"The Wonders of the Last Sea
And The Very End of the World"
by C.S. Lewis, from "The Voyage of the
Dawn Treader"
"Where the waves grow sweet, Doubt not, Reepicheep, There is the
utter East"
... The King took the bucket in both hands, raised it to his lips, sipped,
drank deeply and raised his head. His face was changed. Not only his eyes
but everything about him seemed to be brighter.
"Yes", he said, "it is sweet. That's real water,
that. I'm not sure it isn't going to kill me. But it is the death
I would have chosen - if I'd known about it till now."
"What do you mean?" said Edmund.
"It's like light more than anything else, said Caspian.
"That's what it is" said Reepicheep. "Drinkable light.
We must be very near the end of the world now."
There was a moment's silence and then Lucy knelt down on the deck
and drank from the bucket.
"It's the loveliest thing I have ever tasted" she said with
a kind of gasp.
"But oh - it's strong. We shan't need to *eat* anything now."
And one by one everybody on board drank. And for a long time they were
all silent. They felt almost too well and strong to bear it; and presently
they began to notice another result ... there had been too much light
... the sun too large (though not too hot), the sea too bright, the air
too shining. Now the light grew no less - if anything it increased - but
they could bear it.
They could look straight up at the sun without blinking. They could
see more light than they had ever seen before. And the deck and the sail
and their own faces and bodies became brighter and brighter and every
rope shone.
... 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 one ate and slept and no one wanted to, but they drew buckets of
dazzling water from the sea, stronger than 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 and excitement, but not an excitement that made one talk.
The further they sailed the less they spoke, and then almost in a whisper.
The stillness of that last sea laid hold of them.
... if their eyes had not by now grown as strong as eagles' the
sun on all that whiteness - especially in early morning when the sun was
hugest - would have been unbearable. And every evening the same whiteness
made the daylight last longer. There seemed no end to the lilies.
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