"Bless the child!" cried Uncle Andy. "Whatever has been putting swordfish into your head?" "Bill!" replied the Babe truthfully. "And what do you know about swordfish, then?" proceeded his uncle. The Babe was much flattered at the unusual favor of being allowed to air his information. "They're awful!" he explained. "They're as big as a canoe. And they've got a sword as long as your leg, Uncle Andy, right in their tail, so they can stab whales and porpoises with it, just carelessly, without looking round, so as to make pretend it was an accident. And they're quicker than greased lightning, Bill says. So you see, if there was one here in the lake, we couldn't ever go in swimming." Uncle Andy refrained from smiling. He puffed thoughtfully at his pipe for half a minute, while the Babe waited for his verdict. At length he said, between puffs: "Well, now, there's quite a lot of truth in that, considering that it's one of Bill's yarns. The swordfish does carry a sword. And he does jab it into things, whales, sharks, boats, seals, anything whatever that he thinks might be good to eat or that he does not like the looks of. And _you_ are quite correct in thinking that the lake would not be a health-resort for us if it was occupied by a healthy swordfish. But in one particular Bill has got you badly mixed up. The swordfish carries his sword not in his tail, but on the tip of his snout more like a bayonet than a sword. I don't think Bill has ever been at all intimate with swordfish--eh, what?" The Babe shook his blonde head sadly over this instance of Bill's inaccuracy. "And are they as big as Bill says?" he inquired. "Oh, yes! He's all right _there_!" assented Uncle Andy. "When they are quite grown up they are sometimes as long as a canoe, a seventeen or eighteen foot canoe. And they _are_ quick as 'greased lightning' all right!" "But how big are they when they're little?" pursued the Babe, getting around to his favorite line of investigation. "Well now, that depends on how little you take them!" answered Uncle Andy. "As they are hatched out of tiny, pearly eggs no bigger than a white currant, which the little silver crabs can play marbles with on the white sand of the sea-bottom till they get tired of the game and eat them up, you've got a lot of sizes to choose from in a growing sword-fish." "I don't mean when they're so very little," answered the Babe, who did not find things just hatched very interesting. "I see," said Uncle Andy, understandingly. "Of course when they are first hatched, and for a long time afterwards, they are kept so busy trying to avoid getting eaten up by their enemies that I don't suppose one in ten thousand or so ever manages to survive to the stage where he begins to make things interesting for his enemies in turn. But _then_ things begin to hum." "Tell me how they hum!" said the Babe eagerly, his eyes round with anticipation.