"I'm sure I don't know," replied little Mary Louise. "Perhaps there's something on the track."By this time all the passengers were thrusting their heads out through the curtains of their berths.
"Porter, Porter!" called the Penguin, who had been vainly pressing the electric call-button.
But as usual, when a porter was wanted he is nowhere to be found. Then the Baby Seal began to cry.Suddenly all the lights went out.
Mary Louise hastily caught up her clothes and commenced dressing. "Thank goodness," she said in a trembling voice, "I don't have to bother with stockings!""I never was anything but a Mermaid," said the Princess in a frightened whisper, "so I don't know anything about them!""Where's my waist?" asked Mary Louise, hardly able to keep from crying. "I can't find it anywhere, and it's so dreadfully dark, too.""Oh, dear me!" suddenly cried the Mermaid Princess. "I believe I'm trying to get yours on over mine. I'm so excited I forgot that I already had on my own.""Well, I'm dressed at last," exclaimed Mary Louise after wriggling and squirming about for a few minutes longer. "Isn't it awful hard work dressing in a berth?"Suddenly the engine bell clanged out more furiously than ever. The whistle shrieked again and again. Mary Louise looked with frightened eyes at the princess who gave a cry of terror and threw her arms about her neck as the lights again went out. Then there was a sudden crash, and the Iceberg Express shivered and toppled over.
The next instant Mary Louise and the Mermaid Princess found themselves in the water.
It was quite warm and pleasant, and in a few minutes they reached the surface.To their surprise they saw their fellow passenger, the little StarFish, swimming near them, and not far away, on a piece of ice, the Polar Bear porter.
"Where are we?" asked Mary Louise. But no one replied to her question, although the Star Fish looked all around, before and behind and both sides at once, which I'm sure you can't do no matter how hard you may try--while with his fifth eye he kept a bright lookout for sharks.
Presently the Polar Bear porter replied, "I think we are in the Caribbean Sea."And if you don't know where that is, please get out you map of North America, although school is over, and find it.
"I never thought we'd get here so soon," said the little Star Fish at last. "You see, I boarded the train somewhere off Cape Cod. And that's a long way from here.""I got on much farther north," said the Polar Bear porter, fanning himself with a large sea shell. "Gracious me, but it's dreadfully hot down here.""This Caribbean Sea is as full of mountains as New Hampshire and Vermont are, but none of them have caps of snow like that which Mount Washington sometimes wears," said the Mermaid Princess. "Snow wouldn't last a second under this hot sun.""Where did you learn all this?" asked Mary Louise.
"Oh, I went to the Coral School for Girls," answered the Mermaid Princess, and she sighed, for she suddenly remembered she was a long way from home.
Just then the little Star Fish met a soft little body, much smaller than himself, who invited him to visit her relatives, who live, by millions, in this mountain region.
So off they started for Coraltown, where this little Miss Polyp lived.
Her father and mother, brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts, were all polyps. they had built the coral islands by fastening themselves to the tops of the mountains under the sea, year after year, and at last their soft bodies had turned into stone. And now you know how these millions of little polyps finally made the small islands that dotted the surface of the water.
After the Star Fish and his little friend had swum away, Mary Louise spied a boat drifting toward them. So she and the Mermaid Princess scrambled inside, and the polar Bear porter hoisted a sail, which he found wrapped around a mast in the bottom of the boat.
"Hip, hurrah, we're off once more," Shouted the Polar Bear, waving his paw, And the Mermaid Princess laughed in glee As he held the tiller and sailed o'er the sea!
By and by the air became colder and the Mermaid said:
"We must be near my father's castle. I think I'll slip into the ocean and swim home.""Before you go, please comb my hair with your magic comb so that I may be a little girl again," begged Mary Louise; "I don't want to be a mermaid forever."As soon as the magic pearl comb touched Mary Louise's hair her tail changed into her own little pair of legs.
"Now kiss me good-by," said the little Mermaid Princess, and, with a splash, she disappeared in the ocean.
