‘You’re just looking for trouble,’ said the Carp. ‘Well, here you are!’
Above them in the clear water hung a delicious-looking worm. Kenneth Boy did not like worms any better than you do, but to Kenneth Fish that worm looked most tempting and delightful.
‘Just wait a sec.,’ he said, ‘till I get that worm.’
‘You little silly,’ said the Carp, ‘that’s the hook. Take it.’
‘Wait a sec.,’ said Kenneth again.
His courage was beginning to ooze out of his fin tips, and a shiver ran down him from gills to tail.
‘If you once begin to think about a hook you never take it,’ said the Carp.
[p256]
‘Never?’ said Kenneth ‘Then … oh! good-bye!’ he cried desperately, and snapped at the worm. A sharp pain ran through his head and he felt himself drawn up into the air, that stifling, choking, husky, thick stuff in which fish cannot breathe. And as he swung in the air the dreadful thought came to him, ‘Suppose I don’t turn into a boy again? Suppose I keep being a fish?’ And then he wished he hadn’t. But it was too late to wish that.
Everything grew quite dark, only inside his head there seemed to be a light. There was a wild, rushing, buzzing noise, then something in his head seemed to break and he knew no more.
* * * * *