Velika morska kača

Besedilo

Velika morska kača

There was once a little sea fish of good family; I cannot remember its name, so the learned must tell you that. The little fish had eighteen hundred brothers and sisters, all the same age. They knew neither their father nor their mother, and had to fend for themselves at once and swim about, but that was a great pleasure. They had plenty of water to drink—the whole world’s ocean. As for food, they never gave it a thought; it would come along. Each would follow its own fancy, each would have its own story—though none of them thought about that either.

The sun shone down into the water, lighting up everything around them. It was so clear, a world of the most wonderful creatures, some of them terribly big, with enormous mouths that could swallow all eighteen hundred brothers and sisters. But they never thought about that either, for none of them had yet been swallowed.

The little fish swam together, close beside one another, as herrings and mackerel do. But just as they were swimming along so happily, thinking of nothing at all, a long, heavy thing came sinking down from above with a dreadful noise, right into their midst, and there seemed to be no end to it. Farther and farther it stretched, and every little fish it struck was crushed or dealt a blow from which it could never recover. All the little fish, and the big ones too, from the very surface of the sea down to its bottom, darted aside in terror. The heavy, mighty thing sank deeper and deeper, stretching farther and farther, for miles upon miles, through the whole sea.

Fish and snails, everything that swam, everything that crawled or drifted with the currents, became aware of this terrible thing, this immense, unknown sea eel that had suddenly descended from above.

What could it be? Well, we know! It was the great telegraph cable, miles and miles long, which men were laying between Europe and America. What a fright there was, what a commotion among the sea’s rightful inhabitants wherever the cable sank! The flying fish shot up above the surface as high as it could; even the gurnard sped a whole gunshot’s distance over the water, for that is something it can do. Other fish made for the seabed, racing so fast that they arrived long before the telegraph cable was even in sight down there. They frightened both cod and flounder, who were going peacefully about in the depths, eating their fellow creatures.

A couple of sea cucumbers were so frightened that they spat out their stomachs, yet went on living, for that is something they can do. Many lobsters and edible crabs scrambled out of their fine armour and had to leave their legs behind.

In all this terror and confusion, the eighteen hundred brothers and sisters were separated, never to meet again—or, if they did, they did not know one another. Only half a score remained in the same place, and after keeping still for a couple of hours, they got over their first fright and began to grow curious.

They looked around, they looked up and down, and there in the depths they thought they could make out the terrible thing that had frightened them, frightened great and small alike. It lay across the seabed as far as they could see. It was very thin, but then they did not know how thick it could make itself, or how strong it was. It lay quite still, but that, they thought, might be cunning.

“Let it lie where it is! It’s no concern of ours!” said the most cautious of the little fish. But the very smallest would not give up trying to discover what the thing could be. It had come down from above, so surely above was the best place to find out about it. And up they swam towards the surface of the sea. The weather was perfectly calm.

There they met a dolphin, one of those lively fellows, a rover of the sea that can turn somersaults along its surface. It had eyes to see with, and surely it must have seen something and know all about it. They asked, but it had been thinking only of itself and its somersaults, had seen nothing, and did not know what to answer. So it said nothing and looked proud.

Next they turned to a seal that was just diving down. It was more polite, though it ate little fish; today, however, it had had its fill. It knew a little more than the leaping fish.

“Many a night I have lain on a wet rock and looked towards the shore, miles from here. There are cunning creatures there, called humans in their own language. They hunt us, but usually we manage to slip away from them. I have learnt that trick, and so has this sea eel you are asking about. It was in their power, up on dry land, no doubt for ages and ages. From there they carried it aboard a ship to take it across the sea to another distant country. I saw what trouble they had, but they could handle it, for it had grown weak on land. They laid it in rings and coils; I heard it clinking and clanking as they laid it down. But it got away from them after all, escaped out here. They held on with all their might, many hands clung fast, but it slipped away and reached the bottom. There it lies, I imagine, for the time being!”

“It is rather thin!” said the little fish. “They have starved it!” said the seal. “But it will soon recover and regain its old size and thickness. I suppose it is the great sea serpent that humans are so afraid of and talk about so much. I had never seen it before and never believed in it; now I believe that is what it is!” And down the seal dived.

“How much he knew! How much he had to say!” said the little fish. “I have never known so much before!—If only it isn’t all lies!” “We can swim down and investigate!” said the smallest. “On the way we can hear what the others think!”

“I am not stirring a fin just to find something out!” said the others, and turned away. “But I am!” said the smallest, and set off down into the deep water. Yet it was a long way from the place where “the long, sunken thing” lay. The little fish looked and searched in every direction as it made its way down into the depths.

Never before had it felt its world to be so vast. The herrings travelled in great shoals, gleaming like a gigantic boat of silver; the mackerel kept together too, and looked even more splendid. Fish appeared in every shape, patterned in every colour; jellyfish, like half-transparent flowers, let themselves be carried and guided by the currents. Great plants grew from the seabed, grass a fathom high and trees shaped like palms, every leaf studded with shining shellfish.

