And then the otter came by with all her brood, twining and sweeping along as fast as the eels themselves; and she spied Tom as she came by, and said: 

“Now is your time, eft, if you want to see the world.  Come along, children, never mind those nasty eels; we shall breakfast on salmon to-morrow.  Down to the sea, down to the sea!”

Then came a flash brighter than all the rest, and by the light of it—­in the thousandth part of a second they were gone again—­but he had seen them, he was certain of it—­three beautiful little white girls, with their arms twined round each other’s necks, floating down the torrent, as they sang, “Down to the sea, down to the sea!”

“Oh, stay!  Wait for me!” cried Tom; but they were gone; yet he could hear their voices clear and sweet through the roar of thunder and water and wind, singing as they died away, “Down to the sea!”

“Down to the sea!” said Tom; “everything is going to the sea, and I will go too.  Good-bye, trout.”  But the trout were so busy gobbling worms that they never turned to answer him; so that Tom was spared the pain of bidding them farewell.

And now, down the rushing stream, guided by the bright flashes of the storm; past tall birch-fringed rocks, which shone out one moment as clear as day, and the next were dark as night; past dark hovers under swirling banks, from which great trout rushed out on Tom, thinking him to be good to eat, and turned back sulkily, for the fairies sent them home again with a tremendous scolding, for daring to meddle with a water baby; on through narrow strids [Footnote:  strid (rare) means a place the length of a stride] and roaring cataracts, where Tom was deafened and blinded for a moment by the rushing waters; along deep reaches, where the white water lilies tossed and flapped beneath the wind and hail; past sleeping villages; under dark bridge arches, and away and away to the sea.  And Tom could not stop, and did not care to stop; he would see the great world below, and the salmon, and the breakers, and the wide, wide sea.

And when the daylight came, Tom found himself out in the salmon river.

A full hundred yards broad it was, sliding on from broad pool to broad shallow, and broad shallow to broad pool, over great fields of shingle, under oak and ash coverts, past low cliffs of sandstone, past green meadows, and fair parks, and a great house of gray stone, and brown moors above, and here and there against the sky the smoking chimney of a colliery.

[Illustration:  The salmon, king of all the fish]

But Tom thought nothing about what the river was like.  All his fancy was, to get down to the wide, wide sea.

And after a while he came to a place where the river spread out into broad, still, shallow reaches, so wide that little Tom, as he put his head out of the water, could hardly see across.

And there he stopped.  He got a little frightened.  “This must be the sea,” he thought.  “What a wide place it is!  If I go on into it I shall surely lose my way, or some strange thing will bite me.  I will stop here and look out for the otter, or the eels, or some one to tell me where I shall go.”