CHAPTER IX
The elder Flying Fish loses one eye, and the Hen finds it: The Historian wakes up, and Smaly and Redy run out of the house: The Healer mends the paw of the Confectioner.
The Flying-Fish upon their perches now began to shake their wings and then their paws, and last of all their heads.
"Are we really awake?" asked the elder Flying-Fish of the younger.
"It seems to me that we are more or less shaken up," replied the little Flying-Fish.
The two Fish prepared themselves to fly forthwith once more upon their arduous duties, for the Flying-Fish in this country act as sentinels and look-out men, and also cry the hours publicly.
Just as they were about to set off the little Flying-Fish noticed that the other had lost an eye.
"That must have been when I shook my head," exclaimed the elder Flying-Fish with conviction, and both flew down on to the floor to look for the missing eye. The Hen joined them in their search, and as she fluttered down she managed to upset a glass retort from which an opalescent vapour began to escape.
Soon the whole laboratory was filled with this vapour in layer upon layer of different colours, from deep rose at the base up through violet and pale green to a layer of no colour at all, which was succeeded by a layer of blue.