Animals -- Fiction; Children's stories, English; Short stories
[Illustration: THIS is the picture of the Whale swallowing the Mariner
with his infinite-resource-and-sagacity, and the raft and the jack-knife
_and_ his suspenders, which you must _not_ forget. The buttony-things
are the Mariner's suspenders, and you can see the knife close by them.
He is sitting on the raft, but it has tilted up sideways, so you don't
see much of it. The whity thing by the Mariner's left hand is a piece of
wood that he was trying to row the raft with when the Whale came along.
The piece of wood is called the jaws-of-a-gaff. The Mariner left it
outside when he went in. The Whale's name was Smiler, and the Mariner
was called Mr. Henry Albert Bivvens, A.B. The little 'Stute Fish is
hiding under the Whale's tummy, or else I would have drawn him. The
reason that the sea looks so ooshy-skooshy is because the Whale is
sucking it all into his mouth so as to suck in Mr. Henry Albert Bivvens
and the raft and the jack-knife and the suspenders. You must never
forget the suspenders.]
So he said to the 'Stute Fish, 'This man is very nubbly, and besides
he is making me hiccough. What shall I do?'
'Tell him to come out,' said the 'Stute Fish.
So the Whale called down his own throat to the shipwrecked Mariner,
'Come out and behave yourself. I've got the hiccoughs.'
'Nay, nay!' said the Mariner. 'Not so, but far otherwise. Take me to my
natal-shore and the white-cliffs-of-Albion, and I'll think about it.'
And he began to dance more than ever.
'You had better take him home,' said the 'Stute Fish to the Whale. 'I
ought to have warned you that he is a man of
infinite-resource-and-sagacity.'
[Illustration: HERE is the Whale looking for the little 'Stute Fish, who
is hiding under the Door-sills of the Equator. The little 'Stute Fish's
name was Pingle. He is hiding among the roots of the big seaweed that
grows in front of the Doors of the Equator. I have drawn the Doors of
the Equator. They are shut. They are always kept shut, because a door
ought always to be kept shut. The ropy-thing right across is the Equator
itself; and the things that look like rocks are the two giants Moar and
Koar, that keep the Equator in order. They drew the shadow-pictures on
the doors of the Equator, and they carved all those twisty fishes under
the Doors. The beaky-fish are called beaked Dolphins, and the other fish
with the queer heads are called Hammer-headed Sharks. The Whale never
found the little 'Stute Fish till he got over his temper, and then they
became good friends again.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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