moonlight, while the great ships are sailing by; and then you will see both
forests and towns.”
In the following year, one of the sisters would be fifteen: but as each was
a year younger than the other, the youngest would have to wait five years
before her turn came to rise up from the bottom of the ocean, and see the
earth as we do. However, each promised to tell the others what she saw on
her first visit, and what she thought the most beautiful; for their
grandmother could not tell them enough; there were so many things on
which they wanted information. None of them longed so much for her turn
to come as the youngest, she who had the longest time to wait, and who was
so quiet and thoughtful. Many nights she stood by the open window,
looking up through the dark blue water, and watching the fish as they
splashed about with their fins and tails. She could see the moon and stars
shining faintly; but through the water they looked larger than they do to our
eyes. When something like a black cloud passed between her and them, she
knew that it was either a whale swimming over her head, or a ship full of
human beings, who never imagined that a pretty little mermaid was
standing beneath them, holding out her white hands towards the keel of
their ship.
As soon as the eldest was fifteen, she was allowed to rise to the surface of
the ocean. When she came back, she had hundreds of things to talk about;
but the most beautiful, she said, was to lie in the moonlight, on a sandbank,
in the quiet sea, near the coast, and to gaze on a large town nearby, where
the lights were twinkling like hundreds of stars; to listen to the sounds of
the music, the noise of carriages, and the voices of human beings, and then
to hear the merry bells peal out from the church steeples; and because she
could not go near to all those wonderful things, she longed for them more
than ever. Oh, did not the youngest sister listen eagerly to all these
descriptions? and afterwards, when she stood at the open window looking
up through the dark blue water, she thought of the great city, with all its
bustle and noise, and even fancied she could hear the sound of the church
bells, down in the depths of the sea.
