“It is a sword-fish, children; a monster of a dangerous species, and of extreme voracity.  If, by way of reciprocity, the fish have a museum at the bottom of the sea, they will have some fine specimens of the human race that have become the prey of this creature; and it may be that we were on the way to join the collection.”

“Did you observe the formidable dentilated horn?”

“It is by means of this horn or sword, from which it takes its name, that it wages a continual war with the whale, whose only mode of escape is by flourishing its enormous tail; but the sword-fish, being very agile, easily avoids this, bounds into the air as Fritz saw it doing just now, then, falling down upon its huge adversary, pierces him with its sword.”

“By the way, talking about the whale,” said Jack, “all naturalists seem agreed, and we ourselves are convinced from our own observation, that its throat is very narrow, and that it can only swallow molluscs, or very small fishes—­what, in that case, becomes of the history of Jonah?”

“It is rather unfortunate,” replied Becker, “that the whale has been associated with this miracle.  There is now no possibility of separating the whale from Jonah, or Jonah from the whale; yet, in the Greek translation of the Chaldean text, there is Ketos—­in the Latin, there is Cete—­and both these words were understood by the ancients to signify a fish of enormous size, but not the whale in particular.  The shark, for example, can swallow a man, and even a horse, without mangling it.”

“I have heard,” said Jack, “of navigators who have landed on the back of a whale, and walked about on it, supposing it a small island.”

“There is nothing impossible about that,” observed Willis.

“One thing is certain, that we had just now within reach a sea monster who has carried off four leaden bullets in his body without seeming to be in the least inconvenienced by them; on the contrary, he seemed to move all the quicker for the dose.”

“Life is a very different thing with those fellows than with us.  The carp is said to live two hundred years, and it is supposed that a whale might live for ten centuries if the harpoon did not come in the way to shorten the period.”

“Ah!” exclaimed Willis, with a sigh that might have moved a train of waggons, “these fellows have no cares.”

“And the ephemeride, that dies an instant after its birth, do you suppose that it dies of grief?”

“Who knows, Master Jack?”

“The ephemeride does not die so quickly as you think,” said Becker; “it commences by living three years under water in the form of a maggot.  It afterwards becomes amphibious, when it has a horny covering, on which the rudiments of wings may be observed.  Then, four or five months after this first metamorphosis, generally in the month of August, it issues from its skin, almost as rapidly as we throw off a jacket; attached to the rejected skin are the teeth, lips, horns, and all the apparatus that the creature required as a water insect; then it is no sooner winged, gay, and beautiful, than, as you observe, it dies—­hence it is called the day-fly, its existence being terminated by the shades of night.”