Remember you are but a little boy.
What is it?
a snake with a bird's head?
No: a snake has no fins; and look at its beak: it is full of little teeth, which no bird has.

But a very curious fellow he is, nevertheless: and his name is Gar-fish.

Some call him Green-bone, because his bones are green.
But what kind of fish is he?
He is like nothing I ever saw.
I believe he is nearest to a pike, though his backbone is different from a pike, and from all other known fishes.
But is he not very rare?
Oh no: he comes to Devonshire and Cornwall with the mackerel, as he has come here; and in calm weather he will swim on the top of the water, and play about, and catch flies, and stand bolt upright with his long nose in the air; and when the fisher-boys throw him a stick, he will jump over it again and again, and play with it in the most ridiculous way.
And what will they do with him?
Cut him up for bait, I suppose, for he is not very good to eat.
Certainly, he does smell very nasty.
Have you only just found out that?
Sometimes when I have caught one, he has made the boat smell so that I was glad to throw him overboard, and so he saved his life by his nastiness.

But they will catch plenty of mackerel now; for where he is they are; and where they are, perhaps the whale will be; for we are now well outside the harbour, and running across the open bay; and lucky for you that there are no rollers coming in from the Atlantic, and spouting up those cliffs in columns of white foam.
* * * * * "Hoch!" Ah! Who was that coughed just behind the ship?
Who, indeed?
look round and see.
There is nobody.

There could not be in the sea.
Look--there, a quarter of a mile away.
Oh! What is that turning over in the water, like a great black wheel?
And a great tooth on it, and--oh! it is gone! Never mind.