The eldest princess had now reached her fifteenth birthday, and was to venture above the water.  When she came back she had hundreds of things to tell them, but the most delightful of all, she said, was to lie in the moonlight, on a sandbank in a calm sea, and to gaze at the large town close to the shore, where the lights twinkled like hundreds of stars; to listen to music and the noise and bustle of carriages and people, to see the many church towers and spires, and to hear the bells ringing; and just because she could not go on shore she longed for that most of all.

Oh, how eagerly the youngest sister listened! and when, later in the evening she stood at the open window and looked up through the dark blue water, she thought of the big town with all its noise and bustle, and fancied that she could even hear the church bells ringing.

The year after, the second sister was allowed to mount up through the water and swim about wherever she liked.  The sun was just going down when she reached the surface, the most beautiful sight, she thought, that she had ever seen.  The whole sky had looked like gold, she said, and as for the clouds! well, their beauty was beyond description; they floated in red and violet splendour over her head, and, far faster than they went, a flock of wild swans flew like a long white veil over the water towards the setting sun; she swam towards it, but it sank and all the rosy light on clouds and water faded away.

The year after that the third sister went up, and, being much the most venturesome of them all, swam up a broad river which ran into the sea.  She saw beautiful green, vine-clad hills; palaces and country seats peeping through splendid woods.  She heard the birds singing, and the sun was so hot that she was often obliged to dive, to cool her burning face.  In a tiny bay she found a troop of little children running about naked and paddling in the water; she wanted to play with them, but they were frightened and ran away.  Then a little black animal came up; it was a dog, but she had never seen one before; it barked so furiously at her that she was frightened and made for the open sea.  She could never forget the beautiful woods, the green hills and the lovely children who could swim in the water although they had no fishes’ tails.

The fourth sister was not so brave; she stayed in the remotest part of the ocean, and, according to her account, that was the most beautiful spot.  You could see for miles and miles around you, and the sky above was like a great glass dome.  She had seen ships, but only far away, so that they looked like sea-gulls.  There were grotesque dolphins turning somersaults, and gigantic whales squirting water through their nostrils like hundreds of fountains on every side.

Now the fifth sister’s turn came.  Her birthday fell in the winter, so that she saw sights that the others had not seen on their first trips.  The sea looked quite green, and large icebergs were floating about, each one of which looked like a pearl, she said, but was much bigger than the church towers built by men.  They took the most wonderful shapes, and sparkled like diamonds.  She had seated herself on one of the largest, and all the passing ships sheered off in alarm when they saw her sitting there with her long hair streaming loose in the wind.