The crab that played with the sea

he said. `Now, let me try,` and he made a Magic with his left handwith just the little finger of his left handandlo 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 softsoft 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, all soft as I am now, though I may be safe, I can never stir out to get my food, and so I shall die.` Then he waved his legs and lamented.
`Listen, Pau Amma,` said the Eldest Magician. `I cannot make you play the play you were meant to play, because you escaped me at the Very Beginning; but if you choose, I can make every stone and every hole and every bunch of weed in all the seas a safe Pusat Tasek for you and your children for always.`
Then Pau Amma said, `That is good, but I do not choose yet. Look! there is that Man who talked to you at the Very Beginning. If he had not taken up your attention I should not have grown tired of waiting and run away, and all this would never have happened. What will he do for me?`
And the Man said, `If you choose, I will make a Magic, so that both the deep water and the dry ground will be a home for you and your childrenso that you shall be able to hide both on the land and in the sea.`
And Pau Amma said, `I do not choose yet. Look! there is that girl who saw me running away at the Very Beginning. If she had spoken then, the Eldest Magician would have called me back, and all this would never have happened. What will she do for me?`
And the little girl-daughter said, `This is a good nut that I am eating. If you choose, I will make a Magic and I will give you this pair of scissors, very sharp and strong, so that you and your children can eat cocoa-nuts like this all day long when you come up from the Sea to the land; or you can dig a Pusat Tasek for yourself with the scissors that belong to you when there is no stone or hole near by; and when the earth is too hard, by the help of these same scissors you can run up a tree.`
And Pau Amma said, `I do not choose yet, for, all soft as I am, these gifts would not help me. Give me back my shell, O Eldest Magician, and then I will play your play.`
And the Eldest Magician said, `I will give it back, Pau Amma, for eleven months of the year; but on the twelfth month of every year it shall grow soft again, to remind you and all your children that I can make magics, and to keep you humble, Pau Amma; for I see that if you can run both under the water and on land, you will grow too bold; and if you can climb trees and crack nuts and dig holes with your scissors, you will grow too greedy, Pau Amma.`
Then Pau Amma thought a little and said, `I have made my choice. I will take all the gifts.`
Then the Eldest Magician made a Magic with the right hand, with all five fingers of his right hand, and lo and behold, Best Beloved, Pau Amma grew smaller and smaller and smaller, till at last there was only a little green crab swimming in the water alongside the canoe, crying in a very small voice, `Give me the scissors!`
And the girl-daughter picked him up on the palm of her little brown hand, and sat him in the bottom of the canoe and gave him her scissors, and he waved them in his little arms, and opened them and shut them and snapped them, and said, `I can eat nuts. I can crack shells. I can dig holes. I can climb trees. I can breathe in the dry air, and I can find a safe Pusat Tasek under every stone. I did not know I was so important. Kun?` (Is this right?)
`Payah-kun,` said the Eldest Magician, and he laughed and gave him his blessing; and little Pau Amma scuttled over the side of the canoe into the water; and he was so tiny that he could have hidden under the shadow of a dry leaf on land or of a dead shell at the bottom of the sea.
`Was that well done?` said the Eldest Magician.
`Yes,` said the Man. `But now we must go back to Perak, and that is a weary way to paddle. If we had waited till Pau Amma had gone out of Pusat Tasek and come home, the water would have carried us there by itself.`
`You are lazy,` said the Eldest Magician. `So your children shall be lazy. They shall be the laziest people in the world. They shall be called the Malazythe lazy people;` and he held up his finger to the Moon and said, `O Fisherman, here is the Man too lazy to row home. Pull his canoe home with your line, Fisherman.`
`No,` said the Man. `If I am to be lazy all my days, let the Sea work for me twice a day for ever. That will save paddling.`
And the Eldest Magician laughed and said, `Payah kun` (That is right).
And the Rat of the Moon stopped biting the line; and the Fisherman let his line down till it touched the Sea, and he pulled the whole deep Sea along, past the Island of Bintang, past Singapore, past Malacca, past Selangor, till the canoe whirled into the mouth of the Perak River again. Kun?` said the Fisherman of the Moon.
`Payah kun,` said the Eldest Magician. `See now that you pull the Sea twice a day and twice a night for ever, so that the Malazy fishermen may be saved paddling. But be careful not to do it too hard, or I shall make a magic on you as I did to Pau Amma.`
Then they all went up the Perak River and went to bed, Best Beloved.
Now listen and attend!
From that day to this the Moon has always pulled the sea up and down and made what we call the tides. Sometimes the Fisher of the Sea pulls a little too hard, and then we get spring tides; and sometimes he pulls a little too softly, and then we get what are called neap-tides; but nearly always he is careful, because of the Eldest Magician.
And Pau Amma? You can see when you go to the beach, how all Pau Amma`s babies make little Pusat Taseks for themselves under every stone and bunch of weed on the sands; you can see them waving their little scissors; and in some parts of the world they truly live on the dry land and run up the palm trees and eat cocoa-nuts, exactly as the girl-daughter promised. But once a year all Pau Ammas must shake off their hard armour and be soft-to remind them of what the Eldest Magician could do. And so it isn`t fair to kill or hunt Pau Amma`s babies just because old Pau Amma was stupidly rude a very long time ago.
Oh yes! And Pau Amma`s babies hate being taken out of their little Pusat Taseks and brought home in pickle-bottles. That is why they nip you with their scissors, and it serves you right!