THERE WAS ONCE A MERMAID who pitied the sailors who drowned in the windy sea. Her sisters would laugh whenever a ship foundered and sank, and they would swim down to steal the silver combs and golden goblets from the sunken vessels. But Varina, the mermaid, wept in her watery cave, thinking of the men who had lost their lives.
‘What in the sea is the matter with you?’ her sisters would exclaim. ‘While we are finding jewels and silver, you sit alone and grieve. It’s not our fault if their ships are wrecked! That is the way the sea goes. Besides, these sailors mean nothing to us, sister, for they are not of our kind.’
But Varina the mermaid replied: ‘What though they are not of our kind? Their hopes are still hopes. Their lives are lives.’
And her sisters just laughed at her, and splashed her with their finny tails.
One day, however, a great ship struck the rocks near by and started to sink. All the other mermaids stayed sitting on the rocks where they had been singing, but Varina slipped away into the sea, and swam around and around the sinking ship, calling out to see if any sailors were still alive.
She saw the boatswain in his chair, but he had drowned as the ship first took water. She saw the First Mate on the poop deck, but he had drowned, caught in the rigging. She saw the captain, but he too was lifeless, with his hands around the wheel.
Then she heard a tap-tap-tapping, coming from the side of the sunken ship, and there was the frightened face of the cabin boy, peering through a crack.
‘How are you still alive, when your ship-mates are all drowned?’ asked Varina.
‘I’m caught in a pocket of air,’ replied the cabin boy. ‘But it will not last, and we are now so deep at the bottom of the ocean, that unless I can swim as fast as a fish through the ship’s hold, through the galley and up onto the deck, I shall drown long before I can make my way up to the waves above.’
‘But I swim faster than forty fishes!’ exclaimed the mermaid. And without more ado, she twitched her tail, and swam to the deck, and down through the galley and along through the ship’s hold to the place where the cabin boy was trapped in the pocket of air.
Then she took his hand and said: ‘Hold your landlubberly breath!’ And back she swam, faster than forty fishes, back through the ship’s hold, back through the galley and up to the deck and then up and up and up to the waves above.
There the cabin boy got back his breath. But the moment he turned to the mermaid, it left his body again, for he suddenly saw how beautiful she was.
‘Thank you!’ he finally managed to say. ‘Now I can swim to the shore.’ But the mermaid would not let go of his hand.
‘Come with me to my watery cave,’ she said.
‘Oh no!’ cried the cabin boy. ‘You have saved my life, and grateful I am more than six times seven, but I know you mermaids are not of our kind and bring us poor sailors only despair.’
But still the mermaid would not let go of his hand, and she swam as fast as forty fishes, back to her watery cave.
And there she gave the cabin boy sea-kelp and sargassum, bladder-wrack and sea-urchins, all served up on a silver dish. But the cabin boy looked pale as death and said: ‘Your kindness overwhelms me, and grateful I am more than six times sixty, but you are not of my kind, and these ocean foods to me are thin and savourless. Let me go.’
But the mermaid wrapped him up in a seaweed bed and said: ‘Sleep and tomorrow you may feel better.’
The cabin boy replied: ‘You are kind beyond words, and grateful I am more than six times six hundred, but I am not of your kind, and this bed is cold and damp, and my blood runs as chill as sea-water in my veins.’
Finally the mermaid said to the cabin boy: ‘Shut your eyes, and I shall sing you a song that will make you forget your sorrow.’
But at that, the cabin boy leapt out of the bed and cried: ‘Oh no! That you must not! For don’t you know it is your mermaids’ singing that lulls our senses and lures us poor sailors onto the rocks so that we founder and drown?’
When the mermaid heard this, she was truly astonished. She swam to her sisters and cried out: ‘Sisters! Throw away those silver combs and throw away those golden goblets that we have stolen from the drowned sailors – for it is our songs that lull these sailors’ senses and lure them onto the rocks.’
When they heard this, the mermaids all wept salty tears for the lives of the men who had been drowned through their songs. And from that day on the mermaids resolved to sit on the rocks and sing only when they were sure there was no ship in sight.
As for Varina, she swam back to her watery cave, and there she found the cabin boy still waiting for her.
‘I could not leave,’ he said taking her hand. ‘For though we are of different kind, where shall I find such goodness of heart as yours?’
And there and then he took the mermaid in his arms and kissed her, and she wrapped her finny tail around him, and they both fell into the sea.
Then they swam as if they were one creature instead of two – fast as forty fishes – until, at last, they reached the land the cabin boy had left, many years before. And there they fell asleep upon the shore – exhausted and sea-worn.
When the cabin boy awoke, he looked and he found Varina still asleep beside him. And as he stared at her, all the breath once again went from his body, for her finny tail had disappeared, and there she lay beside him – no longer a mermaid, but a beautiful girl, who opened her eyes and looked at him not with pity but with love.