemen of that kidney would have thought of her and her part. For she had real talent, though she was not above utilizing it in revues.
Fintale should have adopted the same tone. Instead of this, he set her on a pedestal as high as the Eiffel Tower—and received in due time, what he asked for....
"Yes, beautiful lady, I am a merman, with your gracious permission," he said.
"Oh, don't ask me," she said, smiling. "Where have you come from?"
He told her about Merdom.
"Describe it," she commanded, and when he began, stopped him.
"Describe it at breakfast. Have you breakfasted? Do you care for eggs and bacon—waffles—that sort of thing? Or is—er—seaweed—"
He assured her that anything would do, and she invited him to the villa. But first she brought him a dressing-gown.
Her maid was surprised to find Fintale on the terrace.
"Mr.—er—Merperson has swum over to breakfast," said Miss Daream airily. "Tell them to lay breakfast for two." She followed the maid in, warning her to say nothing to anyone about the poor gentleman's deformity,—his tail,—about which he was extremely sensitive. She sent out a box of cigarettes. Fin tried one, in three puffs brought himself to the very brink of violent illness, and gave up smoking.
Perhaps an hour later he was sitting with Dorene, who was now most charmingly arrayed, on the terrace, telling her about Merdom, and the uniform beauty of the Mermanchester girls.
"They are very lovely—but there is not one to compare with you, O beautiful lady. Even the milk-white pearls they wear do not—"
Dorene brightened up suddenly. She did not interest herself very much in things that were out of her reach, and Merdom sounded chilly and not very interesting. Her thoughts were wandering to a man in shabby tweeds probably at that moment engaged in rubbing evil-smelling lotions into a horse's legs—but—
"Pearls, did you say?" she inquired.
"Pearls—oh, yes, beautiful lady."
"Are there so many pearls in Merdom, my dear man?" she inquired, thinking that Fintale's face reminded her vaguely of a seal's, though rather better-looking.
"The children play marbles with them, beautiful lady," he said.
"What horrible waste! I love pearls—the larger ones."
She smiled at him very sweetly. "Do you think they would suit me—pearls?" she asked. "A necklace of large pearls—a rope of them. That is, a large rope that would loop round my neck four—no, say six, times."
"Would you like some pearls, beautiful lady?" bleated Fintale.
"Oh, thank you so very much. I can't possibly give you the trouble—I suppose it's no trouble, really—you just pick them up like pebbles, no doubt. If you insist, of course, but don't put yourself out. That would be very delightful—thank you so much. When do you think you will start? Can I offer you any thing before you go? No? Very well, I insist on being permitted to come to the water's edge with you. But you really are too kind!" And so saying, the lady arose vivaciously.
Rather reluctantly Fin did the same. This was rather quicker work than the way they set about things in Merdom.
"How charming it must be in Merdom!" prattled the lady as they crossed the sands. "Do you have—er—diamonds and emeralds and that sort of thing there too?"
"My friend Scaliend's spearhead is made of diamonds, sweet lady," said Fintale. "He is very fond of experimenting with his spears. We usually prefer emerald blades, with a heavy gold shaft, and a big rough ball of ruby on the end. They balance better like that, beautiful lady." He paused at the boat and picked up his trident.
It blazed in the sunlight with all the fires of a rainbow. It was as he said—wedge-shaped prongs of solid emerald, gold shaft and a ruby boss the size of a very large golf-ball.
Dorene Daream gasped, and her beautiful blue eyes changed slightly into a gentle green.
"That is the loveliest thing I have ever seen," she said.
"That!" ejaculated Fintale, genuinely amazed. "Why, beautiful lady, that is but a rough hunting tool—a thing for use. It is without beauty, being intended for use, star of my soul! Do you love beautiful things—gems, sweet lady?" He hesitated, then took a plunge. "Could you care for one who brought you really lovely gems? Such as the mazuma, that strange and weirdly beautiful stone of scarlet fire, ringed with a flashing edge of green and its center silver-white with a sheen that dulls the finest pearl in the sea. A necklace of these! Could you try to care a little for one who brought you that? Or an arm-ring of gleaming black spondulique—that rare and noble metal that is bespangled with little sparkling stars of gold. Would you make an effort to be fond of one who brought you such a bracelet?
