For some moments I detected nothing at all—except, with my dry ear, the heavy breathing of the Doctor as he waited, all stiff and anxious, for me to say something. At last from within the water, sounding like a child singing miles and miles away, I heard an unbelievably thin, small voice.
“Ah!” I said.
“What is it?” asked the Doctor in a hoarse, trembly whisper. “What does he say?”
“I can’t quite make it out,” I said. “It’s mostly in some strange fish language—Oh, but wait a minute!—Yes, now I get it—‘No smoking’.... ‘My, here’s a queer one!’ ‘Popcorn and picture postcards here’.... ‘This way out’.... ‘Don’t spit’—What funny things to say, Doctor!—Oh, but wait!—Now he’s whistling the tune.”
“What tune is it?” gasped the Doctor.
“John Peel.”
“Ah hah,” cried the Doctor, “that’s what I made it out to be.” And he wrote furiously in his note-book.
I went on listening.
“This is most extraordinary,” the Doctor kept muttering to himself as his pencil went wiggling over the page—“Most extraordinary—but frightfully thrilling. I wonder where he—”
“Here’s some more,” I cried—“some more English.... ‘The big tank needs cleaning’.... That’s all. Now he’s talking fish-talk again.”