g, calling him by name?

"Come away, little boy!" said the voice. "Come away to the south, where
the water is blue always, and storms come rarely, rarely! There, under
the water, my brothers and sisters wait to see you, and with them their
friends, the lovely ones, of whom you have dreamed all your life. There,
on beds of sea-moss, they lie, and the rainbow is dull beside them.
Flowers are there, and stars, and bells that wave softly without sound.
For one fair thing that the man, our master, told you of, we have a
thousand to show you. What does he know, a man, whose eyes are already
half-shut? But you are a child, and for you all things shall be opened
under the ocean, and you shall see the treasures of it, and the
wonders; and you shall grow wise, wise, so that men shall look up to
you, and shall say, 'Where did he gain his knowledge?' And your friend
shall be with you, oh yes, for he knows the way, if he cannot see all
the things that will meet your eyes! And you and he together shall
sail--shall sail, through waters green as chrysoprase; and all the
sea-creatures shall learn to know you and love you. You shall learn
where the sea-otter makes his nest, in the leaves of the giant sea-weed,
where they stretch along the water, full sixty feet long, as the Skipper
told you. The 'Nautilus' will be there, too: not a clumsy wooden
mountain, like this in which we lie prisoned, but the creature itself,
the fairy thing of pearl and silver! Look! here lies his shell, and you
find it lovely; but like us, it is dim and dead for want of the life
within it.

"Come away, and let us be sailing, sailing over seas of gold! And when
you are weary of the top of the waves, down you shall sink with us
through the clear green water, and the night will fall like a soft
dream, and the moon-fish, with its disk of silver, shall gleam beside
you to light the dimness that yet is never dark; and you shall go down,
down, down--"

And about this time it must have been that the little boy went down, for
when the morning broke, the Skipper found him, fast asleep, and smiling
as he slept.

CHAPTER IX.

FAMILY MATTERS.

"Well," said Mr. Bill Hen, "I only want to put it to you, you
understand. Intelligent man like you, no need for me to do more than put
it to you. There's the child, and there's the old man, and they 'pear to
have got separated. I don't want to be understood as implying anything,
not anything in the living world; but ther