The Steadfast Tin Soldier

There were once twenty-five tin soldiers, all brothers, made out of the same old tin spoon. They carried their muskets on their shoulders, and their uniforms were red and blue. The first words they ever heard were “Tin soldiers!” called by a little boy who clapped his hands as the lid came off their birthday box. Every soldier was like the rest but one: he had been poured last, the tin ran short, and he had only one leg. He stood on it as firmly as the others stood on two.

On the same table stood a paper castle, with a looking-glass lake and wax swans before it. Prettiest of all was a tiny lady in the open castle door, cut out of paper too, in a dress of fine muslin with a glittering tinsel rose as big as her whole face. She was a dancer, and she lifted one leg so high behind her that the tin soldier could not find it at all, and he thought she had only one leg, like him.

“There is the wife for me,” he thought. “But she is grand and lives in a castle, and I have only a box with twenty-four brothers in it. Still, I must make her acquaintance.” So he lay down behind a snuff-box and watched her stand on one leg without losing her balance.

In the evening the other soldiers were shut in their box and the house went to bed. Then the toys began their own games. Only two never moved: the dancer on the tip of one toe, and the soldier on his one leg, who did not take his eyes off her.

The clock struck twelve, and pop! the lid of the snuff-box flew open. Inside there was no snuff, but a little black goblin.

“Tin soldier,” said the goblin, “kindly keep your eyes to yourself.”

The tin soldier pretended not to hear.

“Very well. Wait until tomorrow,” said the goblin.

In the morning the children set him on the windowsill. Whether it was the goblin or the draught nobody knows, but the window blew open and out he went, head over heels, from the third floor. He landed upside down, his bayonet wedged between the paving stones and his one leg in the air.

The maid and the little boy came down to look for him. They nearly trod on him and still did not see him. If he had called out, “Here I am!” they would have found him, but he would not shout while he wore his uniform.

Then it rained hard, and when the shower had passed, two boys came along the street.

“Look!” said one of them. “There is a tin soldier. He shall go sailing.”

They folded a boat out of a newspaper, set him in the middle of it and sent him off down the gutter. The boat pitched and spun until the tin soldier trembled, yet he stood firm, looked straight ahead and held his musket. Then the boat shot in under a long bridge over the gutter, and it was as dark as inside his box.

“Where am I going now?” he thought. “This is the goblin’s doing. If the little lady were here in the boat with me, it could be twice as dark for all I would care.”

Just then a great water rat came out from under the bridge.

“Where is your passport?” asked the rat. “Hand it over.”

The soldier said nothing and held his musket tighter than ever. The boat rushed on and the rat came after it, calling to the sticks and the straw, “Stop him! He has not paid the toll, and he has not shown his pass!”

Where the bridge ended the soldier could see daylight, and he heard a roaring that would frighten the bravest man alive, for there the gutter poured over a steep edge into a great canal. The boat swept out, spun round three times, four times, and filled to the brim. Deeper and deeper it sank, and softer and softer went the wet paper, until the water closed over his head. He thought of the little dancer he would never see again, and in his ears there sounded the words of a song:

Farewell, farewell, my soldier brave,The water bears you to your grave.

Then the paper came apart, the soldier sank, and a great fish swallowed him up.

Oh, how dark it was inside the fish! But the tin soldier stayed steadfast and lay at full length with his musket on his shoulder. At last the light shone in, and a voice cried, “The tin soldier!” The fish had been caught and sold at the market, and in the kitchen the cook opened it with a large knife and carried the soldier into the room.

They stood him on the table, and what strange things happen in this world! He was in the very same room he had fallen out of, and there was the castle with the little dancer in the doorway, still balanced on one leg. She had been steadfast too. It moved him so much that he could almost have wept tin tears, but he held them back, and neither of them said a word.

Then one of the children of the house picked the soldier up and threw him into the stove, and gave no reason for it. It must surely have been the goblin in the snuff-box.

The tin soldier stood in the light of the flames and felt a terrible heat, though whether it came from the fire or from love he could not tell. He looked at the little lady, she looked at him, and he felt himself melting, but still he stood steadfast with his musket on his shoulder. Then a door flew open, the draught caught the dancer, and she flew like a sylph into the stove to the tin soldier, flared up and was gone. He melted down into a lump, and the next morning, when the maid raked out the ashes, she found him in the shape of a little tin heart. Of the dancer nothing was left but the tinsel rose, burnt black as a cinder.