'All right,' the parrot answered; 'keep your pecker up!'
'What did it say?' the Pretenderette asked.
'Something about peck,' said Philip upside down.
'Ah!' said the Pretenderette with satisfaction, 'he won't do any more pecking for some time to come.' And the wide Hippogriff wings swept on over the wide sea.
Polly's cage fell and floated. And it floated alone till the dawn, when, with wheelings and waftings and cries, the gulls came from far and near to see what this new strange thing might be that bobbed up and down in their waters in the light of the new-born day.
'Hullo!' said Polly in bird-talk, clinging upside down to the top bars of the cage.
'Hullo, yourself,' replied the eldest gull; 'what's up? And who are you? And what are you doing in that unnatural lobster pot?'
'I conjure you,' said the parrot earnestly, 'I conjure you by our common birdhood to help me in my misfortune.'
'No gull who is a gull can resist that appeal,' said the master of the sea birds; 'what can we do, brother-bird?'
'The matter is urgent,' said Polly, but quite calmly. 'I am getting very wet and I dislike salt water. It is bad for my plumage. May I give an order to your followers, bird-brother?'