Page:Dumas - Tales of Strange adventure (Methuen, 1907).djvu/85

Rh "The same to you, friend."

"Well, as I was saying, I am a Frenchman, son of a Frenchman, sailors from father to son, of the old sea-dog, Jack-tar breed. I was born at sea and I hope to die there."

"How is it you never joined the Navy—a man of your kidney?"

"Oh! I served in the Emperor's time; but in 1810, good-night! I was nabbed and sent to England—I suppose to learn English; I found it useful later on, as you will hear. In 1814 I came back here to Monnikendam; it was there the Emperor had pressed me. I was an industrious man and I used to make ail sorts of strawwork nick-nacks on the hulks and then sell them to the English ladies who came to visit the prisoners; so that I came home with quite a little capital, something like three or four hundred florins. I bought a boat, called myself captain and made it my business to carry passengers to Amsterdam, Purmeren, Edam, Hoorn, in fact all along the coast.

"This went on from 1815 to 1820. I was now thirty-five and they were always asking me, 'why don't you get married, Père Olifus?' But I used to say, 'Not I! I am a salt-water man, a sort of merman, and I shan't marry until I have found a mermaid.' 'And why do you want to marry a mermaid, Père Olifus?' 'Why,' says I, 'because mermaids don't talk, you know.'

"I ought to tell you that two or three hundred years ago they once found a mermaid cast up on the sands; they taught her to make a curtsey and spin, but they never taught her, no never, to say a word."

"Yes, I know; well?"

"You see, a woman who can make a curtsey and spin, and never say a word is a perfect treasure; but the real truth is, look you, I did not believe in mermaids, I had made up my mind not to marry.

"One day, it was the 20th September, 1823,—I shall not forget the day in a hurry, there had been heavy weather the day before, the wind blowing in hard from the North Sea. I was coming back from taking an Englishman over to Amsterdam and as I was making the passage between Cape Tidam and the little Island of Marken, just where the reeds grow, the place I shewed you as we came here, we catch sight of something that looked like an animal thrashing the water.

"We pulled towards the spot and the nearer we pulled the more like a human being it looks. We shout ' hold on, hold on, never fear, we are coming,' but the more we shout, the more the creature struggles. We get there, and lo and behold it is a woman kicking about in the water.

"There was a Parisian in the boat, a wag, and he says to me, 'Why Père Olifus, it's a mermaid, there is the wife for you.' When I heard the word, look you, I should have sheered off, if I had not been a fool. But not I, I was as curious as a porpoise and I push on for the shore, crying, 'By the Lord! it is a woman anyway and what is more, like to drown; must take her aboard, that is flat.'

"'She has not much on,' said the Parisian; the fact is, she was stark naked.

"'Oh, never you fear,' was all I said, and with the word, I jumped into the water and took her in my arms.

"She had fainted away. We tried to draw her out from among the reeds; but I don't know how she managed it, the rushes had made a knot round one leg that the tightest of sailor's knots was a fool to it. Finally we had to cut her loose. Then we laid her in the bottom of the boat, threw our sea-cloaks over her and steered for Monnikendam. We conjectured there had been a shipwreck in the neighbourhood and that the poor woman had been washed ashore and got entangled in the reeds. But the Parisian shook his head; he would have it the woman had fainted with terror when she saw us, and declared it was a mermaid, a Nereid, not a ship- wrecked woman at all. Then he lifted up a corner of the boat-cloaks and looked at her.

"I looked at her too and I must confess I rather liked looking. She was a pretty creature, apparently twenty or twentytwo at the most, fine arms and beautiful bust; only her hair had a greenish tinge, but as her complexion was of the whitest, this was not unbecoming.

"While I was looking she opened an eye. This was green too, but it was none the less fascinating for all that. When I saw she had opened her eye I dropped the corner of the cloak again, asking her pardon if I had been indiscreet and