Let Sleeping Sea-Monsters Lie-And Other Cautionary Tales (Short Story Collection)

Of all the monsters in the world there is none so fierce or so terrible as the Kraken. A Kraken is the size of an island; it can eat large ships at a single gulp and when it lashes its tail, whole cities on the shore will be flooded. If you just say the name “Kraken” to the bravest sailor with the biggest muscles and the largest anchor tattooed on his chest he will probably faint from fright.

The Kraken I am going to tell you about was, for many years, as terrible as any. He would eat a galleon for breakfast, a man-of-war for lunch, a pirate ship for supper, and still sometimes gulp down a rowing boat for tea. But one day he didn’t want to go on like this any more. The oars and the sails that he swallowed were beginning to scratch the inside of his stomach and the screams of the sailors as he sucked them into his mouth gave him earache and made him feel depressed. So he gorged himself on seaweed three times a day instead, which kept him perfectly healthy.

At the same time he decided to settle down because it is difficult to make friends if you are always roaring about and flooding things and swallowing them.

The place he chose to settle down was a peaceful, sunny bay with clear, deep water. The Kraken kept his neck and his huge, whiskery head with its big eyes, long eyelashes and intelligent forehead well down in the water and he kept his tail, which was scaly and interesting, in the water also, but he left his round, smooth back sticking out above the surface of the waves.

Soon he began to make friends. His head made friends with a mermaid who lived in a grotto not far from his chin. She was no longer young and the songs she sang were rude because she had learned them from some sailors in a pub. This had happened when she came out on land for a while and married an innkeeper who had forced her to work as a barmaid. But standing on her tail all day made her tired and when her husband said she smelled fishy she had left him and returned to the water. She was a motherly mermaid and very fond of the Kraken and he of her. The Kraken also liked a rather dotty sea-witch who roared about muttering spells which began with words like “Sweery, sweery linkum-loo” and usually ended with someone being turned into a sea cucumber. And he liked the sea horses and the peacefully squelching squids.

The Kraken’s tail, which was about half a mile away from its head, didn’t exactly make friends but the sea creatures made friends with it. Giant eels curled themselves round it and all those magic people that you find under the water – people whose front ends are horses and back ends are people, or whose back ends are fish and front ends are seals – used it to swing on and have fun.

With so many friends to talk to and enough seaweed to eat, the Kraken was very happy. But because its head was so busy at one end and its tail was so useful at the other, the Kraken forgot about its back, which was sticking hugely and humpily out of the water. And of course you will guess what happened next.

After about fifty years, grass seeds began to sprout on the Kraken’s back and a meadow grew up, and among the grass the prettiest flowers – sea pinks and kingcups and forget-me-nots. Then a little larch tree managed to grow and another and another . . . and in the trees birds began to nest and to sing and to lay little speckled eggs.

In short, the Kraken became the most beautiful and peaceful island you can imagine!

Naturally it was not long before people started rowing out from the village on the shore of the bay for picnics.

The Kraken did not mind this. The people who came were sensible and well behaved and would not have dreamed of leaving paper or broken glass about, and all that the Kraken could feel as they walked about on him was a very gentle tickle which was not at all disagreeable.

Then one day a large boat rowed out to the island and in it were five ordinary, nice little girls in clean pinafores with excited, shining eyes and five ordinary, sensible little boys in clean sailor suits with scrubbed and happy faces. These were the children of the village school on their Sunday Outing. Also in the boat were the children’s teacher, who was called Miss Pigg but was not at all like a pig but very kind, Miss Pigg’s mother, who was ninety-three, and two strong fishermen to do the rowing.

And if these had been the only people in the boat everything would have been all right, but they were not. There was also a truly awful boy called Algernon.

It is quite possible that there has never been a child as unpleasant as this boy. Algernon lied and cheated. He kicked and bullied. When Miss Pigg tried to teach him to read he yawned or dribbled or fell off his stool and when he saw a stray kitten or a puppy in the school yard he pelted it with stones. But Algernon, too, was at the village school so he could not be left out of The Outing.

