“But you may be ashamed,” began Globicephalous.
“Please forget that. Now listen to me. You are a servant, and you can’t have studied much. Still you may know this: Mr. Tursio does not want me to call him a fish. What is he, if not a fish?”
“Do you think Mr. Tursio would dare tell a lie to such an important personage as you are?” said Globicephalous, who was having some fun all by himself. “Neither Mr. Tursio nor Master Marsovino should be called fish. Nor I either, for that matter.”
“What are you, then? Birds? You have about their shape, and you live in the water. I know that in the sea there are only fish.”
“But you are mistaken. To many animals that live in the sea you cannot give the name fish,” continued Globicephalous. “Fish have a flat body, wedge-shaped fore and aft, as the sailors say, so that they may move rapidly both forward and backward. They are each provided with fins and a tail. These fins and the tail enable the fish to swim about in the water. Some fish have only a few fins, others have more. Then the fish has no lungs. It breathes in the water by means of gills. These are the chief characteristics of fish. But in the sea are many animals which do not possess them.”
“Please explain yourself,” said Pinocchio, who had understood little.
“Very well. Listen. There are the cetaceans, to which belong the whales, the narwhals, and the dolphins; the amphibians, to which belong the frogs and the seals; the mollusks, which is what the little animals that live in shells are called; the crustaceans, which is the correct name for the lobsters, crayfishes, and crabs; and the zoöphytes, among which are the corals, sponges, and the many varieties of polyps. All these, you must know, are not fish.”
“What hard names!” said Pinocchio, to whose wooden head these big names meant but little. “What are you, then?”
“My masters and I are all cetaceans. We cannot stay in the water all the time. We must often come to the surface, because we need air. We have no scales like fishes nor fur like seals, but we have a smooth thick skin under which is a layer of fat.”
“Thank you. But why, if you and your masters are all dolphins, are you so unlike?”