The Stories Mother Nature Told Her Children, Jane Andrews [jenna bush book club .txt] 📗

there, it would have taken him till this day, I verily believe; but he no more thought of walking, than you or I should think of walking to China. You shall see how he travelled. A great train was coming, down from the Northern seas; not a railroad train, but a water train, sweeping on like a river in the sea. Its track lay along near the bottom of the ocean; and above you could see no sign of it, any more than you can see the cars while they go through the tunnel under the street. The principal passengers by this train were icebergs, who were in the habit of coming down on it every year, in order to reduce their weight by a little exercise; for they grow so very large and heavy up there in the North every winter, that some sort of treatment is really necessary to them when summer comes. I only call the icebergs the principal passengers, because they take up so much room; for thousands and millions of other travellers come with them,—from the white bears asleep on the bergs, and brought away quite against their will, to the tiniest little creatures rocking in the cradles of the ripples, or clinging to the delicate branches of the sea-mosses. I said you could see no sign of the great water train from above: that was not quite true, for many of the icebergs are tall enough to lift their heads far up into the air, and shine with a cold, glittering splendor in the sunlight; and you can tell, by the course in which they sail, which way the train is going deep down in the sea.

The star-fish took passage on this train. He didn’t start at the beginning of the road, but got in at one of the way-stations somewhere off Cape Cod, fell in with some friends going South, and had altogether a pleasant trip of it. No wearisome stopping-places to feed either engine or passengers; for this train moves by a power that needs no feeding on the way, and the passengers are much in the habit of eating their fellow-travellers by way of frequent luncheons.

In the course of a few weeks, our five-fingered traveller is safely dropped in the Caribbean Sea; and, if you do not know where that sea is, I wish you would take your map of North America and find it, and then you can see the course of the journey, and understand the story better. This Caribbean Sea is as full of mountains as New Hampshire and Vermont are; but none of them have caps of snow like that which Mount Washington sometimes wears, and some of them are built up in a very odd way, as you will presently see.

Now the star-fish is floating in the warm, soft water among the mountains, turning up first one eye and then another to see the wonders about him, or looking all around, before and behind and both sides at once,—as you can’t do, if you try ever so hard,—while his fifth eye is on the lookout for sharks, besides; and he meets with a soft little body, much smaller than himself, and not half so handsomely dressed, who invites him to visit her relatives, who live by millions in this mountain region. “And come quickly, if you please,” she says, “for I begin to feel as if I must fix myself somewhere; and I should like, if possible, to settle down near my brothers and sisters on the Roncador Bank.”

 

CHAPTER II. CORALTOWN ON RONCADOR BANK.

 

Where is Roncador Bank, and who are the little settlers there? If you want me to answer this question, you must go back with me, or rather think back with me, over many thousands of years; and, looking into this same Caribbean Sea, we shall find in its south-western part a little hill formed of mud and sand, and reaching not nearly so high as the top of the water. Not far from it float some little, soft, jelly-like bodies, exactly resembling the one who spoke to the star-fish just now. They are emigrants looking for a new home. They seem to take a fancy to this hill, and fix themselves on bits of rock along its base, until, as more and more of them come, they form a circle around it, and the hill stands up in the middle, while far above the whole blue waves are tossing in the sunlight.

[Illustration: (Conical mound of coral under surface of water.)]

How do you like this little circular town seen in the picture? It is the beginning of Coraltown, just as the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth was the beginning of Massachusetts. Now we will see how it grows. First of all, notice this curious fact, that each settler, after once choosing a home, never after stirs from that spot; but, from day to day, fastens himself more and more firmly to the rock where he first stuck. The part of his body touching the rock hardens into stone, and as the months and years go by, the sides of his body, too, turn to stone; and yet he is still alive, eating all the time with a little mouth at his top, taking in the seawater without a strainer, and getting consequently tiny bits of lime in it, which, once taken in, go to build up the little body into a sort of limestone castle; just as if one of the knights in armor, of whom we read in old stories, had, instead of putting on his steel corselet and helmet and breastplate, turned his own flesh and bones into armor. How safe he would be! So these inhabitants of Coraltown were safe from all the fishes and other fierce devourers of little sea creatures (for who wants to swallow a mail-clad warrior, however small?); and their settlement was undisturbed, and grew from year to year, until it formed a pretty high wall.

