When spring came, away the manatees swam on their way back to the pleasant river, where the baby first opened his little eyes in the cool green nursery among the lily-leaves. Of course he never knew that some sailors once saw his mother rocking him to sleep at the top of the water. They thought that she was a mermaid with a baby in her arms.
III
THE WHALE
“THE BIGGEST ONE”
THE BIGGEST ONE
He was the very biggest baby in all the world. He looked like a monstrous fish as he lay beside his mother in the middle of the bay. But he was not a fish. He breathed with lungs instead of gills. On his thick skin he had a few bristly hairs instead of scales such as fishes have. The blood rushing through the great veins in his body was warm instead of cold. And finally he was drinking milk in mighty gulps that sent gallons and gallons down his baby throat at every swallow. He was a whale, and belonged to the class of mammals.
The big body of the mother whale looked like a dark rounded island as she lay on her side almost out of water. She was the largest mother animal that ever lived. When she opened her enormous jaws her mouth seemed like a gloomy cave. Fastened along its floor was an immense cushiony white tongue as big as a feather-bed.