xible worms, moving limb after limb from the root to the
top. All that could be reached in the sea they seized upon and held
fast, so that it never escaped from their clutches.

The little mermaid was so alarmed at what she saw that she stood still
and her heart beat with fear. She came very near turning back, but she
thought of the prince and of the human soul for which she longed, and
her courage returned. She fastened her long, flowing hair round her
head, so that the polypi should not lay hold of it. She crossed her
hands on her bosom, and then darted forward as a fish shoots through the
water, between the supple arms and fingers of the ugly polypi, which
were stretched out on each side of her. She saw that they all held in
their grasp something they had seized with their numerous little arms,
which were as strong as iron bands. Tightly grasped in their clinging
arms were white skeletons of human beings who had perished at sea and
had sunk down into the deep waters; skeletons of land animals; and oars,
rudders, and chests, of ships. There was even a little mermaid whom they
had caught and strangled, and this seemed the most shocking of all to
the little princess.

She now came to a space of marshy ground in the wood, where large, fat
water snakes were rolling in the mire and showing their ugly,
drab-colored bodies. In the midst of this spot stood a house, built of
the bones of shipwrecked human beings. There sat the sea witch, allowing
a toad to eat from her mouth just as people sometimes feed a canary with
pieces of sugar. She called the ugly water snakes her little chickens
and allowed them to crawl all over her bosom.

"I know what you want," said the sea witch. "It is very stupid of you,
but you shall have your way, though it will bring you to sorrow, my
pretty princess. You want to get rid of your fish's tail and to have two
supports instead, like human beings on earth, so that the young prince
may fall in love with you and so that you may have an immortal soul."
And then the witch laughed so loud and so disgustingly that the toad and
the snakes fell to the ground and lay there wriggling.

"You are but just in time," said the witch, "for after sunrise to-morrow
I should not be able to help you till the end of another year. I will
prepare a draft for you, with which you must swim to land to-morrow
before sunrise; seat yourself there and drink it. Your tail will then
disappear, and shrink up into what men call