Well, but the thing I was going to tell you was this.

One of the men said to him he had heard that the greenness of the Greenland Sea was caused by the little things like small bits of jelly on which the whales feed.

As soon as he heard this he got a bucket and hauled some sea-water aboard, and for the next ten days he was never done working away with the sea-water; pouring it into tumblers and glasses; looking through it by daylight and by lamplight; tasting it, and boiling it, and examining it with a microscope." "What's a microscope ?" enquired one of the men.
"Don't you know ?" said Tom Lokins, "why, it's a glass that makes little things seem big, when ye look through it.

I've heerd that say beasts that are so uncommon small you that can't see them at all are made to come into sight and look quite big by means o' this glass.

But I can't myself say that it's true." "But I can," said Fred, "for I have seen it with my own eyes.