Let Sleeping Sea-Monsters Lie and Other Cautionary Tales Read online

  The spaniel whimpered with terror.

  “Come away,” barked the mongrel. “For heaven’s sake, Winsome, come away before it is too late!”

  Winsome Wilhelmina took not the slightest notice. Snuffling her way further along the rock she found a saucer of fresh milk.

  “No!” yelped the basset hound. “Not the Frid’s milk! No, no, no!”

  Winsome didn’t even bother to turn round. Out came her greedy little tongue again and lap, lap, lap she went until every single drop of milk was gone.

  And then – you will find this almost impossible to believe – she went and made a puddle beside the Rock of the Frid itself!

  With a howl of terror, the other dogs fled. A frightful silence fell. The sky darkened; the earth trembled. And on the face of the Frid rock there appeared something so awful that no one could give it a name. An eye – yet like no eye that has ever been seen. With a crack the rock split to form a mouth, a bottomless hole, a something that gaped and beckoned.

  “SCROOMPH!” said the Frid. “SQWILLOP!”

  And as it spoke these dreadful words, Winsome was lifted up bodily and sucked, slowly, into the hole.

  The hole closed. The eye vanished, and Winsome Wilhemina had gone.

  It was a long while before the whimpering dogs dared to crawl back again. But bravely they came and patiently they waited. They waited and they waited and then the awful eye appeared once again and the hole gaped open.

  “GERTCH!” said the Frid. “PFOO! BWERK!”

  And out on to the ground it spat – a thing.

  Only what could it be? It was the size of a very small rat. It was quite raw and pink and totally naked. And as it lay there, like something on a butcher’s slab, it seemed more dead than alive.

  The Frid had closed up again. Slowly the dogs crawled forward and the spaniel began to lick the pitiful thing with her loving tongue.

  “Good heavens!” said the sheepdog, when he could trust himself to speak again. “Look – it’s her! It’s Winsome! She’s still wearing her collar.”

  It was true. On the scalped, raw little rat of an animal, the collar of diamonds still twinkled.

  And in that moment, the wise old sheepdog recalled what his great-grandmother had told him years and years before.

  “I remember now,” he said, “what a Frid is. A Frid is a thing that turns dogs hairless.”

  And the other dogs nodded, for it was coming back to them, too, that if there is a something that turns dogs hairless then that something is a Frid.

  So they dragged the poor, silly, hairless little creature down to the village, and since her rich mistress wanted nothing to do with her now she was so ugly, the dogs themselves licked and loved her back to health. Winsome Wilhelmina became quite a nice dog but her hair never grew again, not so much as a single eyelash or a whisker. Nor could she ever speak about what had happened when she was inside the Frid. “Let sleeping Frids lie, my dears,” was all she would say when visiting dogs came and asked her questions. That’s all we dogs can do: just let them lie.”

  And I am happy to say they did.

  Let Sleeping Sea-Monsters Lie

  Of all the monsters in the world there is none so fierce or so terrible as the Kraken. A Kraken is the size of an island; it can eat large ships at a single gulp and when it lashes its tail, whole cities on the shore will be flooded. If you just say the name “Kraken” to the bravest sailor with the biggest muscles and the largest anchor tattooed on his chest he will probably faint from fright.

  The Kraken I am going to tell you about was, for many years, as terrible as any. He would eat a galleon for breakfast, a man-of-war for lunch, a pirate ship for supper, and still sometimes gulp down a rowing boat for tea. But one day he didn’t want to go on like this any more. The oars and the sails that he swallowed were beginning to scratch the inside of his stomach and the screams of the sailors as he sucked them into his mouth gave him earache and made him feel depressed. So he gorged himself on seaweed three times a day instead, which kept him perfectly healthy.

  At the same time he decided to settle down because it is difficult to make friends if you are always roaring about and flooding things and swallowing them.

