4

The Last Sardine

IT NEVER ENTERED Crusoe’s head to bite the finger that was extended to him. The giant creature to whom it belonged was simply, in his mind, a provider of food and thus a good friend to him, as were they all.

This one now began to tickle him as he lay floating, flippers spread, on the surface. Gently the tickling fingers moved down from his horse head and along the toad skin of his turtle back to his crocodile tail. The sensation was delicious, and Crusoe squirmed in pleasure, eyes shut in ecstasy When he opened them again, it was to see that two more of the giants had returned, and once more they all began to make strange sounds at one another. Now the smallest giant took over the tickling, rather more roughly, which somehow increased Crusoe’s delight. He wriggled so much that little wavelets spread and slapped against the sides of the bathtub.

That’s the only complaint I have, said Crusoe to himself. The food’s yummy, the tickling’s great, and the giants are obviously very decent creatures. But I am beginning to feel cramped in this small cold white prison. I wish they had somewhere bigger to put me. At that precise moment the biggest giant—as though he were a mind reader—bent over and picked Crusoe out of the bathtub.

Most of us can remember a few particular things from our early childhood, and all his immensely long life the Water Horse never forgot the moment when he was launched into the goldfish pond.

He did not know what it was, of course, only that it was ten times the size of the place he had come from, and deep, and dark, and weedy. Excitedly he paddled all around it, and then dived beneath its carpet of water lilies and began to scrabble around in the mud in which they were rooted. This action disturbed a host of tiny pond dwellers, freshwater shrimp and diving beetles and wiggly wormy things, and off went Crusoe in hot pursuit. Now, with room to move, he was already showing quite a turn of speed, and he caught and swallowed several of them; but most were too quick for him, and at last he surfaced, breathless, to see that the fourth giant had joined the other three to watch him.

The Water Horse chirruped loudly at them. It was in fact the only noise he was capable of making so far, and he did it now simply because he felt happy. But its effect was immediate, for instantly the last of the sardines landed before his nose with an oily splash.

—

“That’s the last he gets of my sardines,” said Mother. “Do you understand that, all of you?

“The last one ever?” said Kirstie. “Couldn’t he have one for a treat, now and again?”

“At Christmas,” said Angus, “and Easter and on his birthday and on Saturdays and Sundays and…”

“No,” said Mother. “He couldn’t. It’s hard enough to make ends meet feeding the three of you, without wasting good food on a…whatever you said it was.”

“Water Horse,” they chorused.

“It’s not a waste, Mother,” said Angus. “He needs it if he’s going to grow into a really big monster.”

Grumble pulled at his droopy mustache and glowered at Mother from under his bushy eyebrows in quite his old grumpy manner. “Would you begrudge the poor beastie a square meal?” he growled.

“Yes,” said Mother. “If you want to spend your pension buying food for it, that’s your business. I daresay it would prefer smoked salmon?” And she marched off into the house.

Kirstie looked at Crusoe going after the last sardine with gusto.

“I could save some of my food and give it to him,” she said. “You could too, Angus, couldn’t you?”

“No,” said Angus.

“There’s no need for this talk of saving food, much less of buying it,” said Grumble. “What we have to do is catch it for Crusoe.”

“Fish, you mean?” said Kirstie.

“Fish, yes, and anything else we can find for him, in the sea, on the beach, in the rock pools. I doubt he’ll be fussy, so long as it’s something with flesh on it.” He looked at Crusoe, in the act of swallowing the sardine’s tail.

“He’s a carnivore, all right,” he said.

“What’s that?” said Angus.

“A meat eater,” said Kirstie.

“I’m a carnivore,” said Angus.

“You’re an omnivore,” said Grumble.

“What’s that?” said Angus.

“Somebody who eats anything and everything,” said Grumble.

Crusoe, having finished the fish, paddled to the edge of the goldfish pond, laid his horse head on the concrete rim, and chirruped.

“He’s still hungry,” said Kirstie, though in fact he was asking for a nice tickle.

“So am I,” said Angus. “It must be time for tea.” And he trudged off.

“D’you know, Grumble,” said Kirstie, “Crusoe looks bigger to me already, although he isn’t even one day old yet.”

Grumble knelt down and, stretching out a hand, put his thumb on Crusoe’s nose and opened his fingers as wide as they would go. The little finger touched the tip of the Water Horses tail. “He’s exactly my span,” he said.

“How long is that?”

“Nine inches.”

“How long d’you think he’ll be when he’s full-grown?”

“Fifty or sixty feet.”

“Oh, Grumble, you’re pulling my leg! He’d have to grow fantastically quickly.”

“He will,” said Grumble. “You mark my words.”

And, only twenty-four hours later, Kirstie marked them.

They had had a successful morning’s expedition down to the beach, Kirstie and Angus hunting through the rock pools with a shrimping net each, and Grumble, wearing a pair of tall waders, trawling through the shallows with the big prawning net. The children had found a number of little rockfish, blennies, and gobies, and Grumble had caught a couple of fair-sized dabs.

Crusoe had had the dabs for lunch, and now, at teatime, was just polishing off the last of the rockfish. When he had finished, he came to the pool’s edge as before. Angus had already gone into the house. “It makes me hungry just watching him,” he had said.

Grumble knelt down and made a span of his hand. Stretch it as he might, the little finger could not reach the tail tip.

“He’s grown an inch!” cried Kirstie. “A whole inch! In a day!”

And as the days passed, the Water Horse grew and grew.

Feeding him was less of a problem than one might have thought, for as Grumble had forecast, he was not the least bit choosy. In addition to various kinds of fish, he happily tucked into prawns and shrimps and starfish and easily crunched up quite large green shore crabs. He particularly liked mussels, fortunately, for the rocks were thick with them, and the children spent a lot of time opening them for him.

The fact that all these were saltwater creatures, released into the fresh water of the goldfish pond, presented no problems. They did not last long enough to be troubled by the change, for Crusoe’s appetite was growing as fast as his body. And his body, as the weeks passed, had already grown from kitten size to cat size. At one month of age, when Grumble measured him, he needed two spans, thumb to thumb, to reach from nose to tail.

“When d’you think he’ll be big enough to go in the lochan, Grumble?” Kirstie asked.

“Not yet,” said Grumble. “There’s pike in there twice that size.”

“But he’d beat ’em up, I bet he’d beat ’em up!” shouted Angus. “He’d bite chunks out of those old pike, Crusoe would! He’d tear ’em to bits!” and he ran around and around the pond, paddling his arms like flippers and roaring and making horrible biting faces.

“No, no,” said Grumble, “he needs to be a lot bigger yet. We must keep on cramming him full of food for a good while longer, till he can look after himself and protect himself. After all, the great thing is that, here in the goldfish pond, Crusoe is perfectly safe.”

But Grumble was wrong.