THE VERY END OF THE WORLD
REEPICHEEP was the only person on board besides Drinian and the two Pevensies who had noticed the Sea People. He had dived in at once when he saw the Sea King shaking his spear, for he regarded this as a sort of threat or challenge and wao have the matter out there and then. The excitement of disc that the water was now fresh had distracted his attention, and before he remembered the Sea People again Lud Drinian had taken him aside and warned him not to mention what he had seen.
As things turned out they need hardly have bothered, for by this time the Dawn Treader was gliding over a part of the sea which seemed to be uninhabited. No one except Lucy saw anything more of the People, and even she had only one shlimpse. All m on the following day they sailed in fairly shallow water and the bottom was weedy. Just before midday Lucy saw a large shoal of fishes grazing on the weed. They were all eating steadily and all moving in the same dire. "Just like a flock of sheep," thought Lucy.
Suddenly she saw a little Sea Girl of about her own age in the middle of them - a quiet, lonely-looking girl with a sort of crook in her hand. Lucy felt sure that this girl must be a shepherdess - or perhaps a fish-herdess and that the shoal was really a flock at pasture.
Both the fishes and the girl were quite close to the surface. And just as the girl, gliding in the shallow water, and Lucy, leaning over the bulwark, came opposite to one ahe girl looked up and stared straight into Lucys faeither could speak to the other and in a moment the Sea Girl dropped astern. But Lucy will never fet her face. It did not lohtened ry like those of the other Sea People. Lucy had liked that girl and she felt certain the girl had liked her. In that one moment they had somehow bee friends.
There does not seem to be much ce of their meeting again in that world or any other.
But if ever they do they will rush together with their hands held out.
After that for many days, without wind in her shrouds or foam at her bows, across a waveless sea, the Dawn Treader glided smoothly east. Every day and every hour the light became more brilliant and still they could bear it. No oe or slept and no one wao, but they drew buckets of dazzling water from the sea, strohan wine and somehow wetter, more liquid, than ordinary water, and pledged one another silently in deep draughts of it. And one or two of the sailors who had been oldish men when the voyage began now grew younger every day. Everyone on board was filled with joy aement, but not aement that made oalk. The further they sailed the less they spoke, and then almost in a whisper. The stillness of that last sea laid hold on them.
"My Lord," said Caspian to Drinian one day, "what do you see ahead?」
"Sire," said Drinian, "I see whiteness. All along the horizon from north to south, as far as my eyes reach.」
"That is what I see too," said Caspian, "and I agine what it is.」
"If we were in higher latitudes, your Majesty," said Drinian, "I would say it was ice. But it t be that; not here. All the same, wed better get men to the oars and hold the ship
back against the current. Whatever the stuff is, we dont want to crash into it at this speed!」
They did as Drinian said, and so tio go slower and slower. The whiteness did not get any less mysterious as they- approached it. If it was land it must be a very st