For a few minutes Mary Louise felt quite lonely.Presently she asked the Polar Bear to be kind enough to land her on the nearest shore.
At once the big kind animal trimmed in his sail and before long they entered a beautiful bay whose dark waters were dotted with the white sails of the fisher boats, and directly in front, climbing up to the sky, a high mountain on which stood a castle, where from a tall tower all night long shone a light that could hardly be told from the stars around it.
Mary Louise jumped from the boat to the beach, and then turned to wave good-by to the Polar Bear as he sailed away to the North Pole.
Nearby sat an old fisherman on a bench mending his net.
"Hello, little girl," he said, as Mary Louise hesitated. "Moor your little hulk 'longside o' me an' I'll spin you a yarn!"Then he began to tell how, many hundred years ago, all the land around about was covered with a thick forest instead of the deep blue water of the bay.
Then came the great giant Cormoran, who was 18 feet high and 3 yards wide, and his wife Cormelian, who was just as big, and they brought from the hills great gray rocks which they piled up, one on the other, hundreds of feet high, until they had made a mountain. And on the top of this they built their castle, where they lived until the giant's wife died and was buried under the Chapel rock.
Then Jack the Giant Killer climbed up the mountain, and after a hard fight Cormoran was killed, and there were no more giants in the land.
Next came the Small People, who cut down most of the forest, and built cottages for themselves, ploughed the fields and made gardens.
But one day a great enchanter came that way, and his strange dress and long gray beard frightened the women and children, and they shut their doors in his face whenever he asked for a drink, for he had walked far and was tired and thirsty.
At last he found the principal man of the Small People, a little oldcrusty fellow and very miserly. And when the great enchanter asked him for a drink of water, the Small Man told him he didn't keep a hotel for beggars. And this made the great enchanter so angry that he struck the ground with his staff, so that it made a deep hole, and then he went upon his journey.
Soon a little spring of water bubbled up through the hole, and by and by a stream burst forth that swelled to a river, and after a time the whole land was drowned, and only the high mountain remained above the water.
But the Small People who were buried under the water didn't die. They lived on just the same, waiting for the enchanter to return and lift the spell, and the land to rise, again with all the people on it.
When the old fisherman had finished his story, he said, "I will take you in my boat to see the Small People deep down in the water.
"Yes, come with me in my boat and you shall see the Wonderland under the Sea."As soon as the old fisherman had hoisted the sail, away they went out to sea over a wide path of moonlight like a silver road leading straight out to the sky where it dipped down to the water.
All of a sudden Mary Louise noticed something come close up under the side of the boat, and remain there staring straight at her. She bent over until she nearly touched the water, when what she had taken for a fish appeared to be a very odd-looking little man. He was even shorter than she, very broad about the shoulders, with funny little arms and feet that were brought together at the heels, with the toes turned straight out when he stood up, making them look like a fish's tail. His eyes were big and round, without any eyelids or eyebrows. But his mouth was the funniest part, and when he opened it, he looked like a fish trying to talk. He was dressed in silvery white, shaded to blue and green.
