Broken Hearts Damaged Goods (18 page)

After a while, the sails were quickly unfurled, and
the noble ship continued her passage; but soon the waves rose higher, heavy
clouds darkened the sky, and lightning appeared in the distance. A dreadful
storm was approaching; once more the sails were reefed, and the great ship
pursued her flying course over the raging sea. The waves rose mountains high,
as if they would have overtopped the mast; but the ship dived like a swan between
them, and then rose again on their lofty, foaming crests. To the little mermaid
this appeared pleasant sport; not so to the sailors.

At length the ship groaned and creaked; the thick
planks gave way under the lashing of the sea as it broke over the deck; the mainmast
snapped asunder like a reed; the ship lay over on her side; and the water
rushed in. The little mermaid now perceived that the crew was in danger; even
she herself was obliged to be careful to avoid the beams and planks of the wreck
which lay scattered on the water. At one moment it was so pitch dark that she
could not see a single object, but a flash of lightning revealed the whole
scene; she could see everyone who had been on board excepting the prince; when
the ship parted, she had seen him sink into the deep waves, and she was glad,
for she thought he would now be with her; and then she remembered that human
beings could not live in the water, so that when he got down to her father's
palace he would be quite dead.

But he must not die. So she swam about among the
beams and planks which strewed the surface of the sea, forgetting that they
could crush her to pieces. Then she dived deeply under the dark waters, rising
and falling with the waves, till at length she managed to reach the young
prince, who was fast losing the power of swimming in that stormy sea. His limbs
were failing him, his beautiful eyes were closed, and he would have died had
not the little mermaid come to his assistance. She held his head above the
water, and let the waves drift them where they would.

In the morning the storm had ceased; but of the ship
not a single fragment could be seen. The sun rose up red and glowing from the
water, and its beams brought back the hue of health to the prince's cheeks; but
his eyes remained closed. The mermaid kissed his high, smooth forehead, and
stroked back his wet hair; he seemed to her like the marble statue in her
little garden, and she kissed him again, and wished that he might live.

Presently they came in sight of land; she saw lofty
blue mountains, on which the white snow rested as if a flock of swans were
lying upon them. Near the coast were beautiful green forests, and close by
stood a large building, whether a church or a convent she could not tell.
Orange and citron trees grew in the garden, and before the door stood lofty
palms.

The sea here formed a little bay, in which the water
was quite still, but very deep; so she swam with the handsome prince to the
beach, which was covered with fine, white sand, and there she laid him in the warm
sunshine, taking care to raise his head higher than his body.

Then bells sounded in the large white building, and
a number of young girls came into the garden. The little mermaid swam out farther
from the shore and placed herself between some high rocks that rose out of the
water; then she covered her head and neck with the foam of the sea so that her
little face might not be seen, and watched to see what would become of the poor
prince.

She did not wait long before she saw a young girl
approach the spot where he lay. She seemed frightened at first, but only for a
moment; then she fetched a number of people, and the mermaid saw that the
prince came to life again, and smiled upon those who stood round him. But to
her he sent no smile; he knew not that she had saved him. This made her very unhappy,
and when he was led away into the great building, she dived down sorrowfully
into the water, and returned to her father's castle.

She had always been silent and thoughtful, and now
she was more so than ever. Her sisters asked her what she had seen during her
first visit to the surface of the water; but she would tell them nothing. Many
an evening and morning she would rise to the place where she had left the
prince. She saw the fruits in the garden ripen till they were gathered, the
snow on the tops of the mountains melt away; but she never saw the prince, and
therefore she returned home, always more sorrowful than before.

It was her only comfort to sit in her own little
garden, and fling her arm round the beautiful marble statue which was like the
prince; but she gave up tending her flowers, and they grew in wild confusion
over the paths, twining their long leaves and stems round the branches of the
trees, so that the whole place became dark and gloomy.

At length she could bear it no longer, and told one
of her sisters all about it. Then the others heard the secret, and very soon it
became known to two mermaids whose intimate friend happened to know who the
prince was. She had also seen the festival on board ship, and she told them
where the prince came from, and where his palace stood.

"Come, little sister," said the other
princesses; then they entwined their arms and rose up in a long row to the
surface of the water, close by the spot where they knew the prince's palace
stood.

It was built of bright yellow shining stone, with
long flights of marble steps, one of which reached quite down to the sea.
Splendid gilded cupolas rose over the roof, and between the pillars that surrounded
the whole building stood life-like statues of marble.

Through the clear crystal of the lofty windows could
be seen noble rooms, with costly silk curtains and hangings of tapestry; while
the walls were covered with beautiful paintings which were a pleasure to look
at. In the centre of the largest saloon a fountain threw its sparkling jets
high up into the glass cupola of the ceiling, through which the sun shone down
upon the water and upon the beautiful plants growing round the basin of the
fountain.

Now that she knew where he lived, she spent many an
evening and many a night on the water near the palace. She would swim much
nearer the shore than any of the others ventured to do; indeed once she went
quite up the narrow channel under the marble balcony, which threw a broad
shadow on the water.

Here she would sit and watch the young prince, who
thought himself quite alone in the bright moonlight. She saw him many times of an
evening sailing in a pleasant boat, with music playing and flags waving. She
peeped out from among the green rushes, and if the wind caught her long
silvery-white veil, those who saw it believed it to be a swan, spreading out
its wings. On many a night, too, when the fishermen, with their torches, were
out at sea, she heard them relate so many good things about the doings of the
young prince, that she was glad she had saved his life when he had been tossed
about half-dead on the waves.

