Oh, no, Mister Sailorman, and Mister Deckhand.  No, no!  I had seen and felt quite enough of being on land, thank you, to last me all the rest of my life.  And as the Dolphin family is very long lived, I hope that many years of sweet, delicious freedom, and enjoyment of my native element, are yet before me.

And if there was a great king of the Dolphins, as there must be a great Friend of the Folks, that guides our affairs, I would send him a letter a yard long, full of thanks for my freedom.  It may be there is such a king, but real knowledge of such things is way beyond me.

I saw strange craft as I boomed along, always giving them a wide berth.  And such fishes!  Did you ever see an angel-fish?  Don’t ever wish to if you haven’t.  It ought to be called evil spirit fish.  In appearance it is one of the quaintest, ugliest creatures that swims the sea.  Some Folks call it monk-fish.  It is all of four feet long, has fierce, goggly eyes, and a round, wicked-looking head, that seems nearly separated from the rest of its thick body by a thin, short neck.  Then such a vicious-looking tail!  Oh, you had better keep clear of an angel-fish.

A toad-fish looked like an enormous, swimming toad.  Bless me!  I caught sight of a shark as I came well out into the ocean.  He was more than twenty feet long.  Think of that!  But they are thirty feet sometimes.  His great, fleshy, powerful tail takes him along as he looks from side to side for his prey.  I saw his pointed nose and his rows of awful teeth, one over another.

There are sharks that can bite a man in halves.  Once in awhile we see a shark in our Mediterranean, but they do not abound there.  Yet now and then Mister Diver-man has had to rush for his life to reach the friendly ladder when the disturbance under water to right and left has warned him that one of these sea-monsters was approaching.  Oh, they are dreadful creatures, and greedy, too.  They will follow vessels for miles and miles, expecting that cast-off food will be thrown into the sea, as it often is.  Their instinct tells them that food is likely to drop from vessels, and it does, indeed.

I also saw a sea-snipe, or trumpet-fish, but, oho, without a tooth!  He made me think of a scorpion that has a poisonous, dangerous tail.

I came upon a funny sight while still in the Atlantic Ocean.  A whole school of whales went rushing along in a body, and pretty soon I saw what it meant.  Then it was more funny for me than for the poor whales.  Some whalers, men who go out in vessels to catch these enormous fishes for their flesh, their oil, and their bones, were banging great heavy pieces of tin of iron against stones, so frightening the whales that they crowded in a body into a little creek or inlet.

This was just what the whalers wanted them to do.  Because, once in the narrow place, so many of them could not escape, and it became easy to capture them.  Men-Folks do really know a very great deal.  It makes me afraid of them.