Page:The fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen (c1899).djvu/42

 whenever I happened to wake, the petrels were flying about my legs. What comical birds they are! They will flap their wings suddenly, and then remain poised upon them, and quite motionless, as if they had had enough of flying.”

“Don’t be so diffuse,” said the mother of the Winds. “And so you reached Bear’s Island?”

“It’s a beautiful place! There’s a ball-room floor for you, as smooth as a plate! Heaps of half-thawed snow, slightly covered with moss, sharp stones, and skeletons of sea-cows and bears were lying about, together with the arms and legs of giants in a state of green decay. It looks as if the sun had never shone there. I blew slightly on the mist, that the hovels might be visible, and there appeared a hut, built from the remains of a ship that had been wrecked, and covered over with sea-cows’ skins. The fleshy side was turned outwards, and it was both red and green. A living bear sat growling on the roof. I went to the shore, and looked after birds’ nests, and saw the unfledged youngsters opening their beaks and screaming lustily; so I blew into their thousands of throats, and they learned to shut their mouths. A little farther on, the sea-cows were rolling about like giant worms with pigs’ heads, and teeth a yard long.”

“You tell your adventures right pleasantly, my son,” said his mother; “it makes my mouth water to hear you.”

“Then the hunting began. The harpoon was flung right into the sea-cow’s chest, so that a smoking jet of blood spurted forth like water from a fountain, and besprinkled the ice. Then I thought of my part of the game. I began to blow, and set my vessels, the towering icebergs, to stick the boats fast. Oh! what a whistling and a bawling there was! Only I whistled louder than all of them. They were obliged to unpack the dead sea-cows, the chests, and the tackle upon the ice; I then shook snowflakes over them, and left them and their spoils to sail in their pent-up vessels towards the south, to drink salt-water. They will never return to Bear’s Island.”

“Then you have done mischief?” said the mother of the Winds.

“Let others tell of the good I may have done!” said he. “But here comes my brother from the West. I like him the best, because he smacks of the sea, and brings a nice bracing cold with him.”

“Is that the little Zephyr?” asked the prince.

“Yes, that is the Zephyr!” said the old woman; “but he’s not so very little either. Some years ago he was a pretty boy; but that is now over.”

He looked like a wild man; but he wore a roller round his head, that he might not get hurt. In his hand he held a mahogany club, hewn from an American mahogany forest. It was no small weight to carry.

“Whence do you come?” asked the mother.

“From the wild forests,” said he, “where tangled bindweed forms a hedge between each tree, where water-snakes lie in the damp grass, and where man seems to be a superfluous nonentity.”

“What have you been doing there?”

“I looked into the deep river, and saw it had rushed down from the rocks, and then became dust, and flew towards the clouds to support the rainbow. I saw a wild buffalo swimming in the river, but he was carried away by the tide. He had joined a flock of wild ducks, who flew up into the air the moment the waters dashed downwards. The buffalo was obliged to be hurled into the precipice. This pleased me, and I raised a storm, so that the oldest trees sailed down the river, and were reduced to splinters.”