Sea Maiden 24 Willow by Robert Kline

Sea Maiden 24 Willow by Robert Kline

How do mermaids reproduce?

While struggling in the embrace of unbridled villainy, Edmund C. Roberts managed to solve an ages old mystery. He had asked the question of himself as recently as the previous fore night. His grandfather, Sir Edmund Roberts had repeatedly posed the question and was unable to discover it’s answer, and his great, great, great grandfather, the pirate lord, Samuel Edmund Roberts had broached the dilemma in his journal in the 1600’s. “The question be, you Sea Maiden, she cavorts in the company of ‘er one mate fer life, an’ tho time an’ again we seen her in the company of a’ Sea Babies, still, it don’ seem clearlike how she goes about makin’ a wee one.” Sir Edmund Roberts’ 1834 query was even more to the point, “One confronts the enigma with caution, though science poses it again and again. The anatomical features of your basic female Sea Maiden, while obviously and gloriously equipped for nursing, offer no hint as to how any postulated union of Sea Master and Sea Maiden is affected. (Sir Edmund then offers the only explanation he can imagine) Perhaps it is a spontaneous regeneration, the mechanics therein asexual in nature, the details of which leaving this learned scientist in a sustained quandary.”
But the recent problems involving re-coaling the Baci Finale left the youngest Roberts (Edmund C.) becalmed. With some coal remaining in the ship’s bunker he steamed a bit further up the California coast and dropped anchor in a secluded bay. There he spent over a week mumbling to himself and growling at the stowaway triplets. Fear allowed him no more then bland, faraway looks in the direction of his naturalist companion, Dr. Marie Gebeaux. She accompanied him in the late afternoon decent of his diving apparatus, the atmosphere in the cramped vessel increasingly humid and heavy with quiet.

Then she appeared, a beautiful Sea Maiden, apparently adream and drifting slowly toward them. As she neared, she withered sensually a time or too and then did the strangest thing. She moved her hands to just above her waist and deliberately and carefully pushed them downward against her tummy. The topmost edge of her lavender tail slid down, wherein she hooked her thumbs behind it and actually a bit inside, and further moved it down. She withered again, smiled briefly and then proceeded to reveal that the fleshy portion of her upper body actually extended under her lavender sheath of her fish-like lower half, until low and behold, unanswered questions became obvious.

In exquisite detail she revealed herself to be more human in nature than any had dared to dream. Dr. Gebeaux whispered, “Unbelievable: homo sapien in all particulars.” Edmund C. attempted to avert his eyes. “Heaven above,” he marveled, “and apparently below, also,” he added after a pause. Whereupon, remembering his companion, he cleared his throat as if to reclaim his last words. And although he speaks of the discovery in his journal, the bottom third of the entry is torn free and removed. Weather it speaks of the remainder of the encounter or perhaps a sketch is unknown.

Oh mystery of life, solved at last, the upper portion of his journal reads. Beautiful Sea Maiden sighted. Attractive in her entirety. We now understand and appreciate so much more of life under the sea. Am eternally grateful the discovery was female.

This beautiful Sea Maiden illustration is from a collection of Sea Maidens (mermaids), Sea Babies (mermaid babies), Sea Masters (merman), pirates and fairies created by renowned artist and novelist Robert Kline of St. Augustine, Florida. The illustrations are from Robert’s novel The Forgotten Voyage of H.M.S. Baci in which the Sea Captain, Sir Edmund Roberts describes in his log, his various Sea Maiden, Sea Baby and Sea Master sightings. This illustration is available for purchase in the following matted sizes: 5″ x 7″, 8″ x 10″, 11″ x 14″ and an 11″ x 17″ that comes unmatted on a piece of 1/4″ foam board.

Purchase prints here

Sea Maiden 3 Becky with Sailfish

Sea Maiden art by Robert Kline

The following is an excerpt from Roberts book The forgotten voyage of the HMS Baci.

Edmund C. Roberts luxuriated in the blowing prop wash and the smell of burning castor oil. He was off the coast of South America and about 100 feet above the cold, gently rolling Pacific. The Bleriot XI aeroplane in which he flew was barely such, it being a fragile construct of sticks and wood and wire and rubberized cloth dragged forward by a wildly spinning engine (advanced engineering dictating that optimum performance was achieved by bolting the propeller to the engine and allowing the whole mess to twirl itself violently at the fore if the craft; thus providing the lightest and most oiled horsepower available in 1912. The aeroplane was loud, smelly and delicate, but it was his, and he was, indeed, flying. Which was the only time he was happy. On the ground he was haunted by memories of parental abandonment and his inability to tolerant female companionship for more than one phase of the moon. He detested children, large and small alike. If they were joyous he begrudged them their happy childhood and if not, they painfully reminded him of his own. Worse still, he wasn’t even uncomfortable in the company of men. He found no solace in drink for he couldn’t hold his alcohol and quickly became a whining, maudlin drunk. At sea he was usually sick, often green and unsteady, a constant friend of any available rail from whose safety he could cast into the vast ocean his last, churning meal. Even his sleep was fitful and plagued with bad dreams. Fortunately though, he was wealthy beyond words and therefore spared the crushing finale indignity of being miserable and poor. But aloft, as he maintained a respectful distance from those below, Edmund C. Roberts suckled the soft, fulfilling breast of the only peace he knew. He could fly when only a handful of others were able, and in that he reveled. A natural at the controls, Edmund C. coaxed airworthiness from his reluctant craft with a cautious, though unconscious ballet of hands and feet. His mind was free and happy, his spirits lifted at least as high as his body.
Such was his state as he scanned the ocean below. Looking down was easily accomplished in a Bleriot XI, for there was no floor and barely two feet of canvas at each side of his waist. He sat suspended in a tiny wicker basket of a chair, his downward view obstructed only by his own body and the tiny wheel at the top of the control stick. And what a view he had! The long swells were broken again and again by huge fish jumping from the depths and scores of sea maidens slowly surfacing and rolling about in a most sensual manner. Though a part of him wished to remain aloft, Edmund C. noted suitable landmarks on the shore and hurried back to the Baci Finale. His landing was short of disaster and within hours the wonderful ship steamed to the afore-observed bay. His diving apparatus was lowered and within moments the explorer had his fourth intimate observation of a sea maiden.
She wafted by in the company of a magnificent sailfish, he slowly circling her as she balanced in stasis, her wrists nearly crossed behind her. "Indeed," Edmund muttered, for he had studies enough to know she was demonstrating her subservience to the will of nature, symbolically placing herself at the center of a dance whose direction she would never lead."

His notebook reads:
Maidenous subservus istiophorus “Becky” Sighted off Gran Columbia, South America August 23, 1912

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