“I’m Birdling, and the Shrimps are my crew.”
The Little Dipper was surrounded by the ships of pearl, and as the sea was quiet and the wind very low they could talk from deck to deck. The oldest one of the fairy captains was a Brownie named Trick. He was seven hundred years old, and knew about everything from the North Pole to the great Antarctic.
“We are going to the Fairy Islands with a cargo of ants’-eggs,” he told Birdling, “Our King likes to eat them poached, or fried, or scrambled, on his breakfast toast. We would do anything to cheer up the King.”
“Why does the King need cheering up?” Birdling inquired sympathetically. “I thought Kings were always happy.”
“Oh no, no, no, our Fairy King is very unhappy. His little son has been kidnapped by Shag.”
“Who is Shag?”
Trick shook his head and rolled his eyes at Birdling’s ignorance.
“What! You have sailed the Sea for fully half a week, and don’t know who Shag is? Ask your crew!”
But the Shrimps did not know about Shag, either. They were not very clever, you know, and had not gone to school.