[Illustration: "WHERE ARE YOU BOUND IN THAT SHIP?"]
"Where would we be bound at all," the King answered, "but to the
States, where the ship's bound?"
"And what are ye goin' there for?" the merrows asked again.
"Sure," said Naggeneen, "it's followin' the O'Briens and the Sullivans
we are, and it's the long way they're takin' us."
"Could you tell us what the States is like at all?" asked the King.
"Is it like Cork?"
"There's parts of them," said the man merrow, "that's more like Cork
than Cork itself, and there's other parts of them that's no more like
Cork than the sea here is like Cork Harbor."
"But are there no places there," the King asked again, "like the
country parts of Ireland, with the fields and the bogs and all?"
"I can't tell you that," the merrow answered. "We've never been far on
the land. Deep down under the sea it's the same way it is under the
sea about Ireland. There's the land at the bottom, with the sand all
fine and firm, like a floor, and there's the water above, like a green
sky, and there are the shells and the sea-flowers, and there are the
weeds that wave around you and over you, like red and green and purple
curtains to your house, and it's all as cool and as neat as any of the
sea-places around Ireland.
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