Pim Puts the Sea to Bed

On Button Island there were nine houses, one harbour wall, and one goat. The goat’s name was Sock. In the smallest house lived a boy named Pim, who was about seven, and who was the only person on the whole island who could put his boots on the right feet. Even then, only sometimes. He was very bad at boots and very good at being kind to cross things, and of the two, I think being kind to cross things is the harder trick.

Now, for a week, nobody on Button Island had slept.

That was the sea’s fault. All night long the sea shoved the boats about, and the boats banged the harbour wall, and the harbour wall said bong like a bad bell. The fishermen were tired. The bakers were tired. Sock the goat was so tired he had stopped chewing things, which for a goat is nearly the end of the world.

And on the seventh night, Pim woke up, and put on one boot, and went out to see about it.

Now, you might think the sea cannot be tired. You have not met this sea.

Pim stood on the harbour wall in the dark and looked at it, and the sea looked back. It had two eyes, which were two round black rocks out past the moorings, and the rocks shut and opened again, slowly, the way eyes do. Then the sea yawned. It was a long wet yawn that went on for a while and fogged up all the windows in all nine houses at once.

“Not sleepy,” said the sea. There were words right there in the grumble of it, if you listened. “I am NOT sleepy.”

And it flopped a wave over the harbour wall, the way you flop your arm off the side of the bed when somebody has just told you it is bedtime.

Pim wrung the water out of his sleeve.

“You are,” he said. “You’ve got the crossness. That’s how I know.”

“NOT,” said the sea, and banged three boats.

Well. Pim thought about what people did for him when he was like that, and he decided to start with singing, because Mom sang.

So Pim sang. He sang the one about the duck who lost his hat, which was the only song he knew all the way through. He sang it in his best soft voice, and he patted the air with his hand to keep it slow.

The sea liked it enormously. That was the trouble. The sea joined in. The sea sang along in a great wet booming voice with no tune anywhere in it. It got louder, and it got wetter, and it threw a wave up so high that Pim had to hold on to a post. When it was finished it said, “AGAIN.”

“That did not work,” said Pim, and squelched.

Next he tried counting sheep, because Mom always said, if you can’t sleep, count sheep.

There were no sheep on Button Island. There was Sock.

Pim fetched Sock out of the shed and stood him on the harbour wall in the moonlight, and said, “Right. One sheep.”

“That is a goat,” said the sea.

“Tonight he’s a sheep,” said Pim.

“It is a GOAT,” said the sea, and heaved itself half up out of the harbour to get a proper look, which is a thing you very much do not want the sea to do. “It has a beard. It has the wrong eyes. Sheep do not look at you like that.”

Sock, who had been called a sheep in front of everybody, was deeply offended, and lay straight down with his back to the sea. In three minutes he was asleep.

Everyone was asleep except the sea, which was now wide awake and arguing about livestock.

“That did not work either,” said Pim.

So Pim sat down on the cold wet wall and thought hard, and what he thought was this: what does Mom do?

And then he knew.

First, Mom says you have had enough for today. So Pim said it. “You’ve had enough for today,” he told the sea. “You’ve been going since Tuesday. No wonder.”

The sea did not say anything. It sloshed a bit, in a sulky way, but it did not say anything, and that is always a good sign.

Second, Mom pulls the blanket up. So Pim went down the slippery steps and took hold of the long brown seaweed that lay in the shallows, and he pulled. It was heavy and it smelled tremendous. He dragged it up over the water in the harbour and spread it out flat, all the way to the corners, tucking it round the edges the way you tuck a blanket round a foot.

“There,” said Pim.

The sea’s rock eyes went shut. Then, halfway, open. Just checking.

Third, Mom tells a story. And here is the important part, and I want you to remember it, because it is the great secret of getting anybody to sleep: the story must be boring. Mom’s stories were about counting the buttons in the button tin, and they were so boring that Pim had never once heard the end of one.

So Pim told the sea about the button tin.

“There is a black button,” he said, “and there is another black button. There is a brown button with four holes. There is a brown button with two holes. There is a button off Dad’s coat. There is a white button, and there is a white button, and there is a white button, and there is a button shaped like a small flat fish, and nobody knows where that one came from.”

The sea gave a very small yawn.

Fourth and last, Mom rubs your back. So Pim knelt down on the bottom step and put his hand flat on the water, and patted it. Round and round and round, slow, the way Mom did. The water went flat under his hand and stayed flat, and the flat spread out across the harbour, and out past the moorings, and out and out into the dark.

And Pim said the four words that Mom says.

“I’ve got you, love.”

“Not sleepy,” said the sea.

“I’ve got you, love,” said Pim, quieter.

“Not... sleepy,” said the sea.

“I’ve got you, love,” said Pim, quieter still.

And the sea yawned one more time, a small one, and said “Not sleepy” so faintly that it was mostly bubbles, and went to sleep.

It lay flat as a plate. It snored, the way the sea snores, in slow flat swells that push and pull and push. The boats stopped banging. Sock slept standing up, which he had got up in his sleep to do. All nine houses slept.

And Pim went home along the harbour wall with one boot on and the other boot full of stars. He had dipped that boot in the water while he was patting, and they had got in. They sat in the boot like small wet coins. He tipped them out on the doorstep so they could find their way back up, and they did, slowly, one at a time.

Then he went in, and Mom was awake, and she was not one bit surprised about the boot.

She put him in bed and rubbed his back, round and round and round.

“I’ve got you, love,” said Mom.

And Pim slept the whole night through, and so did the sea.

The end.