Now is Jonas the Jwe jugged to drowne.
“A wylde walteande whale” comes up opportunely to the side of the boat:
And swyftely swenged hym to swepe, and his swallow opened...,
With-outen towche of any tothe he tult in his throte.
In spite of his safe passage beyond the whale’s teeth, however, Jonah’s plight was not an enviable one:
Lorde! colde was his cumfort, and his care huge.
The poet describes him as passing down the throat like a “mote in at a minster door”:
He glydes in by the gills ...;
Ay, hele ouer hed, hourlande aboute,
Til he blunt [staggered] in a blok as brod as a halle;