“What am I to do, then?”

“Dive under the floe, to be sure, if you have pluck,”

“I’ve not come so far to turn now,” said Tom; “so here goes for a header.”

“A lucky voyage to you, lad,” said the mollys; “we knew you were one of the right sort.  So good-bye.”  “Why don’t you come too?” asked Tom.

But the mollys only wailed sadly, “We can’t go yet, we can’t go yet,” and flew away over the pack.

So Tom dived under the great white gate which never was opened yet, and went on in black darkness, at the bottom of the sea, for seven days and seven nights.  And yet he was not a bit frightened.  Why should he be?  He was a brave English lad, whose business is to go out and see all the world.

And at last he saw the light, and clear, clear water overhead; and up he came a thousand fathoms, among clouds of sea moths, which fluttered round his head.  There were moths with pink heads and wings and opal bodies, that flapped about slowly; moths with brown wings that flapped about quickly; yellow shrimps that hopped and skipped most quickly of all; and jellies of all the colours in the world, that neither hopped nor skipped, but only dawdled and yawned, and would not get out of his way.  The dog snapped at them till his jaws were tired; but Tom hardly minded them at all, he was so eager to get to the top of the water, and see the pool where the good whales go.

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-southeast 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.