“Ah!” I said.

“What is it?” asked the Doctor in a hoarse, trembly whisper.  “What does he say?”

“I can’t quite make it out,” I said.  “It’s mostly in some strange fish language—­Oh, but wait a minute!—­Yes, now I get it—­’No smoking’. . . .  ‘My, here’s a queer one!’ ’Popcorn and picture postcards here .. . . . .  This way out .. . . . .  Don’t spit’—­What funny things to say, Doctor!—­Oh, but wait!—­ Now he’s whistling the tune.”

“What tune is it?” gasped the Doctor.

“John Peel.”

“Ah hah,” cried the Doctor, “that’s what I made it out to be.”  And he wrote furiously in his note-book.

I went on listening.

“This is most extraordinary,” the Doctor kept muttering to himself as his pencil went wiggling over the page—­“Most extraordinary—­ but frightfully thrilling.  I wonder where he—­”

“Here’s some more,” I cried—­“some more English. . . .  ’The big tank needs cleaning’....  That’s all.  Now he’s talking fish-talk again.”

“The big tank!” the Doctor murmured frowning in a puzzled kind of way.  “I wonder where on earth he learned—­”

Then he bounded up out of his chair.

“I have it,” he yelled, “this fish has escaped from an aquarium.  Why, of course!  Look at the kind of things he has learned:  ’Picture postcards’—­they always sell them in aquariums; ’Don’t spit’; ‘No smoking’; ’This way out’—­the things the attendants say.  And then, ‘My, here’s a queer one!’ That’s the kind of thing that people exclaim when they look into the tanks.  It all fits.  There’s no doubt about it, Stubbins:  we have here a fish who has escaped from captivity.  And it’s quite possible—­ not certain, by any means, but quite possible—­that I may now, through him, be able to establish communication with the shellfish.  This is a great piece of luck.”

THE SECOND CHAPTER

THE FIDGIT’S STORY

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 standing at the listening-tank, looking as tired as an owl 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?”