THE OLD PINE TREES; WHAT THEY SAW AND HEARD. NO. 11.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume IX, Issue 43, 22 October 1892, Page 1061

THE OLD PINE TREES; WHAT THEY SAW AND HEARD. NO. 11.

(BY JEAN.) Another story the moas told Te Au and Konini, was about two little golden haired children, who were being sent by their parents to another country out of the way of a plague. The Queen of the mermaids had no children, so she set her heart upon having these two, and when the ship was well out at sea, she made her slaves, the sword-fish, bore holes right through the ship’s side, till she filled with water and sank. Of course a good many of the people were saved in boats, but the two pretty little children were forgotten in their cabins, and sank with the ship. Fancy what a fuss the mermaids made over them, and especially the Queen ! The mermaids combed their hair every morning and every night with whale’s fringe, and rubbed their growing tails with gold-dust to make them shine, and carefully watched the growth of each scale, and fed them on the daintiest food procurable in the sea, and did everything they could to make them happy in their new element. But the two little girls never forgot their mother, or father, or the sun, and the flowers and all the trees, and they used to put their two pretty little heads together, when the mermaids were attending to the aflairsof the State, and talk about how they should escape, and get back to the world again. ‘ Whatever will mother say to our tails?’ asked Dorothy. * I don’t know, I’se sure,’ sighed Belle. ‘ Mine grow'd awful in the night. Won’t they want to cut ’em off? They eats fishes on the ground.’ ‘ They won’t eat us though. Oh ! Belle, mother’ll think we’re dead, drowned. Won’t she be glad to see us again ?’ * And wis tails, too,’ said Belle, looking at hers rather proudly, and admiring the pearly glitter of the scales. * Well, we’ll take our legs if we can find them, because the doctors can put them on again, but I'm afraid the Queen ordered them to be thrown away, so as we should never be able to walk again.’ Just then a big whale came along, and hearing the children talking, stopped and asked them what was the matter. * Oh,’ said the whale, when they told him, * I know the way well enough. Jump on my back and hold on tight and I’ll have you there in no time.’ It was easy enough to get on the whale’s back, but it was not so easy to stick on. Whales are such oily creatures, and they slipped off so often that the whale became impatient, and worse than all, they could hear the mermaids singing as they returned from the volcano hole, which they had been stirring up. * They are coming, they are coming,' cried Dorothy, 1 Oh !

Mr Whale, do please make a start and take us back to earth again.' The whale lashed the sea with his tail and sped upwards, but, alas ! the mermaids had seen their two little pets sitting on his back, and they started in pursuit. And so they sped along, the whale first, and the mermaids following in his wake. Such a commotion was made in the sea that many ships were wrecked, and many more people went to join the mermaids at the bottom of the sea, and those who escaped heard wild cries all over the face of the ocean. People on the land, too, could not sleep for the wailing cries they heard, and Dorothy and Belle's father and mother, thinking they could hear their children cry, arose and went down to the beach. There they saw wreckage floating about, and what looked like a hunch-back whale out in the offing, followed by all the shipwrecked people floating in the water and crying for help. They wondered and they listened, and presently they saw the good whale toss his tail up high in the air, and then something strange fell at their very feet—their own two little darlings, Dorothy and Belle. Just think what the parents’ joy was when they found their own two little ones again, and they knelt on the beach embracing them, though the mermaids all around were crying out for them to be restored to them again. And after a time the poor parents had to let them go, for after being mermaids with a tail, they could not live on earth again. So after making the mermaids promise that once a year they would bring Dorothy and Belle to see their parents, they placed the two little ones in the water, and oh ! what a fuss the mermaids did make over them to be sure ! It was a great trouble to the parents to part with their children, but as long as they lived they went to meet them once a year on the beach, and carry them beautiful things from their home down at the bottom of the sea.