hs open, for the sea-moths to swim
down their throats. There were no threshers there to thresh their poor
old backs, or sword-fish to stab their stomachs, or saw-fish to rip them
up, or ice-sharks to bite lumps out of their sides, or whalers to
harpoon and lance them. They were quite safe and happy there; and all
they had to do was to wait quietly in Peacepool, till Mother Carey sent
for them to make them out of old beasts into new.

Tom swam up to the nearest whale, and asked the way to Mother Carey.

"There she sits in the middle," said the whale.

Tom looked; but he could see nothing in the middle of the pool, but one
peaked iceberg: and he said so.

"That's Mother Carey," said the whale, "as you will find when you get to
her. There she sits making old beasts into new all the year round."

"How does she do that?"

"That's her concern, not mine," said the old whale; and yawned so wide
(for he was very large) that there swam into his mouth 943 sea-moths,
13,846 jelly-fish no bigger than pins' heads, a string of salpae nine
yards long, and forty-three little ice-crabs, who gave each other a
parting pinch all round, tucked their legs under their stomachs, and
determined to die decently, like Julius Caesar.

"I suppose," said Tom, "she cuts up a great whale like you into a whole
shoal of porpoises?"

At which the old whale laughed so violently that he coughed up all the
creatures; who swam away again very thankful at having escaped out of
that terrible whalebone net of his, from which bourne no traveller
returns; and Tom went on to the iceberg, wondering.

And, when he came near it, it took the form of the grandest old lady he
had ever seen--a white marble lady, sitting on a white marble throne.
And from the foot of the throne there swum away, out and out into the
sea, millions of new-born creatures, of more shapes and colours than man
ever dreamed. And they were Mother Carey's children, whom she makes out
of the sea-water all day long.

He expected, of course--like some grown people who ought to know
better--to find her snipping, piecing, fitting, stitching, cobbling,
basting, filing, planing, hammering, turning, polishing, moulding,
measuring, chiselling, clipping, and so forth, as men do when they go
to work to make anything.

But, instead of that, she sat quite still with her chin upon her hand,
looking down into the sea with two great grand blue eyes, as blue as the
sea itself. Her hair was as white as t