There, on beds of sea-moss, they lie, and the rainbow is dull beside them.
Flowers are there, and stars, and bells that wave softly without sound.
For one fair thing that the man, our master, told you of, we have a thousand to show you.

What does he know, a man, whose eyes are already half-shut?
But you are a child, and for you all things shall be opened under the ocean, and you shall see the treasures of it, and the wonders; and you shall grow wise, wise, so that men shall look up to you, and shall say, 'Where did he gain his knowledge ?' And your friend shall be with you, oh yes, for he knows the way, if he cannot see all the things that will meet your eyes! And you and he together shall sail--shall sail, through waters green as chrysoprase; and all the sea-creatures shall learn to know you and love you.

You shall learn where the sea-otter makes his nest, in the leaves of the giant sea-weed, where they stretch along the water, full sixty feet long, as the Skipper told you.

The 'Nautilus' will be there, too: not a clumsy wooden mountain, like this in which we lie prisoned, but the creature itself, the fairy thing of pearl and silver! Look! here lies his shell, and you find it lovely; but like us, it is dim and dead for want of the life within it.
"Come away, and let us be sailing, sailing over seas of gold! And when you are weary of the top of the waves, down you shall sink with us through the clear green water, and the night will fall like a soft dream, and the moon-fish, with its disk of silver, shall gleam beside you to light the dimness that yet is never dark; and you shall go down, down, down--" And about this time it must have been that the little boy went down, for when the morning broke, the Skipper found him, fast asleep, and smiling as he slept..