WELL, now that he was started once more upon his old hobby of the shellfish languages, there was no stopping the Doctor. He worked right through the night.
 
A little after midnight I fell asleep in a chair; about two in the morning Bumpo fell asleep at the wheel; and for five hours the Curlew was allowed to drift where she liked. But still John Dolittle worked on, trying his hardest to understand the fidgit’s language, struggling to make the fidgit understand him.
 
When I woke up it was broad daylight again. The Doctor was still at the listening-tank, looking as tired as an and dreadfully wet. But on his face there was a proud and happy smile.
 
“Stubbins,” he said as soon as he saw me stir, “I’ve done it. I’ve got the key to the fidgit’s language. It’s a frightfully difficult language—quite different from anything I ever heard. The only thing it reminds me of—slightly—is ancient Hebrew. It isn’t shellfish; but it’s a big step towards it. Now, the next thing, I want you to take a pencil and a fresh notebook and write down everything I say. The fidgit has promised to tell me the story of his life. I will translate it into English and you put it down in the book. Are you ready?”
 
Once more the Doctor lowered his ear beneath the level of the water; and as he began to speak, I started to write. And this is the story that the fidgit told us.
 
THIRTEEN MONTHS IN AN
“I was born in the Pacific Ocean, close to the coast of Chile. I was one of a family of two-thousand five-hundred and ten. Soon after our mother and father left us, we youngsters got . The family was broken up—by a of whales who chased us. I and my sister, Clippa (she was my favorite sister) had a very narrow escape for our lives. As a rule, whales are not very hard to get away from if you are good at dodging—if you’ve only got a quick . But this one that came after Clippa and myself was a very mean whale. Every time he lost us under a stone or something he’d come back and hunt and hunt till he routed us out into the open again. I never saw such a nasty, .
 
“Well, we shook him at last—though not before he had worried us for hundreds of miles , up the west coast of South America. But luck was against us that day. While we were resting and trying to get our breath, another family of fidgits came rushing by, shouting, ‘Come on! Swim for your lives! The dog-fish are coming!’
 
“Now dog-fish are particularly fond of fidgits. We are, you might say, their favorite food—and for that reason we always keep away from deep, muddy waters. What’s more, dog-fish are not easy to escape from; they are terribly fast and clever hunters. So up we had to jump and on again.
 
“After we had gone a few more hundred miles we looked back and saw that the dog-fish were gaining on us. So we turned into a harbor. It happened to be one on the west coast of the United States. Here we guessed, and hoped, the dog-fish would not be likely to follow us. As it happened, they didn’t even see us turn in, but dashed on northward and we never saw them again. I hope they froze to death in the Arctic Seas.
 
“But, as I said, luck was against us that day. While I and my sister were cruising gently round the ships anchored in the harbor looking for orange-peels, a great with us—! Bang!—we were caught in a net.
 
“We struggled for all we were worth; but it was no use. The net was small-meshed and strongly made. Kicking and we were hauled up the side of the ship and dumped down on the deck, high and dry in a blazing noon-day sun.
 
“Here a couple of old men in whiskers and spectacles leant over us, making strange sounds. Some codling had got caught in the net the same time as we were. These the old men threw back into the sea; but us they seemed to think very precious. They put us carefully into a large jar and after they had taken us on shore they went to a big house and changed us from the jar into glass boxes full of water. This house was on the edge of the harbor; and a small stream of sea-water was made to flow through the glass tank so we could breathe properly. Of course we had never lived inside glass walls before; and at first we kept on trying to swim through them and got our noses sore bumping the glass at full speed.
 
“Then followed weeks and weeks of weary idleness. They treated us well, so far as they knew how. The old fellows in spectacles came and looked at us proudly twice a day and saw that we had the proper food to eat, the right amount of light and that the water was not too hot or too cold. But oh, the dullness of that life! It seemed we were a kind of a show. At a certain hour every morning the big doors of the house were thrown open and everybody in the city who had nothing special to do came in and looked at us. There were other tanks filled with different kinds of fishes all round the walls of the big room. And the crowds would go from tank to tank, looking in at us through the glass—with their mouths open, like half-witted flounders. We got so sick of it that we used to open our mouths back at them; and this they seemed to think highly comical.
 
