Moby Dick went on his way, “emerging strong against the tide.” A Nantucket ship saw him as he blew, and her boats put out after him.

“Just get off a minute, my dear,” said he to the little mermaid whom he carried. She did so, and then, instead of swimming away from the boats, he put down his enormous head and went straight at them.

“The white whale!” cried the sailors; and they did not throw the harpoon, but went meekly back to the ship. They were bold enough, but they were afraid of the white whale, for Moby Dick had sunk two or three ships in his time and entirely reversed the whalers’ programme.
104

Moby Dick executed a huge frisk on the surface of the sea, flapped his tail on the water with a noise like thunder, and then dived down to rejoin the mermaid.

“All right, my dear,” he said, cheerfully.

“I’m so glad you are safe,” said the mermaid, patting him with her little hands.

On they went through the water, and the coast was soon in sight. It was growing dusk, and the lighthouse showed its red star over the sea. The mermaid was silent, and Moby Dick did not trouble her to talk.

Suddenly a beautiful woman appeared to them on the crest of a long rolling billow. She made no effort; she did not swim, but moved through the water by her will alone. She seemed a part of the sea, like a wave come alive.

“That is not a human being, surely,” said the mermaid, startled.

“It’s very like that—you know—that wooden thing—that he ran after,” said Moby Dick in a gigantic whisper, “only it’s alive.”

“She don’t seem as though she could ever have been wood,” said the mermaid. “She looks kind. I don’t feel as though she were that—that person. Please ask if she has seen our friend.”
105

“Yes; my dear child,” said Panope—for she it was—answering the mermaid’s thought, “I have seen him;” and the immortal sighed.

“His family are very anxious about him, my lady,” said the whale, who was conscious of an awe he had never known before, though he felt he could trust the Sea-Nymph.

“They need be anxious no more,” said Panope, gently and sadly.

“What has happened?” asked the mermaid, turning pale, but keeping herself very quiet.

Panope went to her, and the immortal daughter of the sea put her white arms round the mermaid and held her in a close and soft embrace.

“My dear,” she said, very gently, “your old playmate is dead.”

“‘My dear,’ she said, very gently, ‘your old playmate is dead.’”

“You don’t say so, ma’am!” said Moby Dick, with a great sigh; and then he swam away to a little distance and left the mermaid to the care of the Sea-Nymph, for he was a whale of very delicate feelings.
106

The mermaid looked into the blue eyes of the Goddess, and felt that the countless ages of her being had but made her more wise and kind. She hid her face on the immortal maiden’s bosom.

“My sweet child,” said Panope, after a little while, “I cannot bring your friend to life—it is beyond my power—but if you will, I can give you an immortality like my own. I can carry you with me to a world where death or pain has never come, and keep you young and lovely for ever.”

The mermaid was silent a moment. Then she looked up into Panope’s face.

“You will not be angry with me?” said she.

“Angry, my poor darling!”

“Then, my friends that I have loved have all been mortal. My mother is dead, my twin brother was killed in the war, and now my old companion—and I have known him so long! I think I should rather not be so very different, but go to them when my time comes.”

Panope caressed her hair with a soft hand.
107

“I don’t know but you are right. Sometimes,” said the Goddess, with a sad, tired look in her eyes, “I think I would be glad to be mortal myself, except that I am glad to be a little comfort to you. I am sorry I came back. Either the world has grown a sad place, or else I had forgotten what it used to be. But I don’t know; I almost broke my heart over Prometheus when I was quite a young thing. I could have helped him take care of his beloved human race a great deal better than Asia, but he never cared anything for me. It is all over long ago. Is there nothing that I can do for you, my dear?”

The mermaid was silent a minute. Then she said:

“I think I should like to take him home to his friends. I know they would wish it should be so.”

“It shall be,” said Panope. “Wait here, and I will bring him to you. But, my dear child, you are so quiet. All the mortal women I ever knew in the old days, in the sea or out, would have torn their hair and screamed, but you are so different.”

The mermaid looked up with a little ghost of a smile, half proud, half pitiful. “I suppose it is because I was born in American waters,” she said.
108

“Wait but a little,” said Panope. “The whale will take care of you. He is a good creature. His great-grandfathers were pets of mine long ago. I will soon come back again;” and the Nymph was gone.

Some time after the news had come to Salem of the total loss of the brig Sea-nymph, Lucy Peabody was walking alone along the sands. She felt weary, and sat down under the shadow of a rock to rest. The sun was just setting, the west was suffused with a golden glow, the water lay, hardly rippling to a low whispering wind, a sea of fire and glass. Lucy leaned her head against the rock, and sitting there, she dreamed a dream. Along the sands toward her came old Goody Cobb, whom everybody suspected of witchcraft. She appeared so suddenly that Lucy in her dream thought she had come out of the sea.

“Ho! ho!” said Goody Cobb, with a cracked laugh; “so here is Madam Peabody’s lady daughter come out to cry over her disappointment all by herself? The man was a fool, sure enough, but I wouldn’t mind. Just let me write your name down in a little book I keep, and you shall see our fine young madam dwine away like snow in spring-time, and then we shall see—”
109

“You are out of your mind, Goody,” said Lucy in her dream; “but such talk as that is not safe, for there are those in town who are silly enough to believe witch stories, and you might get yourself into trouble.”

“Silly, are they!” cried Goody Cobb, growing angry. “But never mind. Just let me have your name, and we shall see what we shall see. Look at the pretty necklace I will give you;” and she drew from her pocket a chain of shining green stones and held it up before the girl’s eyes.

“I will have nothing to say to you or your gifts,” said Lucy, steadily. “Pass on your way, Goody, and leave me alone.”

“So you think yourself too good for me!” said the witch in a rage. “Let me tell you that my family is as good as yours, and better. My grandfather was a minister—ay, and a noted one—while yours was selling clams round the streets.”

It was a very odd thing that while Goody Cobb had become a witch, renounced her baptism and sold herself to the enemy of mankind, she was yet very proud of the eminent divine, her grandfather.
110

“I’ll be the death of you! I’ll stick pins in you, and set my imps to pinch you black and blue!” screamed Goody Cobb, with the look of a possessed woman, as she was.

Suddenly, as Lucy dreamed—so suddenly that she seemed to grow out of the air—there stood on the sand between herself and the witch a tall and beautiful woman in shining raiment of green and silver, with golden hai............