One of the men answered:
“He would say, a healthy stomach had got him in more trouble than a fish who had the dyspepsia too bad to eat.”
The men all laughed in the most hearty manner. The conceit was a good one, and another of the party put in:
“If he could speak he would say: ‘I tried to hook your bait, and, alas! you hooked me.’”
A third chipped in.
“He’d say: ‘Better an empty stomach than a treacherous meal.’” And so the jokes went on, one saying:
“He’d say: ‘I wish I’d been too full for utterance, and then I’d have let your bait go by.’”
Each joke received the laughter it deserved, and finally the man who had offered the first suggestion projected his query again with the remark:
“It would be a big thing to hear that fish express his thoughts.”
At that instant there sounded a strange flapping like the sound of a bird in its flight.