At last the little sea fish caught sight of a long, dark streak below and steered towards it. But it was neither fish nor cable; it was the railing of a great sunken vessel, whose upper and lower decks had been broken apart by the pressure of the sea. The little fish swam into the interior, from which the many people who had perished when the ship sank had now been washed away—all but two. A young woman lay stretched out with a little child in her arms. The water buoyed them up and seemed to rock them; they appeared to be asleep. The little fish was quite frightened, not knowing that they could never wake again. Water plants hung like foliage over the railing, above the two beautiful bodies of mother and child. It was so still, so lonely. The little fish hurried away as fast as it could, out to where the water was more brightly lit and there were fish to be seen. It had not gone far when it met a young whale, so terribly big.

“Don’t swallow me!” said the little fish. “I am not even a mouthful, I am so small, and being alive is a great pleasure to me!” “What are you doing down here, so deep, where your kind never comes?” asked the whale. And the little fish told it about the long, extraordinary eel, or whatever the thing might be, that had sunk down from above and frightened even the bravest creatures in the sea.

“Ho, ho!” said the whale, drawing in water so violently that it would have to send up a mighty spout when it rose to breathe. “Ho, ho!” it said. “So that was the thing that tickled my back as I turned over! I thought it was a ship’s mast I could use to scratch myself! But it wasn’t here. No, that thing lies much farther out. Still, I shall go and investigate; I have nothing else to do!”

And it swam on, with the little fish following, though not too closely, for something like a rushing current arose wherever the great whale sped through the water.

They met a shark and an old sawfish. Those two had also heard about the strange sea eel, so long and so thin. They had not seen it, but they meant to.

Now a wolffish came along. “I’ll come too!” he said, for he was going the same way. “If the great sea serpent is no thicker than an anchor cable, I shall bite it through at one snap!” And he opened his jaws and showed his six rows of teeth. “I can bite a mark in a ship’s anchor; surely I can bite through that stalk!”

“There it is!” said the great whale. “I can see it!” He thought he could see better than the others. “Look how it rises, look how it sways and twists and curls!”

But it was not the thing at all; it was an enormously large sea eel, several yards long, coming towards them. “I have seen that one before!” said the sawfish. “It has never made much of a stir in the sea, or frightened any big fish!”

Then they told it about the new eel and asked whether it would join their expedition. “If that eel is longer than I am,” said the sea eel, “it will be the worse for it!”

“So it will!” said the others. “There are enough of us to put up with no nonsense from it!” And they hurried on. But just then something came straight into their path, a strange monster, bigger than all of them put together.

It looked like a floating island that could not keep itself afloat. It was an ancient whale. Sea plants had overgrown its head, and its back was covered with creeping creatures and such countless oysters and mussels that its black skin was quite speckled with white.

“Come along, old fellow!” they said. “A new fish has arrived, and we won’t stand for it.” “I would rather lie where I am!” said the old whale. “Leave me in peace! Let me lie! Oh dear, dear, dear! I am suffering from a dreadful illness! My only relief is to reach the surface and get my back above the water. Then the big, kindly seabirds come and pick at me, and it feels so good, as long as they do not drive their beaks too deep; they often go straight into my blubber. Just look! There is still a bird’s whole skeleton stuck in my back. It dug its claws in too deep and could not get free when I went down to the bottom. Now the little fish have picked it clean. Look at the state it is in, and the state I am in! I am ill!”

“It is all in your imagination!” said the shark. “I am never ill. No fish is ever ill!” “Beg your pardon!” said the old whale. “The eel has a skin disease, the carp is said to get smallpox, and we all have worms in our insides!”

“Nonsense!” said the shark. He could not be bothered to listen any longer, nor could the others; they had other matters to attend to. At last they reached the place where the telegraph cable lay. It has a long bed on the ocean floor, from Europe to America, across sandbanks and sea mud, rocky ground and tangled vegetation, whole forests of coral. Down there the currents shift, whirlpools turn, and fish swarm forth in shoals greater than the countless flocks of birds that humans see at migration time. There is a stirring, a splashing, a humming, a rushing. A little of that rushing still haunts the great empty seashells when we hold them to our ears.

Now they had reached the place. “There lies the beast!” said the big fish, and the little one said so too. They could see the cable, whose beginning and end vanished beyond their sight.

Sponges, polyps, and sea fans swayed up from the seabed, dipping and bending over it, so that it was hidden one moment and visible the next. Sea urchins, snails, and worms moved around it; gigantic spiders, carrying a whole crew of creeping creatures, strode along the cable. Dark-blue sea cucumbers, or whatever those creatures are called that eat with their whole bodies, lay as though sniffing at the new animal that had settled on the seabed. Flounder and cod turned in the water to listen from every side. The starfish, which always burrows into the mud with only its two long eyestalks sticking out, lay staring to see what would come of all this commotion.

