ndy ground stretched out to the
whirlpool, where the water, like foaming mill-wheels, whirled round
everything that it seized, and cast it into the fathomless deep.
Through the midst of these crushing whirlpools the little mermaid
was obliged to pass, to reach the dominions of the sea witch; and also
for a long distance the only road lay right across a quantity of warm,
bubbling mire, called by the witch her turfmoor. Beyond this stood her
house, in the centre of a strange forest, in which all the trees and
flowers were polypi, half animals and half plants; they looked like
serpents with a hundred heads growing out of the ground. The
branches were long slimy arms, with fingers like flexible 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, and she
was very nearly 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
might not seize hold of it. She laid her hands together across her
bosom, and then she 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 each held in its grasp
something it had seized with its numerous little arms, as if they were
iron bands. The white skeletons of human beings who had perished at
sea, and had sunk down into the deep waters, skeletons of land
animals, oars, rudders, and chests of ships were lying tightly grasped
by their clinging arms; 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
with 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 a piece 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, and it