  The place he chose to settle down was a peaceful, sunny bay with clear, deep water. The Kraken kept his neck and his huge, whiskery head with its big eyes, long eyelashes and intelligent forehead well down in the water and he kept his tail, which was scaly and interesting, in the water also, but he left his round, smooth back sticking out above the surface of the waves.

  Soon he began to make friends. His head made friends with a mermaid who lived in a grotto not far from his chin. She was no longer young and the songs she sang were rude because she had learned them from some sailors in a pub. This had happened when she came out on land for a while and married an innkeeper who had forced her to work as a barmaid. But standing on her tail all day made her tired and when her husband said she smelled fishy she had left him and returned to the water. She was a motherly mermaid and very fond of the Kraken and he of her. The Kraken also liked a rather dotty sea-witch who roared about muttering spells which began with words like “Sweery, sweery linkum-loo” and usually ended with someone being turned into a sea cucumber. And he liked the sea horses and the peacefully squelching squids.

  The Kraken’s tail, which was about half a mile away from its head, didn’t exactly make friends but the sea creatures made friends with it. Giant eels curled themselves round it and all those magic people that you find under the water – people whose front ends are horses and back ends are people, or whose back ends are fish and front ends are seals – used it to swing on and have fun.

  With so many friends to talk to and enough seaweed to eat, the Kraken was very happy. But because its head was so busy at one end and its tail was so useful at the other, the Kraken forgot about its back, which was sticking hugely and humpily out of the water. And of course you will guess what happened next.

  After about fifty years, grass seeds began to sprout on the Kraken’s back and a meadow grew up, and among the grass the prettiest flowers – sea pinks and kingcups and forget-me-nots. Then a little larch tree managed to grow and another and another . . . and in the trees birds began to nest and to sing and to lay little speckled eggs.

  In short, the Kraken became the most beautiful and peaceful island you can imagine!

  Naturally it was not long before people started rowing out from the village on the shore of the bay for picnics.

  The Kraken did not mind this. The people who came were sensible and well behaved and would not have dreamed of leaving paper or broken glass about, and all that the Kraken could feel as they walked about on him was a very gentle tickle which was not at all disagreeable.

  Then one day a large boat rowed out to the island and in it were five ordinary, nice little girls in clean pinafores with excited, shining eyes and five ordinary, sensible little boys in clean sailor suits with scrubbed and happy faces. These were the children of the village school on their Sunday Outing. Also in the boat were the children’s teacher, who was called Miss Pigg but was not at all like a pig but very kind, Miss Pigg’s mother, who was ninety-three, and two strong fishermen to do the rowing.

  And if these had been the only people in the boat everything would have been all right, but they were not. There was also a truly awful boy called Algernon.

  It is quite possible that there has never been a child as unpleasant as this boy. Algernon lied and cheated. He kicked and bullied. When Miss Pigg tried to teach him to read he yawned or dribbled or fell off his stool and when he saw a stray kitten or a puppy in the school yard he pelted it with stones. But Algernon, too, was at the village school so he could not be left out of The Outing.

  The boat landed. Miss Pigg’s old mother was placed on a tussock with her parasol open against the sun. Miss Pigg began to butter the sandwiches. And the five sensible little boys and the five well-behaved little girls ran about, so happy they thought they would burst.
They took off their shoes and they paddled. They made daisy chains. They crawled through the grass pretending to be Ferocious Animals.

  But not Algernon. Algernon was bored. He kicked the stones about and hit one of the little boys on the forehead. He pulled down a thrush’s nest and trampled on the eggs. He found a little girl with her apron full of cowrie shells and threw them on the ground.

  “I’m bored,” he moaned. “There’s nothing to do on this island.”

  But after lunch, when everyone was resting, he did find something to do. He thought of it because it was the one thing Miss Pigg had told the children not to do on the island.

  “You must not light a fire, children,” she had said, “because it is dangerous and will damage the plants and trees.”

  And the five little girls and the five little boys had listened and nodded their heads. But not Algernon.

