The ark swayed easily on a sea not too rough. The saloon passengers staggered to their cabins. And silence reigned in the ark. * * * * * * I am sorry to say that the Pretenderette dropped the wicker cage containing the parrot into the sea--an unpardonable piece of cruelty and revenge; unpardonable, that is, unless you consider that she did not really know any better. The Hippogriff's white wings swept on; Philip, now laid across the knees of the Pretenderette (a most undignified attitude for any boy, and I hope none of you may be placed in such a position), screamed as the cage struck the water, and, 'Oh, Polly!' he cried. 'All right,' the parrot answered; 'keep your pecker up!' 'What did it say?' the Pretenderette asked. 'Something about peck,' said Philip upside down. 'Ah!' said the Pretenderette with satisfaction, 'he won't do any more pecking for some time to come.' And the wide Hippogriff wings swept on over the wide sea. Polly's cage fell and floated. And it floated alone till the dawn, when, with wheelings and waftings and cries, the gulls came from far and near to see what this new strange thing might be that bobbed up and down in their waters in the light of the new-born day. 'Hullo!' said Polly in bird-talk, clinging upside down to the top bars of the cage. 'Hullo, yourself,' replied the eldest gull; 'what's up? And who are you? And what are you doing in that unnatural lobster pot?' 'I conjure you,' said the parrot earnestly, 'I conjure you by our common birdhood to help me in my misfortune.' 'No gull who _is_ a gull can resist that appeal,' said the master of the sea birds; 'what can we do, brother-bird?' 'The matter is urgent,' said Polly, but quite calmly. 'I am getting very wet and I dislike salt water. It is bad for my plumage. May I give an order to your followers, bird-brother?' 'Give,' said the master gull, with a graceful wheel and whirl of his splendid wings. 'Let four of my brothers raise this detested trap high above the waves,' said the parrot, 'and let others of you, with your brave strong beaks, break through the bars and set me free.' 'Delighted,' said the master gull; 'any little thing, you know,' and his own high-bred beak was the first to take hold of the cage, which presently the gulls lifted in the air and broke through, setting the parrot free. 'Thank you, brother-birds,' the parrot said, shaking wet wings and spreading them; 'one good turn deserves another. The beach yonder was white with cockles but yesterday.' 'Thank you, brother-bird,' they all said, and flew fleetly cocklewards. And that was how the parrot got free from the cage and went back to the shore to have that little talk with the blugraiwee which I told you about in the last chapter. * * * * * *