“Good morning, Stubbins,” said he. “Going to be a nice day, don’t you think? I’ve just been listening to the Wiff-Waff. But he is very disappointing—very.”
“Why?” I said. “Didn’t you find that he has any language at all?”
“Oh yes,” said the Doctor, “he has a language. But it is such a poor language—only a few words, like ‘yes’ and ‘no’—‘hot’ and ‘cold.’ That’s all he can say. It’s very disappointing. You see he really belongs to two different families of fishes. I thought he was going to be tremendously helpful—Well, well!”
“I suppose,” said I, “that means he hasn’t very much sense—if his language is only two or three words?”
“Yes, I suppose it does. Possibly it is the kind of life he leads. You see, they are very rare now, these Wiff-Waffs—very rare and very solitary. They swim around in the deepest parts of the ocean entirely by themselves—always alone. So I presume they really don’t need to talk much.”
“Perhaps some kind of a bigger shellfish would talk more,” I said. “After all, he is very small, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” said the Doctor, “that’s true. Oh I have no doubt that there are shellfish who are good talkers—not the least doubt. But the big shellfish—the biggest of them, are so hard to catch. They are only to be found in the deep parts of the sea; and as they don’t swim very much, but just crawl along the floor of the ocean most of the time, they are very seldom taken in nets. I do wish I could find some way of going down to the bottom of the sea. I could learn a lot if I could only do that. But we are forgetting all about breakfast—Have you had breakfast yet, Stubbins?”
I told the Doctor that I had forgotten all about it and he at once led the way into the kitchen.
“Yes,” he said, as he poured the hot water from the kettle into the tea-pot, “if a man could only manage to get right down to the bottom of the sea, and live there a while, he would discover some wonderful things—things that people have never dreamed of.”
“But men do go down, don’t they?” I asked—“divers and people like that?”