  He gathered some sticks and he piled up some dry grass right in the middle and humpiest bit of the island. Then he crept to where one of the fishermen was sleeping and stole his matches. And then . . . he lit a fire!

  The fire started small. But soon it caught a gust of wind and it grew and it spread.

  At first the Kraken felt nothing at all. Then it felt rather a strong tickle . . . then an itch . . . and then a pain!

  “Ow!” said the Kraken, feeling very much upset.

  Well, you will see what happened next and it is no use at all blaming the Kraken. If someone lit a fire on you, what would you do?

  The Kraken sank.

  He sank very slowly, because he was a monster who did not do things in a hurry, but he sank. And on the island the children saw the water rise over the fringe of sand, on to the grass, and up and up into the button boots of Miss Pigg’s mother sitting underneath her parasol . . .

  “To the boats, children! Quick! Quick!” cried Miss Pigg.

  She gathered up the smallest of the little girls and the smallest of the little boys and, with the rest of the children following her, she ran to where the fishermen were waiting in the boat. Miss Pigg’s mother, who was too old to run, climbed into her upturned parasol and floated towards the boat where the fishermen hauled her to safety.

  But Algernon was still in the middle of the island, shouting and hooting round his fire.

  “Algernon!” shouted Miss Pigg, standing up in the boat and waving her arms. “Algernon, come quickly!”

  Too late! The island – and the boy – had gone!

  Down and down went awful Algernon, down into the icy water . . . down and down he sank until he was level with the Kraken’s gaping mouth.

  The Kraken had of course meant to swallow Algernon, but when he saw the soggy, pulpy boy he said: “I find I do not want to eat this child.”

  “Can’t say I blame you,” said the mermaid. “I wouldn’t fancy him myself. But what’s to be done with him? They don’t last more than a few minutes under water and we don’t want dead bodies littering up the place.”

  “Perhaps the sea-witch could turn him into something?” suggested the Kraken.

  “Good idea,” said the mermaid. “I’ll get her.” And she swam off very quickly because Algernon was fast becoming waterlogged and magic does not work on people who are dead.

  So the sea-witch came and did her spell, the one that began “Sweery, sweery linkum-loo”, and she turned Algernon into the thing he most reminded her of, which was a sea slug with a slimy body and blotchy spots.

  As for the children and Miss Pigg and Miss Pigg’s mother and the fishermen in the village, they were at first upset at losing their beautiful island. But when they realised that it had been a Kraken they became very excited. Soon people came from all over the world and gave the fishermen a lot of money to row them out to where the island had been. So the fishermen became rich and bought lovely clothes for their wives and nice toys for their children and were very happy. The Kraken, too, was happy because he had no more trouble with his back.

  But whether Algernon was happy or not I cannot tell you. Some things are easy and some things are difficult – and finding out whether a sea slug is happy is very difficult indeed!

  The Boobrie and the Sheepish Scotsmen

  Once upon a time three Scotsmen were walking through the Highlands on a cold winter’s day when they came across some most unusual footprints in the snow. They were the tracks of webbed feet with curved claws on the end and each track was absolutely enormous, about the size of a house.

  “Now what on earth can that be?” said Chief MacGregor, a tall, thin Scotsman with scars on his hairy knees from fighting in a battle.

  “Whatever it is, it’s mighty large,” said Chief MacCallum, a small, fat Scotsman whose stomach bulged roundly beneath his kilt.

  “We had better follow the tracks and see where they lead,” said Chief MacDuff, an old, brave Scotsman who had lost a leg and painted his wooden one in the MacDuff colours of red, blue and green so that nobody would steal it.

  So they followed the tracks of the webbed feet which looked as though whatever had made them was not only gigantic but also a bit knock-kneed and pigeon-toed because they pointed inwards. And when they had followed them for about an hour they came to a lake (only of course, being in Scotland, it was called a loch). At the edge of the loch there was the biggest nest they had ever seen, so big that it looked like one of those stockades made of logs that the settlers in America used to make to keep off Red Indians.

