WHAT I SAW ONE DAY

Now I do not know how brave an English lord may be or how much it may take to scare him, but I, Lord Dolphin, inhabitant of the great Mediterranean Sea, was scared nearly out of my wits and skin by the sight I saw one day.

But there is this to comfort me:  if I was a coward at the sight, there were plenty of other creatures in the sea to keep me company.  Mercy on us!  Such a scuttling and rushing, such a whisking and a whacking, flying and plunging, I for one never saw before.  There was actually a chorus of flapping fins and thumping tails as we raced for our lives.

Was it a steam-engine or a monster boiler that was coming right down from upper regions into our midst?  Or, had some new sea-monster fallen from the skies to drive us from our hunting and fishing grounds?

We knew something about sea-lions, the huge creature that you may have seen at the Zoo, or in a tank at the park, lifting itself like an enormous sea-horse, and roaring like the animal whose name it bears.  But a sea-lion would not have cut through the water from way above.  It would have come steering along like a great black vessel, puffing and blowing, while all the time it would have been a creature of the sea, and we should have known it, and not have been so terrified.

Or, had a whale come bearing down from upper waters, as they sometimes do, there would have been a disturbance first, made by the spouting and slashing that our instinct at once would have told us came from some monster of the deep.

Or, again, had it been the hulk of a vessel that could not stand some violent storm, oh, yes, we should have known what that was, too.  But now, off tore the fishes, mad with terror, big fishes, little fishes, fat fellows, lean fellows, pleasant ones, and grumblers.

I laughed, yes, with all my fright I had to laugh at such a funny sight.  I was behind what Folks call “whole schools of fishes,” only they speak of “a school of fish,” meaning many of one kind, but the madcap crowd I looked upon was made up of almost every size and sort.

[Illustration:  “Off tore the fishes, mad with terror”]

I saw a porpoise—­porpus—­my enormous cousin, all of fifteen feet long, crowd in midst a multitude of swift little swimmers, as if he meant to make them help in spinning him through the water faster than he could go by himself.  Then on the back of another Dolphin, I saw a crowd of little fishes that seemed so stiff with fear, they had been knowing enough to cling to the back of the great fish, making a boat of him to bear them to a place of safety.

Paddling sideways, I caught a glimpse of the flying-fish that had been my tormentor.  All at once I stopped short.

Now they say that some Folks are very curious.  I do not mean that they are odd or amusing to look at.  But they have curiosity, and want to peer and pry into things.  It is not at all nice to want to find out all about other Folks’ affairs.  It belongs to a poor, mean nature to want to do that.  But to want to inquire into matters for the sake of getting true knowledge is right and worthy even for a fish.