, and the
waters shall never be still.'

And the Eldest Magician said, 'I cannot make you play the play you were
meant to play, Pau Amma, because you escaped me at the Very Beginning;
but if you are not afraid, come up and we will talk about it.'

'I am not afraid,' said Pau Amma, and he rose to the top of the sea in
the moonlight. There was nobody in the world so big as Pau Amma--for he
was the King Crab of all Crabs. Not a common Crab, but a King Crab. One
side of his great shell touched the beach at Sarawak; the other
touched the beach at Pahang; and he was taller than the smoke of three
volcanoes! As he rose up through the branches of the Wonderful Tree he
tore off one of the great twin fruits--the magic double kernelled nuts
that make people young,--and the little girl-daughter saw it bobbing
alongside the canoe, and pulled it in and began to pick out the soft
eyes of it with her little golden scissors.

'Now,' said the Magician, 'make a Magic, Pau Amma, to show that you are
really important.'

Pau Amma rolled his eyes and waved his legs, but he could only stir up
the Sea, because, though he was a King Crab, he was nothing more than a
Crab, and the Eldest Magician laughed.

'You are not so important after all, Pau Amma,' he said. 'Now, let
me try,' and he made a Magic with his left hand--with just the little
finger of his left hand--and--lo and behold, Best Beloved, Pau Amma's
hard, blue-green-black shell fell off him as a husk falls off a
cocoa-nut, and Pau Amma was left all soft--soft as the little crabs that
you sometimes find on the beach, Best Beloved.

'Indeed, you are very important,' said the Eldest Magician. 'Shall I ask
the Man here to cut you with kris? Shall I send for Raja Moyang Kaban,
the King of the Elephants, to pierce you with his tusks, or shall I call
Raja Abdullah, the King of the Crocodiles, to bite you?'

And Pau Amma said, 'I am ashamed! Give me back my hard shell and let me
go back to Pusat Tasek, and I will only stir out once a day and once a
night to get my food.'

And the Eldest Magician said, 'No, Pau Amma, I will not give you back
your shell, for you will grow bigger and prouder and stronger, and
perhaps you will forget your promise, and you will play with the Sea
once more.

Then Pau Amma said, 'What shall I do? I am so big that I can only hide
in Pusat Tasek, and if I go anywhere else, all soft as I am now, the
sharks and the dogfish will eat me. And if I go to Pusat Tasek