The boat landed. Miss Pigg’s old mother was placed on a tussock with her parasol open against the sun. Miss Pigg began to butter the sandwiches. And the five sensible little boys and the five well-behaved little girls ran about, so happy they thought they would burst. They took off their shoes and they paddled. They made daisy chains. They crawled through the grass pretending to be Ferocious Animals.

But not Algernon. Algernon was bored. He kicked the stones about and hit one of the little boys on the forehead. He pulled down a thrush’s nest and trampled on the eggs. He found a little girl with her apron full of cowrie shells and threw them on the ground.

“I’m bored,” he moaned. “There’s nothing to do on this island.”

But after lunch, when everyone was resting, he did find something to do. He thought of it because it was the one thing Miss Pigg had told the children not to do on the island.

“You must not light a fire, children,” she had said, “because it is dangerous and will damage the plants and trees.”

And the five little girls and the five little boys had listened and nodded their heads. But not Algernon.

He gathered some sticks and he piled up some dry grass right in the middle and humpiest bit of the island. Then he crept to where one of the fishermen was sleeping and stole his matches. And then . . . he lit a fire!

The fire started small. But soon it caught a gust of wind and it grew and it spread.

At first the Kraken felt nothing at all. Then it felt rather a strong tickle . . . then an itch . . . and then a pain!

“Ow!” said the Kraken, feeling very much upset.

Well, you will see what happened next and it is no use at all blaming the Kraken. If someone lit a fire on you, what would you do?

The Kraken sank.

He sank very slowly, because he was a monster who did not do things in a hurry, but he sank. And on the island the children saw the water rise over the fringe of sand, on to the grass, and up and up into the button boots of Miss Pigg’s mother sitting underneath her parasol . . .

“To the boats, children! Quick! Quick!” cried Miss Pigg.

She gathered up the smallest of the little girls and the smallest of the little boys and, with the rest of the children following her, she ran to where the fishermen were waiting in the boat. Miss Pigg’s mother, who was too old to run, climbed into her upturned parasol and floated towards the boat where the fishermen hauled her to safety.

But Algernon was still in the middle of the island, shouting and hooting round his fire.

“Algernon!” shouted Miss Pigg, standing up in the boat and waving her arms. “Algernon, come quickly!”

Too late! The island – and the boy – had gone!

Down and down went awful Algernon, down into the icy water . . . down and down he sank until he was level with the Kraken’s gaping mouth.

The Kraken had of course meant to swallow Algernon, but when he saw the soggy, pulpy boy he said: “I find I do not want to eat this child.”

“Can’t say I blame you,” said the mermaid. “I wouldn’t fancy him myself. But what’s to be done with him? They don’t last more than a few minutes under water and we don’t want dead bodies littering up the place.”

“Perhaps the sea-witch could turn him into something?” suggested the Kraken.

“Good idea,” said the mermaid. “I’ll get her.” And she swam off very quickly because Algernon was fast becoming waterlogged and magic does not work on people who are dead.

So the sea-witch came and did her spell, the one that began “Sweery, sweery linkum-loo”, and she turned Algernon into the thing he most reminded her of, which was a sea slug with a slimy body and blotchy spots.

As for the children and Miss Pigg and Miss Pigg’s mother and the fishermen in the village, they were at first upset at losing their beautiful island. But when they realised that it had been a Kraken they became very excited. Soon people came from all over the world and gave the fishermen a lot of money to row them out to where the island had been. So the fishermen became rich and bought lovely clothes for their wives and nice toys for their children and were very happy. The Kraken, too, was happy because he had no more trouble with his back.

But whether Algernon was happy or not I cannot tell you. Some things are easy and some things are difficult – and finding out whether a sea slug is happy is very difficult indeed!