The Sea Fairies (Annotated) E-Book

L. Frank Baum

• Herausgeber: ePembaBooks
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

• This edition includes the following editor's introduction: The life of L. Frank Baum, the father of Oz, a fall from success to disaster

Originally published in 1911, "The Sea Fairies" is a children's fantasy novel written by American author L. Frank Baum. Baum is best known for his children's books, particularly “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” and its sequels.
As an underwater fantasy, Baum's "The Sea Fairies" can be classed with earlier books with similar themes, like Charles Kingsley's "The Water-Babies", and successors too, like E. Nesbit's "Wet Magic".

"The Sea Fairies" chronicles the adventures of Mayre "Trot" Griffiths, a small girl living on the coast of California, and her close friend and companion Cap'n Bill, formerly her father's employer and now a retired seaman with a wooden leg. As they walk along the beach one day, Trot wishes that she could see a mermaid. Nearby mermaids overhear her, and grant her wish, appearing to her and the Cap'n the next day. The mermaids explain that they are "sea fairies," and offer the girl a chance to experience their world. Trot is eager to go; Bill is not, but is too loyal to let Trot go by herself. Magically transformed, the two embark on an underwater adventure.

"The Sea Fairies" was followed by a successful sequel published the following year, "Sky Island." Both books were intended as parts of a projected long-running fantasy series to replace the Oz books.

Leseprobe

Table of contents

The life of L. Frank Baum, the father of Oz, a fall from success to disaster

THE SEA FAIRIES

Preface

Chapter 1 - Trot and Cap'n Bill

Chapter 2 - The Mermaids

Chapter 3 - The Depths of the Deep Blue Sea

Chapter 4 - The Palace of Queen Aquareine

Chapter 5 - The Sea-serpent

Chapter 6 - Exploring the Ocean

Chapter 7 - The Aristocratic Codfish

Chapter 8 - A Banquet Under Water

Chapter 9 - The Bashful Octopus

Chapter 10 - The Undiscovered Island

Chapter 11 - Zog the Terrible and His Sea Devils

Chapter 12 - The Enchanted Island

Chapter 13 - Prisoners of the Sea Monster

Chapter 14 - Cap'n Joe and Cap'n Bill

Chapter 15 - The Magic of the Mermaids

Chapter 16 - The Top of the Great Dome

Chapter 17 - The Queen's Golden Sword

Chapter 18 - A Dash for Liberty

Chapter 19 - King Anko to the Rescue

Chapter 20 - The Home of the Ocean Monarch

Chapter 21 - King Joe

Chapter 22 - Trot Lives to Tell the Tale

The life of L. Frank Baum, the father of Oz, a fall from success to disaster

Who hasn't heard Over the Rainbow? Who hasn't seen Judy Garland as Dorothy and sung the melodies of that history-making movie? However, few remember L. Frank Baum, the author of this series of children's books about the Wizard of Oz, as well as 41 other novels, including the essential “ The Sea Fairies” (1911) and "Sky Island" (1912), 83 short stories, 200 poems and at least 40 plays. Lyman Frank was the ninth child of the Baum - Stanton couple. He was named after his uncle but always preferred to be called Frank. Baum grew up on the family's extensive property; his father was a successful businessman who believed that military life would strengthen his son's dreamy character. For this reason he sent him to a Lyceum where Frank spent the most miserable years of his life. However, the yellow brick streets of Peekskill High School were like the streets Dorothy walked along with the Wizard of Oz. Frank's military career was not very long, lasting barely two years. It ended when the young cadet suffered a panic attack. Back home, he began editing a family newspaper and a philately manual. At the age of 20 he decided to set up a chicken breeding business and even edited a magazine on the subject, without much success in either breeding or publishing. Meanwhile, Frank indulged one of his lifelong passions, fireworks. Every opportunity was good to fill the skies with ephemeral sparkles, a metaphor for what was to be his life with bright moments and black failures. An entertaining young man with a sparkling chat, he quickly became the centre of the meetings he attended. He also had a histrionic vocation that led him to act in several plays while working in his brother-in-law's store and directing a literary magazine called The White Elephant. One day he arrived at the shop and his partner had taken his own life. This experience led him to write a short story, “The Suicide of Kiaros.” In 1880 he wrote his first play, “The Maid of Arran,” which he took on tour to several cities in the interior of the USA. While he was in Kansas, the place where the adventures of the Wizard of Oz take place, the theatre he directed in Richburg burned down, while a play he wrote, coincidentally called “Matches,” was playing. In November 1882 he married Maud Gage, the daughter of a celebrated feminist and suffragist. Baum made the ideas of his wife and mother-in-law his own. The young couple went to live in South Dakota where they opened a store, which did not prosper and Baum returned to editing a newspaper. While living in Dakota he imagined the story of the famous magician from Kansas. As the newspaper also went bankrupt he went to live with his family in Chicago and wrote in the Evening Post. In 1897 he edited “Mother Goose,” a text illustrated by W. Denalow. He also published a children's book called “Papa Goose,” a tale of absurdities in the best Alice in Wonderland style. The success of these books stimulated his literary career and around 1900 he published the story of Dorothy and the Magician, a story that became a commercial success. The play premiered in Chicago and ran on Broadway for almost two years. As the play was intended for adult audiences The little dog Toto was replaced by the Imogene Cow and some political jokes directed at President Roosevelt, and different characters including John Rockefeller were introduced. The play was adapted to film in the 1910 and 1925 versions (the filming with Judy Garland is from 1939 and there is a 1982 Disney version). Baum, emboldened by success, published a book called “Dot and Tot of Merryland” in 1901, which was a fiasco. Although Baum tried to escape from the Wizard of Oz and look for other literary lines about fantastic worlds such as “The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus” and “Queen Zixi of Ix,” he had to return periodically to the Wizard of Oz to save it from the financial failures of his other works that mixed projections of images, with cinema and performances, a very advanced proposal for the time. In order to avoid the loss of all his properties, he transferred them to his wife's name and he only kept his clothes and books. Maud was more cautious than Frank and was able to save the family's assets. Baum continued writing under different pseudonyms and also began his career as a Hollywood producer creating his own company, The Oz Films. Success, once again, eluded him and after the disappointment of “The Last Egyptian,” he suffered a stroke and died in May 1919 shortly after his 63rd birthday, when he discovered that on the other side of the rainbow, only failure and death awaited him. "Now we can cross the quicksand," he said, referring to an episode of his saga before he breathed his last breath.

