At that instant there came a great water-rat who lived under the gutter-bridge.

“Have you a pass?” said the rat.  “Show me your pass.”

But the tin soldier kept still, and only held his musket the firmer.  The boat rushed on, and the rat behind.  Oh! how he gnashed his teeth, and called to the sticks and straws:—­

“Stop him!  Stop him!  He has not paid toll.  He has showed no pass.”

But the current got stronger and stronger.  Before he got to the end of the bridge the tin soldier could see daylight, but he heard also a rushing noise that might frighten a brave man’s heart.  Just think! at the end of the bridge the gutter emptied into a great canal, which for him was as dangerous as for us to sail down a great waterfall.

He was so near it already that he could not stop.  The boat went down.  The poor tin soldier held himself as straight as he could.  No one should say of him that he had ever blinked his eyes.  The boat whirled three or four times and filled with water.  It had to sink.  The tin soldier stood up to his neck in water, and deeper, deeper sank the boat.  The paper grew weaker and weaker.  Now the waves went over the soldier’s head.  Then he thought of the pretty little dancer whom he never was to see again, and there rang in the tin soldier’s ears:—­

     “Farewell, warrior! farewell! 
     Death shalt thou stiffer.”

Now the paper burst in two, and the tin soldier fell through,—­but in that minute he was swallowed by a big fish.

Oh! wasn’t it dark in there.  It was worse even than under the gutter-bridge, and besides, so cramped.  But the tin soldier was steadfast, and lay at full length, musket in hand.

The fish rushed around and made the most fearful jumps.  At last he was quite still, and something went through him like a lightning flash.  Then a bright light rushed in, and somebody called aloud, “The tin soldier!” The fish had been caught, brought to market, sold, and been taken to the kitchen, where the maid had slit it up with a big knife.  She caught the soldier around the body and carried him into the parlor, where everybody wanted to see such a remarkable man who had traveled about in a fish’s belly.  But the tin soldier was not a bit proud.  They put him on the table, and there—­well! what strange things do happen in the world—­the tin soldier was in the very same room that he had been in before.  He saw the same children, and the same playthings were on the table, the splendid castle with the pretty little dancer; she was still standing on one leg, and had the other high in the air.  She was steadfast, too.  That touched the tin soldier so that he could almost have wept tin tears, but that would not have been proper.  He looked at her and she looked at him, but they said nothing at all.

Suddenly one of the little boys seized the tin soldier and threw him right into the tile-stove, although he had no reason to.  It was surely the Troll in the box who was to blame.