[Illustration: (Individual coral polyp.)]

But, before going any farther, you may like to know that these settlers were all of the polyp family: fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts,—all were polyps. And this is the way their families increased: after the first comers were fairly settled, and pretty thoroughly turned to stone, little buds, looking somewhat like the smallest leaf-buds of the spring-time, began to grow out of their edges. These were their children, at least one kind of their children; for they had yet another kind also, coming from eggs, and floating off in the water like the first settlers. These latter we might call the free children or wanderers, while the former could be named the fixed children. But even the wanderers come back after a short time, and settle beside their parents, as you remember the one who met the star-fish was about to do.

It was not very easy for you or me to think back so many thousand years to the very beginning of Coraltown, nor is it less difficult to realize how many, many years were passing while the little town grew, even as far as I have told you.

The old great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers had died, but they left their stone bodies still standing, as a support and assistance to their descendants who had built above them; and the walls had risen, not like walls of common stone or brick, but all alive and busy building themselves, day after day, and year after year, until now, at the time of the star-fish’s visit, the topmost towers could sometimes catch a gleam of sunlight when the tide was low; and when storms rolled the great waves that way, they would dash against the little castles, breaking themselves into snowy spray, and crumbling away at the same time the tiny walls that had been the polyps’ work of years. Do you think that was too bad, and quite discouraging to the workers. It does seem so; but you will see how the good God, who is their loving Father just the same as he is ours, had a grand purpose in letting the waves break down their houses, just as he always does in all the disappointments he sends to us. Wait till you finish the story, and tell me if you don’t think so.

And now let us see what the star-fish thought of the little town and its inhabitants. “Ah, these are your houses!” he said. “Why don’t you come out of them, and travel about to see the world?”—“These are not our houses, but ourselves,” answered the polyps; “we can’t come out, and we don’t want to. We are here to build, and building is all we care to do; as for seeing the world, that is all very well for those who have eyes, but we have none.”

Then the star-fish turned away in contempt from such creatures,—“people of neither taste nor ability, no eyes, no feet, no water-strainers; poor little useless things, what good are they in the world, with their stupid, blind building of which they think so much?” And he worked himself off into a branch water-train that was setting that way, and, without so much as bidding the polyps good-by, turned his back upon Coraltown, and presently found a fellow-passenger fine enough to absorb all his attention,—a passenger, I say, but we shall find it rather a group of passengers in their own pretty boat; some curled in spiral coils, some trailing like little swimmers behind, some snugly ensconced inside, but all of such brilliant colors and gay bearing that even the star-fish felt his inferiority; and, wishing to make friends with so fine a neighbor, he whirled a tempting morsel of food towards one of the swimming party, and politely offered it to him. “No, I thank you,” replied the swimmer, “I don’t eat; my sister does the eating, I only swim.” Turning to another of the gay company with the same offer, he was answered, “Thank you, the eaters are at the other side; I only lay eggs.” “What strange people!” thought the star-fish; but, with all his learning, he didn’t know every thing, and had never heard how people sometimes live in communities, and divide the work as suits their fancy.

While we leave him wondering, let us go back to Coraltown. The crumbling bits, beaten off by the waves, floated about, filling all the chinks of the wall, while the rough edges at the top caught long ribbons of seaweed, and sometimes drifting wood from wrecked vessels, and then the sea washed up sand in great heaps against the walls, building buttresses for them. Do you know what buttresses are? If you don’t, I will leave you to find out. And the polyps, who do not know how to live in the light and air, had all died; or those who were wanderers had emigrated to some new place. Poor little things, their useless lives had ended, and what good had they done in the world?

 

CHAPTER III. LITTLE SUNSHINE.

 

And now let us look at Coraltown once more. It is the first day of June of 1865. The sun is low in the West, and lights up the crests of the long lines of breakers that are everywhere curling and dashing among the topmost turrets of the coral walls. But here is something new and strange indeed for this region; along one of the ledges of rock, fitted as it were into a cradle, lies the great steamship “Golden Rule,” a vessel full two hundred and fifty feet long, and holding six or seven hundred people. Her masts are gone, and so are the tall chimneys from which the smoke of her engine used to rise like a cloud. The rocks have torn a great hole through her strong planks, and the water is washing in; while the