And she remembered that his head had rested on her
bosom, and how heartily she had kissed him; but he knew nothing of all this,
and could not even dream of her. She grew more and more fond of human beings,
and wished more and more to be able to wander about with those whose world
seemed to be so much larger than her own.

They could fly over the sea in ships, and mount the
high hills which were far above the clouds; and the lands they possessed, their
woods and their fields, stretched far away beyond the reach of her sight.

There was so much that she wished to know, and her
sisters were unable to answer all her questions. Then she applied to her old grandmother,
who knew all about the upper world, which she very rightly called the lands
above the sea.

"If human beings are not drowned," asked
the little mermaid, "can they live forever? Do they never die as we do here
in the sea?"

"Yes," replied the old lady, "they
must also die, and their term of life is even shorter than ours. We sometimes
live to three hundred years, but when we cease to exist here we only become the
foam on the surface of the water, and we have not even a grave down here of those
we love. We have not immortal souls, we shall never live again; but, like the
green sea-weed, when once it has been cut off, we can never flourish more.
Human beings, on the contrary, have a soul which lives forever, lives after the
body has been turned to dust.  It rises up through the clear, pure air beyond
the glittering stars.  As we rise out of the water, and behold all the land of
the earth, so do they rise to unknown and glorious regions which we shall never
see."

"Why have not we an immortal soul?" asked
the little mermaid mournfully; "I would give gladly all the hundreds of
years that I have to live, to be a human being only for one day, and to have
the hope of knowing the happiness of that glorious world above the stars."

"You must not think of that," said the old
woman; "we feel ourselves to be much happier and much better off than
human beings."

"So I shall die," said the little mermaid,
"and as the foam of the sea I shall be driven about never again to hear
the music of the waves, or to see the pretty flowers nor the red sun. Is there
anything I can do to win an immortal soul?"

"No," said the old woman, "unless a
man were to love you so much that you were more to him than his father or
mother; and if all his thoughts and all his love were fixed upon you, and the
priest placed his right hand in yours, and he promised to be true to you here
and hereafter, then his soul would glide into your body and you would obtain a
share in the future happiness of mankind. He would give a soul to you and
retain his own as well; but this can never happen. Your fish's tail, which
amongst us is considered so beautiful, is thought on earth to be quite ugly;
they do not know any better, and they think it necessary to have two stout
props, which they call legs, in order to be beautiful."

Then the little mermaid sighed, and looked
sorrowfully at her fish's tail. "Let us be happy," said the old lady,
"and dart and spring about during the three hundred years that we have to
live, which is really quite long enough; after that we can rest ourselves all
the better. This evening we are going to have a court ball."

It is one of those splendid sights which we can
never see on earth. The walls and the ceiling of the large ball-room were of
thick, but transparent crystal. Many hundreds of colossal shells, some of a deep
red, others of a grass green, stood on each side in rows, with blue fire in
them, which lighted up the whole saloon, and shone through the walls, so that
the sea was also illuminated. Innumerable fishes, great and small, swam past
the crystal walls; on some of them the scales glowed with a purple brilliancy,
and on others they shone like silver and gold. Through the halls flowed a broad
stream, and in it danced the mermen and the mermaids to the music of their own sweet
singing.

No one on earth has such a lovely voice as theirs. 
The little mermaid sang more sweetly than them all. The whole court applauded
her with hands and tails; and for a moment her heart felt quite gay, for she
knew she had the loveliest voice of any on earth or in the sea. But she soon
thought again of the world above her, for she could not forget the charming
prince, nor her sorrow that she had not an immortal soul like his; therefore
she crept away silently out of her father's palace, and while everything within
was gladness and song, she sat in her own little garden sorrowful and alone.

Then she heard the bugle sounding through the water,
and thought—"He is certainly sailing above, he on whom my wishes depend,
and in whose hands I should like to place the happiness of my life. I will venture
all for him, and to win 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 so much
afraid, but she can give me counsel and help.”

And then the little mermaid went out from her
garden, and took the road to the foaming whirlpools, behind which the sorceress
lived.  She had never been that way before: neither flowers nor grass grew there;
nothing but bare, gray, sandy ground stretched out to the whirlpool, where the
water, like foaming mill-wheels, whirled round everything that it seized, and
cast it into the fathomless deep.

Through the midst of these crushing whirlpools the
little mermaid was obliged to pass, to reach the dominions of the sea witch;
and also for a long distance the only road lay right across a quantity of warm,
bubbling mire, called by the witch her turf moor. Beyond this stood her house,
in the centre of a strange forest, in which all the trees and flowers were
polypi, half animals and half plants; they looked like serpents with a hundred
heads growing out of the ground.

The branches were long slimy arms, with fingers like
flexible worms, moving limb after limb from the root to the top. All that could
be reached in the sea they seized upon, and held fast, so that it never escaped
from their clutches.

The little mermaid was so alarmed at what she saw,
that she stood still, and her heart beat with fear, and she was very nearly
turning back; but she thought of the prince, and of the human soul for which
she longed, and her courage returned. She fastened her long flowing hair round
her head, so that the polypi might not seize hold of it.

She laid her hands together across her bosom, and then
she darted forward as a fish shoots through the water, between the supple arms
and fingers of the ugly polypi, which were stretched out on each side of her.
She saw that each held in its grasp something it had seized with its numerous
little arms, as if they were iron bands. The white skeletons of human beings
who had perished at sea, and had sunk down into the deep waters, skeletons of
land animals, oars, rudders, and chests of ships were lying tightly grasped by
their clinging arms; even a little mermaid, whom they had caught and strangled;
and this seemed the most shocking of all to the little princess.