  Inside the nest were three fluffy, round-eyed, goofy-looking chicks with mottled feathers and yellow beaks. However, when I say “chicks” I do not mean anything sweet and little and quaint. These chicks were the size of full-grown elephants, and as they jostled against each other and opened their huge beaks, the noise that came out was not “CHEEP!” but “BAA!”

  The Scotsmen looked at each other and their knees beneath their kilts began to tremble because they knew they had been following the tracks of a BOOBRIE bird and that these chicks were Boobrie chicks. They also knew that the chicks were saying “Baa!” instead of “Cheep!” because what Boobries feed on, mostly, is sheep.

  “What are we going to do?” quavered tall, thin MacGregor.

  “The Boobrie will carry away all our livestock!” squeaked small, fat MacCallum.

  “We must make a plan,” said brave MacDuff, striking his wooden leg with his walking stick.

  So the Scotsmen walked back to their village and thought out what to do. They were quite right to be afraid. The Boobrie, which is a very Scottish bird, may not be very clever but it is so big that it seems to fill the whole sky when it appears and it is so strong that it can swoop down and carry off a sheep or a horse or a cow as easily as you could pick a daisy. A Boobrie’s eyes are round and black and crazy-looking, its beak is the size of a canoe, and when it flies it makes a mournful, honking noise like a foghorn with stomach ache.

  So the three Scotsmen thought and thought about what to do and then brave old MacDuff struck his forehead and said:

  “I know! We will disguise ourselves as sheep and when the Boobrie swoops down on us we will shoot it with our horse pistols.”

  “And our blunderbusses!” yelled thin MacGregor.

  “In its soft underbelly!” cried brave MacDuff.

  Fat MacCullum didn’t say anything because the idea of pretending to be a sheep and popping off bullets at the Boobrie made his poor underbelly quiver like a jelly. But he did not wish to seem a coward so all three Scotsmen began then and there to dress up as sheep.

  This was difficult. First they had to find some sheepskins that fitted over their backs and then they had to go down on their hands and knees and see if they looked like sheep which mostly they didn’t. MacDuff didn’t because you don’t often get sheep with wooden legs, and MacCallum didn’t because he was so fat that he bulged out pinkly underneath like a sausage does when you fry it without pricking it first. And MacGregor certainly didn’t because he had forgotten to take off his sporran and sheep with sporrans are very, very rare.

  But in
the end, by pulling and pushing at the skins and sticking extra bits of wool here and there they didn’t look quite so bad and when they had practised saying “Baa” a few times they set off for the moor above the loch where they had first seen the Boobrie tracks. They didn’t like to walk upright carrying their sheepskins in case the Boobrie was watching, so they crawled, and they had a very nasty time. Crawling in the snow is nasty anyway, and crawling in the snow while pretending to be a sheep and carrying a horse pistol, a blunderbuss and a catapult is even nastier. The Scotsmen fell and stumbled and their poor hairy legs, which weren’t quite covered by the sheep hides, turned blue with cold. When they tried to say “Baa” their teeth rattled like doors in a high wind. But they crawled on till they reached the moor and then they huddled together and waited.

  They did not wait for long.

  The Boobrie did not come from the sky. It rose from the waters of the lake and the sight was one to turn the bravest man to stone. First came its head with its mad, round, staring eyes and then its terrible beak, curved like a pelican’s to carry its prey, then its gigantic feathered body rising like a living island from the water and lastly its webbed and house-sized feet.

  It was the mother Boobrie. She was hungry and she was worried about her chicks and as she circled the moor, darkening the sky with her huge wings and making the mournful, honking noise that Boobries make, her crazy eyes searched anxiously for something to give them to eat. Round and round flew the Boobrie, searching and honking, and presently the vast and worried bird saw exactly what she was looking for. Three sheep.