fish's tail.

'Let us be happy,' said the grandmother; 'we will hop and skip during
our three hundred years of life; it is surely a long enough time; and
after it is over we shall rest all the better in our graves. There is to
be a court ball to-night.'

This was a much more splendid affair than we ever see on earth. The
walls and the ceiling of the great ballroom were of thick but
transparent glass. Several hundreds of colossal mussel shells, rose red
and grass green, were ranged in order round the sides holding blue
lights, which illuminated the whole room and shone through the walls, so
that the sea outside was quite lit up. You could see countless fish,
great and small, swimming towards the glass walls, some with shining
scales of crimson hue, while others were golden and silvery. In the
middle of the room was a broad stream of running water, and on this the
mermaids and mermen danced to their own beautiful singing. No earthly
beings have such lovely voices. The little mermaid sang more sweetly
than any of them, and they all applauded her. For a moment she felt glad
at heart, for she knew that she had the finest voice either in the sea
or on land. But she soon began to think again about the upper world, she
could not forget the handsome prince and her sorrow in not possessing,
like him, an immortal soul. Therefore she stole out of her father's
palace, and while all within was joy and merriment, she sat sadly in her
little garden. Suddenly she heard the sound of a horn through the water,
and she thought, 'Now he is out sailing up there; he whom I love more
than father or mother, he to whom my thoughts cling and to whose hands I
am ready to commit the happiness of my life. I will dare anything to win
him and to gain an immortal soul! While my sisters are dancing in my
father's palace I will go to the sea-witch, of whom I have always been
very much afraid; she will perhaps be able to advise and help me!'

Thereupon the little mermaid left the garden and went towards the
roaring whirlpools at the back of which the witch lived. She had never
been that way before; no flowers grew there, no seaweed, only the bare
grey sands, stretched towards the whirlpools, which like rushing
mill-wheels swirled round, dragging everything that came within reach
down to the depths. She had to pass between these boiling eddies to
reach the witch's domain, and for a long way the only path led over warm
bubbling mud, which the witch called