“One day my sister said to me, ‘Think you, Brother, that these strange creatures who have captured us can talk?’
 
“‘Surely,’ said I, ‘have you not noticed that some talk with the lips only, some with the whole face, and yet others with the hands? When they come quite close to the glass you can hear them. Listen!’
 
“At that moment a female, larger than the rest, pressed her nose up against the glass, at me and said to her young behind her, ‘Oh, look, here’s a queer one!’
 
“And then we noticed that they nearly always said this when they looked in. And for a long time we thought that such was the whole extent of the language, this being a people of but few ideas. To help pass away the weary hours we learned it by heart, ‘Oh, look, here’s a queer one!’ But we never got to know what it meant. Other phrases, however, we did get the meaning of; and we even learned to read a little in man-talk. Many big signs there were, set up upon the walls; and when we saw that the keepers stopped the people from spitting and smoking, pointed to these signs angrily and read them out loud, we knew then that these writings signified, No Smoking and Don’t Spit.
 
“Then in the evenings, after the crowd had gone, the same male with one leg of wood, swept up the peanut-shells with a broom every night. And while he was so doing he always whistled the same to himself. This melody we rather liked; and we learned that too by heart—thinking it was part of the language.
 
“Thus a whole year went by in this place. Some days new fishes were brought in to the other tanks; and other days old fishes were taken out. At first we had hoped we would only be kept here for a while, and that after we had been looked at we would be returned to freedom and the sea. But as month after month went by, and we were left undisturbed, our hearts grew heavy within our prison-walls of glass and we to one another less and less.
 
“One day, when the crowd was thickest in the big room, a woman with a red face fainted from the heat. I watched through the glass and saw that the rest of the people got highly excited—though to me it did not seem to be a matter of very great importance. They threw cold water on her and carried her out into the open air.
 
“This made me think ; and presently a great idea burst upon me.
 
“‘Sister,’ I said, turning to poor Clippa who was sulking at the bottom of our prison trying to hide behind a stone from the stupid gaze of the children who about our tank, ‘supposing that we pretended we were sick: do you think they would take us also from this house?’
 
“‘Brother,’ said she wearily, ‘that they might do. But most likely they would throw us on a rubbish-heap, where we would die in the hot sun.’
 
“‘But,’ said I, ‘why should they go abroad to seek a rubbish-heap, when the harbor is so close? While we were being brought here I saw men throwing their rubbish into the water. If they would only throw us also there, we could quickly reach the sea.’
 
“‘The Sea!’ murmured poor Clippa with a far-away look in her eyes (she had fine eyes, had my sister, Clippa). ‘How like a dream it sounds—the Sea! Oh brother, will we ever swim in it again, think you? Every night as I lie awake on the floor of this evil-smelling I hear its voice ringing in my ears. How I have longed for it! Just to feel it once again, the nice, big, of it all! To jump, just to jump from the of an Atlantic wave, laughing in the trade wind’s spindrift, down into the blue-green trough! To chase the on a summer evening, when the sky is red and the light’s all pink within the ! To lie on the top, in the doldrums’ noonday calm, and warm your tummy in the tropic sun! To wander hand in hand once more through the giant seaweed forests of the Indian Ocean, seeking the delicious eggs of the pop-pop! To play hide-and-seek among the castles of the coral towns with their pearl and jasper windows spangling the floor of the Spanish Main! To picnic in the anemone-meadows, dim blue and lilac-gray, that lie in the lowlands beyond the South Sea Garden! To throw somersaults on the springy sponge-beds of the Mexican ! To about among the dead ships and see what wonders and adventures lie inside!—And then, on winter nights when the Northeaster whips the water into froth, to swoop down and down to get away from the cold, down to where the water’s warm and dark, down and still down, till we spy the twinkle of the fire-eels far below where our friends and cousins sit chatting round the Council Grotto—chatting, Brother, over the news and gossip of the Sea!... Oh—’
 
“And then she broke down completely, sniffling.
 
&............