It was really a fish; but it was also a hobgoblin, nightmare, and ooze-croaker!—if you know what that is!
I had never seen a live toadfish before, and it is small wonder that I sighed with relief to see that he had unhooked himself; for he looked not only uncanny, but also dangerous! He was slimy all over, with a tremendous head and a more tremendous mouth (if that could be), with jaws studded on the inside with rows of sharp teeth, and fringed on the outside with folds of loose skin and tentacles. Great glaring eyes stared at me, with ragged bits of skin hanging in a ring about them.
Ugly? Oh, worse than ugly? Two thirds of the monster was head; the rest, a weak, shapeless, slimy something with fins and tail, giving the creature the appearance of one whose brain had grown at the expense of the rest of his body, making him only a kind of living head.
I looked at him. He looked at me, and croaked.
“I don’t understand you,” said I, and he croaked again. “But you are alive,” said I; “and God made you, and therefore you ought not to look so ugly to me,” and he flapped in the burning sun and croaked again.
Stooping quickly, I seized him, crowded him back into the old shoe, and dipped him under water. He gasped with new life and croaked again.
“Now,” said I, “I begin to understand you. That croak means that you are glad to taste salt water again”; and he croaked again, and I dipped him in again.
Then I looked him over thoughtfully. He was about fifteen inches long, brown in color, and coarsely marbled with a darker hue, which ran along the fins in irregular wavy lines.
“You are odd, certainly, and peculiar, and altogether homely,” said I; “but really you are not very ugly. Ugly? No, you are not ugly. How could anybody be ugly with a countenance so wise and learned?—so thoughtful and meditative?” And the toadfish croaked and croaked again. And I dipped him in again, and understood him better, and liked him better all the time.
Then I took him in his shoe to the edge of the wharf.