See if you like:  but don’t get in the way.  Remember you are but a little boy.

What is it? a snake with a bird’s head?

No:  a snake has no fins; and look at its beak:  it is full of little teeth, which no bird has.  But a very curious fellow he is, nevertheless:  and his name is Gar-fish.  Some call him Green-bone, because his bones are green.

But what kind of fish is he?  He is like nothing I ever saw.

I believe he is nearest to a pike, though his backbone is different from a pike, and from all other known fishes.

But is he not very rare?

Oh no:  he comes to Devonshire and Cornwall with the mackerel, as he has come here; and in calm weather he will swim on the top of the water, and play about, and catch flies, and stand bolt upright with his long nose in the air; and when the fisher-boys throw him a stick, he will jump over it again and again, and play with it in the most ridiculous way.

And what will they do with him?

Cut him up for bait, I suppose, for he is not very good to eat.

Certainly, he does smell very nasty.

Have you only just found out that?  Sometimes when I have caught one, he has made the boat smell so that I was glad to throw him overboard, and so he saved his life by his nastiness.  But they will catch plenty of mackerel now; for where he is they are; and where they are, perhaps the whale will be; for we are now well outside the harbour, and running across the open bay; and lucky for you that there are no rollers coming in from the Atlantic, and spouting up those cliffs in columns of white foam.

* * * * *

“Hoch!”

Ah!  Who was that coughed just behind the ship?

Who, indeed? look round and see.

There is nobody.  There could not be in the sea.

Look—­there, a quarter of a mile away.

Oh!  What is that turning over in the water, like a great black wheel? 
And a great tooth on it, and—­oh! it is gone!

Never mind.  It will soon show itself again.

But what was it?

The whale:  one of them, at least; for the men say there are two different ones about the bay.  That black wheel was part of his back, as he turned down; and the tooth on it was his back-fin.

But the noise, like a giant’s cough?

Rather like the blast of a locomotive just starting.  That was his breath.

What? as loud as that?

Why not?  He is a very big fellow, and has big lungs.

How big is he?

I cannot say:  perhaps thirty or forty feet long.  We shall be able to see better soon.  He will come up again, and very likely nearer us, where those birds are.

I don’t want him to come any nearer.

You really need not be afraid.  He is quite harmless.

But he might run against the yacht.

He might:  and so might a hundred things happen which never do.  But I never heard of one of these whales running against a vessel; so I suppose he has sense enough to know that the yacht is no concern of his, and to keep out of its way.