The story of Oz knew other versions written by Ruth Plumey Thompson that had better luck than Baum's versions.

The Editor, P.C. 2022

THE SEA FAIRIES

L. Frank Baum

Dedication

To

Judith of Randolph Massachusetts

Preface

THE oceans are big and broad. I believe two–thirds of the earth's surface is covered with water. What people inhabit this water has always been a subject of curiosity to the inhabitants of the land. Strange creatures come from the seas at times, and perhaps in the ocean depths are many, more strange than mortal eye has ever gazed upon.

This story is fanciful. In it the sea people talk and act much as we do, and the mermaids especially are not unlike the fairies with whom we have learned to be familiar. Yet they are real sea people, for all that, and with the exception of Zog the Magician they are all supposed to exist in the ocean's depths.

I am told that some very learned people deny that mermaids or sea–serpents have ever inhabited the oceans, but it would be very difficult for them to prove such an assertion unless they had lived under the water as Trot and Cap'n Bill did in this story.

I hope my readers who have so long followed Dorothy's adventures in the Land of Oz will be interested in Trot's equally strange experiences. The ocean has always appealed to me as a veritable wonderland, and this story has been suggested to me many times by my young correspondents in their letters. Indeed, a good many children have implored me to "write something about the mermaids," and I have willingly granted the request.

Hollywood, 1911.

L. FRANK BAUM.

Chapter 1 - Trot and Cap'n Bill

"Nobody," said Cap'n Bill solemnly, "ever sawr a mermaid an' lived to tell the tale."

"Why not?" asked Trot, looking earnestly up into the old sailor's face.

They were seated on a bench built around a giant acacia tree that grew just at the edge of the bluff. Below them rolled the blue waves of the great Pacific. A little way behind them was the house, a neat frame cottage painted white and surrounded by huge eucalyptus and pepper trees. Still farther behind that—a quarter of a mile distant but built upon a bend of the coast—was the village, overlooking a pretty bay.

Cap'n Bill and Trot came often to this tree to sit and watch the ocean below them. The sailor man had one "meat leg" and one "hickory leg," and he often said the wooden one was the best of the two. Once Cap'n Bill had commanded and owned the "Anemone," a trading schooner that plied along the coast; and in those days Charlie Griffiths, who was Trot's father, had been the Captain's mate. But ever since Cap'n Bill's accident, when he lost his leg, Charlie Griffiths had been the captain of the little schooner while his old master lived peacefully ashore with the Griffiths family.

This was about the time Trot was born, and the old sailor became very fond of the baby girl. Her real name was Mayre, but when she grew big enough to walk, she took so many busy little steps every day that both her mother and Cap'n Bill nicknamed her "Trot," and so she was thereafter mostly called.

It was the old sailor who taught the child to love the sea, to love it almost as much as he and her father did, and these two, who represented the "beginning and the end of life," became firm friends and constant companions.

"Why hasn't anybody seen a mermaid and lived?" asked Trot again.

"'Cause mermaids is fairies, an' ain't meant to be seen by us mortal folk," replied Cap'n Bill.

"But if anyone happens to see 'em, what then, Cap'n?"

"Then," he answered, slowly wagging his head, "the mermaids give 'em a smile an' a wink, an' they dive into the water an' gets drownded."

"S'pose they knew how to swim, Cap'n Bill?"

"That don't make any diff'rence, Trot. The mermaids live deep down, an' the poor mortals never come up again."

The little girl was thoughtful for a moment. "But why do folks dive in the water when the mermaids smile an' wink?" she asked.

