Page:Merman & mermaid, grand operatic phantasmagoria.djvu/13

 Act II — Scene 1.

THE ARGUMENT.

Owondlo and Fleehion fifteen years later, in Nature's Submarine Garden, feasting and making love, they lived in caves and sunken vessels, and had twenty children born to them, who are in the Submarine Garden picking fruit. Owondlo, who had been informed of the dangers in the sea by King Neptune, had also taken possession of a life boat, which was covered with sea shells of peculiar shapes and colors.

Owondlo tells Fleehion, who fears that the treasure vaults are being ransacked by sea Nymphs, that he had locked all the doors in all sunken vessels they have been in, and that the fish have lost their color of gold. Their magic and treachery appeared to have vanished. No Nymphs had been seen since her birth. Then Fleehion suddenly becomes infatuated with an oval sea plant and its colors, and enters the plant to reap its fruit, whereupon the plant suddenly closes about her, just as Owondlo warns her. Owondlo immediately severs the plant at the bottom, and rescues Fleehion in the nick of time. Owondlo hurries to the sea shell boat, assisting Fleehion, recovering from a fainting spell.

This incident caused so much commotion from nearby sea plants, who were angry and frightened, and weeping, that curious fish swam about and threatened Owondlo and Fleehion's lives.

Owondlo's boat was fastened to a sea plant by sea plant rope; fish gnawed the rope apart and their boat just floats away in a sea current as curtain falls.