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.