The telegraph cable lay motionless. Yet there was life and thought within it; human thoughts were passing through it. “That thing is crafty!” said the whale. “It is quite capable of striking me in the belly, and that happens to be my tender spot!”

“Let us feel our way!” said the octopus. “I have long arms, I have supple fingers! I have touched it; now I shall take a firmer hold.” And it stretched its longest, most supple arms down to the cable and around it.

“It has no scales!” said the octopus. “It has no skin! I don’t believe it ever gives birth to live young!” The sea eel lay down beside the telegraph cable and stretched itself as far as it could.

“That thing is longer than I am!” it said. “But length is not what matters; one must have skin, a stomach, and suppleness.” The whale, the young, strong whale, bowed straight down, deeper than it had ever been before.

“Are you a fish or a plant?” it asked. “Or are you merely some contraption from above that cannot thrive down here among us?” But the telegraph cable did not answer; that was not its way. Thoughts were passing through it, human thoughts; in a single second they sped the many hundreds of miles from land to land.

“Will you answer, or shall we break you?” asked the ravenous shark, and all the other big fish asked the same: “Will you answer, or shall we break you?”

The cable did not stir. It had its own peculiar thought, as something so full of thoughts surely may. “Let them break me; then I shall be hauled up and put to rights again. It has happened to others of my kind in smaller waters!”

So it did not answer. It had other things to do; it was sending telegrams, lying there on the seabed in the lawful discharge of its duties. Above, the sun was now setting, as humans call it. It glowed like the reddest fire, and all the clouds of heaven shone like flames, each more splendid than the last.

“Now we shall have red lighting!” said the polyps. “Perhaps that will give us a better view of the thing, if need be.” “At it! At it!” cried the wolffish, showing all his teeth.

“At it! At it!” said the swordfish, the whale, and the sea eel. They charged forward, the wolffish in the lead. But just as he was about to close his jaws around the cable, the sawfish, in its sheer impetuosity, drove its saw straight into the wolffish’s hindquarters. That was a great mistake, and the wolffish had no strength left to bite.

What a muddle there was down in that mud! Big fish and little fish, sea cucumbers and snails ran into one another, ate one another, shoved and crushed. The cable lay still and went about its work, as one should.

Dark night brooded overhead, but the sea’s billions upon billions of tiny living creatures shone. Little crustaceans, no bigger than a pinhead, shone. It is quite wonderful, but that is how it is.

The creatures of the sea looked at the telegraph cable. “What is that thing, and what is it not?” Yes, that was the question. Then an old sea cow came along. Humans call such creatures mermaids or mermen. This one was a female, with a tail, two short arms to splash about with, drooping breasts, and seaweed and parasites on her head, of which she was proud.

“Do you want knowledge and understanding?” she said. “Then I am surely the only one who can give it to you. But in return I demand safe grazing on the seabed for myself and my family. I am a fish like you, and with practice I have become a creeping creature too. I am the wisest in the sea; I know about everything that moves down here and everything that is above. That thing you are puzzling over comes from above, and whatever drops down from up there is dead, or becomes dead and powerless. Let it lie for what it is. It is merely a human invention!”

“I think there is something more to it!” said the little sea fish. “Hold your tongue, mackerel!” said the great sea cow. “Stickleback!” said the others, and that was even more insulting.

And the sea cow explained to them that this whole alarming beast—which, for that matter, had not uttered a peep—was merely an invention from dry land. And she gave a little lecture on human deceitfulness.

“They want to catch us,” she said. “That is all they live for. They spread out nets and come with bait on hooks to lure us. This is a kind of enormous fishing line that they expect us to bite. They are so stupid! We are not! Just leave that shoddy thing alone; it will fray and crumble into dust and mud, all of it. Whatever comes from above is cracked and broken, no good at all!”

“No good at all!” said all the sea creatures, adopting the sea cow’s opinion so that they would have an opinion. The little sea fish kept its own thoughts. “That immensely long, thin serpent may be the most wonderful fish in the sea. I have a feeling that it is.”

“The most wonderful!” we humans say too, and we say it with knowledge and conviction. It is the great sea serpent, spoken of long ago in songs and legends.

It has been conceived and born, sprung from human ingenuity and laid upon the ocean floor, stretching from the lands of the East to the lands of the West, bearing messages as swiftly as the ray of light from the sun to our earth. It grows, grows in power and reach, grows year by year through all the seas, around the globe, beneath stormy waters and waters clear as glass, where the sailor looks down as though he were sailing through transparent air and sees swarming fish, a whole display of coloured fireworks.

In the deepest depths the serpent stretches, a Midgard Serpent of blessing, biting its own tail as it encircles the earth. Fish and creeping creatures dash their heads against it, yet they do not understand this thing from above: humanity’s serpent of knowledge, filled with thoughts, speaking in every language and yet silent, for good and evil—the most wonderful of the sea’s wonders, the great sea serpent of our age.