"You speak of pearls—pearls with which the merurchins play marbles, dearest lady. But what of that grand and hauntingly beautiful sea-gem which is only found among the debris of the rocks which the giant wedge-fish has wedged to pieces—the gaurbalimei, which burns with a ceaselessly changing procession of colors—colors that change daily and are never repeated—new colors—marvelous hues that one has never seen before and will never see again. I know where one of these may be found, sweetest lady. Do you think if one brought you a gaurbalimei, you could make him your—er—darling?"
Dorene Daream drew a deep breath.
"I could, dearest merman—indeed I could."
Fintale reverently kissed her hand. His lips were rather clammy, but he did it gracefully—for a semi-fish.
"I will return with all those things in seven days, O gracious one," he said— and disappeared before she had time to ask whether it was worth while taking his trident with him for so short a time.
She stared at the water for a long time.
"It's a dream," she said, presently. "How could I possibly accept jewelry from a thing like a seal?"
But she spent the whole of the next seven days on the beach, and most of the next seven nights....
FINTALE returned to Mermanchester, secured the deep-sea
jewels he had spoken of, and was on his way back, swimming with
arrowy speed within the next five days.
Then on the morning of the sixth day he ran full tilt into a gigantic mallet- or bludgeon-fish—another denizen of the extreme depths. This rare beast is built somewhat on the lines of the giant octopus, but is furnished with twelve powerful arms or tentacles, each of which terminates in an oblong block of very hard horny substance, shaped like a large brick. It is normally a very quiet, good-tempered fish, provided that no living thing approaches nearer than five miles or so to it. But should any hapless creature venture nearer than that distance, the mallet-fish is instantly transformed into a raging demon, its rage and cunning increasing with every yard its disturber draws nearer.
The one into which Fintale ran was large and active, and its clubs were in good working trim. The merman succeeded in destroying the brute, but not until he was bruised in a thousand places and was so studded with big bumps and swellings that he looked like a sea-warthog.
In the struggle he lost some of the gems he was bearing so swiftly to Dorene Daream, but more serious than that, he had to rest for some days before he was able to move. So when eventually he approached Bar Harbor, he was almost a week late.
He bobbed up at a point east of Bar Harbor. It was night. He saw he had slightly miscalculated, glided along on the surface a little distance, assured himself of his whereabouts, and so dived again to return out to sea and farther down the coast. But he was unlucky, for he dived into a salmon net which the proprietors thereof were just about to haul. By no means recovered from the effects of his fierce encounter with the mallet-fish, the unfortunate merman's frantic struggles were of no avail—they were not sufficiently frantic. He did his best, but it was not enough. He lost consciousness a few moments after being dragged ashore.
DREAMILY he heard the fishermen discussing him, wrangling
about what he was, swearing at him and each other; as from a
distance he heard voices describing him variously as a sunfish,
a bottle-nosed seal, a sea-cow, and lastly, a "mermaidman."
He heard vaguely a harsh voice which spoke of "Lloyd George,"
Sells-Floto, Barnum and Bailey's, the Zoo, and an aquarium. Then
he fainted....
When he awoke next, he was in a species of tank—a cramped homemade affair of wood with a glass top which, had he but known it, had once been the top of a cucumber-frame.
There were three fishermen outside, talking to a fourth man—a hard-faced person, with something remotely suggestive of circuses about him. They were all arguing and staring in at him.
He thought swiftly and wisely decided to lie low for a space—until he heard or saw how things were shaping. He was not kept long in the dark. The discussion was going on hotly.