"Mermaids," he said gravely, "is the most beautiful creatures in the world—or the water, either. You know what they're like, Trot, they's got a lovely lady's form down to the waist, an' then the other half of 'em's a fish, with green an' purple an' pink scales all down it."

"Have they got arms, Cap'n Bill?"

"'Course, Trot; arms like any other lady. An' pretty faces that smile an' look mighty sweet an' fetchin'. Their hair is long an' soft an' silky, an' floats all around 'em in the water. When they comes up atop the waves, they wring the water out'n their hair and sing songs that go right to your heart. If anybody is unlucky enough to be 'round jes' then, the beauty o' them mermaids an' their sweet songs charm 'em like magic; so's they plunge into the waves to get to the mermaids. But the mermaids haven't any hearts, Trot, no more'n a fish has; so they laughs when the poor people drown an' don't care a fig. That's why I says, an' I says it true, that nobody never sawr a mermaid an' lived to tell the tale."

"Nobody?" asked Trot.

"Nobody a tall."

"Then how do you know, Cap'n Bill?" asked the little girl, looking up into his face with big, round eyes.

Cap'n Bill coughed. Then he tried to sneeze, to gain time. Then he took out his red cotton handkerchief and wiped his bald head with it, rubbing hard so as to make him think clearer. "Look, Trot; ain't that a brig out there?" he inquired, pointing to a sail far out in the sea.

"How does anybody know about mermaids if those who have seen them never lived to tell about them?" she asked again.

"Know what about 'em, Trot?"

"About their green and pink scales and pretty songs and wet hair."

"They don't know, I guess. But mermaids jes' natcherly has to be like that, or they wouldn't be mermaids."

She thought this over. "Somebody MUST have lived, Cap'n Bill," she declared positively. "Other fairies have been seen by mortals; why not mermaids?"

"P'raps they have, Trot, p'raps they have," he answered musingly. "I'm tellin' you as it was told to me, but I never stopped to inquire into the matter so close before. Seems like folks wouldn't know so much about mermaids if they hadn't seen 'em; an' yet accordin' to all accounts the victim is bound to get drownded."

"P'raps," suggested Trot softly, "someone found a fotygraph of one of 'em."

"That might o' been, Trot, that might o' been," answered Cap'n Bill.

A nice man was Cap'n Bill, and Trot knew he always liked to explain everything so she could fully understand it. The aged sailor was not a very tall man, and some people might have called him chubby, or even fat. He wore a blue sailor shirt with white anchors worked on the corners of the broad, square collar, and his blue trousers were very wide at the bottom. He always wore one trouser leg over his wooden limb and sometimes it would flutter in the wind like a flag because it was so wide and the wooden leg so slender. His rough kersey coat was a pea–jacket and came down to his waistline. In the big pockets of his jacket he kept a wonderful jackknife, and his pipe and tobacco, and many bits of string, and matches and keys and lots of other things. Whenever Cap'n Bill thrust a chubby hand into one of his pockets, Trot watched him with breathless interest, for she never knew what he was going to pull out.

The old sailor's face was brown as a berry. He had a fringe of hair around the back of his head and a fringe of whisker around the edge of his face, running from ear to ear and underneath his chin. His eyes were light blue and kind in expression. His nose was big and broad, and his few teeth were not strong enough to crack nuts with.

Trot liked Cap'n Bill and had a great deal of confidence in his wisdom, and a great admiration for his ability to make tops and whistles and toys with that marvelous jackknife of his. In the village were many boys and girls of her own age, but she never had as much fun playing with them as she had wandering by the sea accompanied by the old sailor and listening to his fascinating stories.

She knew all about the Flying Dutchman, and Davy Jones' Locker, and Captain Kidd, and how to harpoon a whale or dodge an iceberg or lasso a seal. Cap'n Bill had been everywhere in the world, almost, on his many voyages. He had been wrecked on desert islands like Robinson Crusoe and been attacked by cannibals, and had a host of other exciting adventures. So he was a delightful comrade for the little girl, and whatever Cap'n Bill knew Trot was sure to know in time.

"How do the mermaids live?" she asked. "Are they in caves, or just in the water like fishes, or how?"

"Can't say, Trot," he replied. "I've asked divers about that, but none of 'em ever run acrost a mermaid's nest yet, as I've heard of."

"If they're fairies," she said, "their homes must be very pretty."

"Mebbe so, Trot, but damp. They are sure to be damp, you know."

"I'd like to see a mermaid, Cap'n Bill," said the child earnestly.

"What, an' git drownded?" he exclaimed.

"No, and live to tell the tale. If they're beautiful, and laughing, and sweet, there can't be much harm in them, I'm sure."

"Mermaids is mermaids," remarked Cap'n Bill in his most solemn voice. "It wouldn't do us any good to mix up with 'em, Trot."

"May–re! May–re!" called a voice from the house.

"Yes, Mamma!"

"You an' Cap'n Bill come in to supper."