y the Tin Soldier could
see daylight at the point where the tunnel ended; but at the same time
he heard a rushing, roaring noise, at which a bolder man might have
trembled. Think! just where the tunnel ended, the drain widened into a
great sheet that fell into the mouth of a sewer. It was as perilous a
situation for the Soldier as sailing down a mighty waterfall would be
for us.

He was now so near it that he could not stop. The boat dashed on, and
the Tin Soldier held himself so well that no one might say of him that
he so much as winked an eye. Three or four times the boat whirled round
and round; it was full of water to the brim and must certainly sink.

The Tin Soldier stood up to his neck in water; deeper and deeper sank
the boat, softer and softer grew the paper; and now the water closed
over the Soldier's head. He thought of the pretty little dancer whom he
should never see again, and in his ears rang the words of the song:

Wild adventure, mortal danger,
Be thy portion, valiant stranger.

The paper boat parted in the middle, and the Soldier was about to sink,
when he was swallowed by a great fish.

Oh, how dark it was! darker even than in the drain, and so narrow; but
the Tin Soldier retained his courage; there he lay at full length,
shouldering his bayonet as before.

To and fro swam the fish, turning and twisting and making the strangest
movements, till at last he became perfectly still.

Something like a flash of daylight passed through him, and a voice said,
"Tin Soldier!" The fish had been caught, taken to market, sold and
bought, and taken to the kitchen, where the cook had cut him with a
large knife. She seized the Tin Soldier between her finger and thumb and
took him to the room where the family sat, and where all were eager to
see the celebrated man who had traveled in the maw of a fish; but the
Tin Soldier remained unmoved. He was not at all proud.

They set him upon the table there. But how could so curious a thing
happen? The Soldier was in the very same room in which he had been
before. He saw the same children, the same toys stood upon the table,
and among them the pretty dancing maiden, who still stood upon one leg.
She too was steadfast. That touched the Tin Soldier's heart. He could
have wept tin tears, but that would not have been proper. He looked at
her and she looked at him, but neither spoke a word.

And now one of the little boys took the Tin Soldier and threw