Let Sleeping Sea-Monsters Lie (6 page)

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.