a bride; they glowed with depths of red and flame that might almost burn
to the touch.

The little boy stood with clasped hands, and sobbed with excitement.
"Did you dig up all the sea?" he asked, in a wonder that was not without
reproach. "Are there none left any more, at all?"

The Skipper laughed quietly. "The mermaids see not any difference, sir,"
he said. "Where I take one shell from its rock, I leave a hundred, a
thousand. The sea is a good mother, she has plenty children. See!" he
added, lifting a splendid horned shell, "this is the Royal Triton. On a
rock I found him, twenty fathom down. It was a family party, I think,
for all around they lay, some clinging to the rock, some in the mud,
some walking about. I take one, two, three, put them in my pouch; up I
go, and the others, they have a little more room, that's all."

John's eyes glowed in his head.

"I--I should like to see that!" he cried. "What is it like down there?
Do sharks come by,--swish! with their great tails? And why don't they
eat you, like the man in the geography book? And is there really a
sea-serpent? And do the oysters open and shut their mouths, so that you
can see the pearls, or how do you know which are the right ones?

"There are a great many things that I have thought about all my life,"
he said, "and nobody could ever tell me. The bottom of the sea, that is
what I want most in the world to know about."

He paused, out of breath, and would have been abashed at his own
boldness, had not the Skipper's eyes told him so perfectly that they had