"I tell you he's pretty near all in," said the hard-faced man—the proprietor of a small circus which had chanced to be in the neighborhood. "You can't fool me with no merman—I've been used to handling 'em all my life— mermaids too. They're tetchy things to handle—delicate. Must have salt water fresh from the sea every day—and where are you going to get it when you get to Indianapolis and Des Moines? We got to think of sich things in the circus profession, see. These here mermen aint easy stock, nohow, and when I tell you that I got the offer of three others at different places in Italy and Spain,—mostly imported mermen, we use,—you'll see that I aint falling over myself to buy this one. I'll own that he's a well-bred merman—very near thoroughbred, I reckon; but give me a good, stout cross-bred 'un. They last. These thoroughbreds aint up to the work. I been in the circus profession all my life, and I know what I'm talking about. He's worth thirty dollars to me—and I'm not begging you to take it, either. I doubt if I shall get my money back on him. Mermen don't draw folk like they used to, neither. Forty years ago, you could have got a hundred for him, but times is changed. However, there 'tis."
He feigned to move away with an admirable assumption of indifference. The fishermen failed to notice the glittering light of sheer excitement in his hard eyes, and they muttered among themselves.
"I don't want him really—I don't want him at all," said the circus man over his shoulder. "I don't want to part with no money for him. I'd sooner swap with you. I got a nice little tiger-cub I'll give you for him—as pretty as a kitten. Or a pair of wildcats. Or I'll give you a couple of cobras, a diamond-back rattlesnake and a horned stinging lizard for him. Or, as I said, thirty dollars. But I'll do no more. Take it or leave it!"
They took it.
"Look after him for half an hour," said the circus man, "and I'll send a tank down for him. Chuck him in a bit of seaweed—fresh, mind." And he hurried away.
"If I haven't made a fortune this morning my name is Merman J. Mud," he muttered as he went. But he was wrong.
Fintale had missed nothing of the extraordinary stream of untruths with which the man had hypnotized the fishermen. Unused though he was to the ways of man, nevertheless he was well aware that his new owner boded no good to him. He must escape—and quickly.
The fishermen, talking rudely about the circus man's ideas of value, slouched off to collect some seaweed, and as they went, Fintale gently forced up the lid of his tank. It was quite simple. He peered out, and to his wild joy perceived that the tank was in a small garden bordered by a channel. The tide was high.
Like an eel, he slipped out of the tank and shuffled across the garden, forcing his way through a row of early green peas.
A woman's voice suddenly rose.
"Bill! Bill! Quick! That merfish is at the peas—"
Fintale heard a clumping of heavy boots—and slid into the water just as Bill charged down the garden, shouting. The man raced to a boat tied up close by, but long before he pushed off, Fintale was out of range....
He hovered about off the coast all that day, and it was not till moonlight that he emerged on to the beach near the villa of Dorene.
Everything was silent. Fintale stole out on to the beach. Just as he reached the boat, which was still in its accustomed place, he saw two figures moving down off the terrace.
He crouched down in the shadow and watched them.
"And it was here, you say, that merthing came ashore?" said a man's voice—that of the poultry-amateur from Long Island.
"Yes, dear," replied Dorene Daream.
"And it fell in love with you?"
"It said so—practically."
"And of course you fell in love with it?" There was a touch of sarcasm in the man's voice. Dorene laughed.
"Don't be mad, my dear—the thing seemed half-witted, and its face was like a seal's. It bleated something about loving me and began to brag about the jewels in the deep seas. So I sent the idiotic thing to fetch some. It promised to return in seven days—but it didn't."
"No? And I don't suppose it ever will. You must have dreamed it, Dorene."
"Yes," she said reluctantly. "I must have. But what a beast of a dream!"
They moved on, strolling through the moonlight.
FINTALE had heard every word—and every word had been an
education.
He crouched in the shadow of the boat, thinking, for a moment. Then, in a low tone of bitter fury, he said, "Oh, very well!"—hesitated a moment, and finally slid again into the sea. He was homeward bound. The mermaids no doubt were alike in their beauty—but they were usually free from any suspicion of being mercenary—and they were less "modern" than Dorene.
"That lovely creature may indeed be a queen—queen of vampires!" he said. "But she's not for me—no, not for me. I have learned something in the last few days. The deep sea, and Gracilis Glyde, in spite of her temper, for me!"
And with one last glance at the shore, he upended and began his long dive home.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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