Well, the old gentleman rabbit could swim a little bit, you know, and the grasshopper could float on his back as nicely as a fat man can, and together they had a very good time. It was so warm that the water didn't make Uncle Wiggily's rheumatism any worse, I'm glad to say.
Then, after a bit, the grasshopper said he thought he'd take a little hop on the sand to dry off, and that left Uncle Wiggily alone in the water. And now comes the second part of the story.
The old gentleman rabbit was swimming slowly along, looking down under the waves every once in a while to see if there was any gold on the sand beneath, when, all of a sudden, he felt something grab hold of his left hind leg.
"Oh, my! I wonder if that's the bad lobster again?" cried the rabbit, and then he saw a most curious fish, called the toggle-taggle, and this fish had hold of him.
"Oh, please let go of me!" cried the rabbit.
"No, indeed, I will not," said the toggle-taggle, speaking under water, and making a lot of bubbles come up from his breath. "I am going to drag you off to my den beneath the rocks."
"Oh, don't be so cruel!" begged the rabbit. "If you do that I can never find my fortune, and I never can go back and see Sammie and Susie Littletail again."
"That makes no difference to me at all," said the toggle-taggle, speaking in a thin, watery sort of voice, "no matter of difference at all. Here we go!" and he started to drag poor Uncle Wiggily to the bottom of the ocean, under the rocks.
"Ha! I guess I'm not going as easily as that!" cried the rabbit, and at once he began to swim as hard as he could toward land, and Uncle Wiggily could swim pretty well when he tried, let me tell you. This time he swam so hard that he pulled the toggle-taggle fish along with him, and in a second or two Uncle Wiggily was out on the sand, but the toggle-taggle still had hold of him.
"Dry land or water is all the same to me!" cried the odd fish, and then the rabbit saw that the toggle-taggle had legs, as well as fins and a tail, and so he could walk on dry land. "Now you come with me!" cried the bad fish, and he braced with his legs in the sand and was pulling the rabbit back into the water again.