And a very large pool it was, miles and miles across, though the air was so clear that the ice cliffs on the opposite side looked as if they were close at hand. All round it the ice cliffs rose, in walls and spires and battlements, and caves and bridges, and stories and galleries, in which the ice-fairies live, and drive away the storms and clouds, that Mother Carey's pool may lie calm from year's end to year's end. And the sun acted policeman, and walked round outside every day, peeping just over the top of the ice wall, to see that all went right; and now and then he played conjuring tricks, or had an exhibition of fireworks, to amuse the ice-fairies. For he would make himself into four or five suns at once, or paint the sky with rings and crosses and crescents of white fire, and stick himself in the middle of them, and wink at the fairies; and I daresay they were very much amused; for anything's fun in the country.
And there the good whales lay, the happy sleepy beasts, upon the still oily sea. They were all right whales, you must know, and finners, and razor-backs, and bottle-noses, and spotted sea- unicorns with long ivory horns. But the sperm whales are such raging, ramping, roaring, rumbustious fellows, that, if Mother Carey let them in, there would be no more peace in Peacepool. So she packs them away in a great pond by themselves at the South Pole, two hundred and sixty-three miles south-south-east of Mount Erebus, the great volcano in the ice; and there they butt each other with their ugly noses, day and night from year's end to year's end.
But here there were only good quiet beasts, lying about like the black hulls of sloops, and blowing every now and then jets of white steam, or sculling round with their huge mouths open, for the sea- moths to swim down their throats. There were no threshers there to thresh their poor old backs, or sword-fish to stab their stomachs, or saw-fish to rip them up, or ice-sharks to bite lumps out of their sides, or whalers to harpoon and lance them. They were quite safe and happy there; and all they had to do was to wait quietly in Peacepool, till Mother Carey sent for them to make them out of old beasts into new.
Tom swam up to the nearest whale, and asked the way to Mother Carey.
"There she sits in the middle," said the whale.
Tom looked; but he could see nothing in the middle of the pool, but one peaked iceberg: and he said so.
"That's Mother Carey," said the whale, "as you will find when you get to her. There she sits ****** old beasts into new all the year round."
"How does she do that?"
"That's her concern, not mine," said the old whale; and yawned so wide (for he was very large) that there swam into his mouth 943 sea-moths, 13,846 jelly-fish no bigger than pins' heads, a string of salpae nine yards long, and forty-three little ice-crabs, who gave each other a parting pinch all round, tucked their legs under their stomachs, and determined to die decently, like Julius Caesar.
"I suppose," said Tom, "she cuts up a great whale like you into a whole shoal of porpoises?"
At which the old whale laughed so violently that he coughed up all the creatures; who swam away again very thankful at having escaped out of that terrible whalebone net of his, from which bourne no traveller returns; and Tom went on to the iceberg, wondering.
And, when he came near it, it took the form of the grandest old lady he had ever seen - a white marble lady, sitting on a white marble throne. And from the foot of the throne there swum away, out and out into the sea, millions of new-born creatures, of more shapes and colours than man ever dreamed. And they were Mother Carey's children, whom she makes out of the sea-water all day long.
He expected, of course - like some grown people who ought to know better - to find her snipping, piecing, fitting, stitching, cobbling, basting, filing, planing, hammering, turning, polishing, moulding, measuring, chiselling, clipping, and so forth, as men do when they go to work to make anything.
But, instead of that, she sat quite still with her chin upon her hand, looking down into the sea with two great grand blue eyes, as blue as the sea itself. Her hair was as white as the snow - for she was very very old - in fact, as old as anything which you are likely to come across, except the difference between right and wrong.
And, when she saw Tom, she looked at him very kindly.
"What do you want, my little man? It is long since I have seen a water-baby here."
Tom told her his errand, and asked the way to the Other-end-of-Nowhere.
"You ought to know yourself, for you have been there already."
"Have I, ma'am? I'm sure I forget all about it."
"Then look at me."
And, as Tom looked into her great blue eyes, he recollected the way perfectly.
Now, was not that strange?
"Thank you, ma'am," said Tom. "Then I won't trouble your ladyship any more; I hear you are very busy."
"I am never more busy than I am now," she said, without stirring a finger.
"I heard, ma'am, that you were always ****** new beasts out of old."
"So people fancy. But I am not going to trouble myself to make things, my little dear. I sit here and make them make themselves."
"You are a clever fairy, indeed," thought Tom. And he was quite right.
That is a grand trick of good old Mother Carey's, and a grand answer, which she has had occasion to make several times to impertinent people.
There was once, for instance, a fairy who was so clever that she found out how to make butterflies. I don't mean sham ones; no: but real live ones, which would fly, and eat, and lay eggs, and do everything that they ought; and she was so proud of her skill that she went flying straight off to the North Pole, to boast to Mother Carey how she could make butterflies.
But Mother Carey laughed.
"Know, silly child," she said, "that any one can make things, if they will take time and trouble enough: but it is not every one who, like me, can make things make themselves."
But people do not yet believe that Mother Carey is as clever as all that comes to; and they will not till they, too, go the journey to the Other-end-of-Nowhere.