Something moving came through the water, something so huge that to the tiny Barnacle its side was like the side of a world. It was a whale, but Bobby was not afraid. As it slowly lifted its great body through the waves he made his way to it and clung on with all his strength. The whale plunged on his mighty way to colder seas, bearing his little unfelt rider with him. "Hurrah!" said Bobby. "Now I shall still travel on, without being obliged to do my own swimming." A more wonderful change than ever before came over him. A tiny bag of cement opened from his head and glued him to the whale's skin. Six strong shells grew round him in an acorn ring, exactly like those of his mother's shell-house on the rock. Four more grew into a door. When he opened the door he could shoot out his twelve curled legs and kick his food down into his mouth in the shell-house. So there he was, living head down and toes up on the whale, and glued so tightly that he could never fall off. He was grown-up now. All his changes were over. His appetite came back, and he went travelling easily and comfortably with the whale. For all you or I know to the contrary, his roving life may be still going on. IV.--LITTLE STARFISH He floated in the depths of the cool salt sea, an egg so small as to remain unnoticed and undevoured. Later, he hatched into a queer-shaped creature, not at all like a starfish, rather like a lump of jelly, with a thick end pushed out here and there. He swam and ate, and grew larger every day. From the sea-food he ate his wonderful little body had power to draw minute particles of lime and build them into a star-shaped framework within itself. Slowly the firm star grew, spreading its rays on every side, and absorbing into itself the soft walls of his earlier body, until at last he was a starfish. He was strangely made. His mouth was underneath the middle of his body, a small red eye lay at the tip of each ray-arm. His legs, scores of them, were small and white, and could be pushed out or drawn in at will from his ray-arms. Drawing in sea water through narrow passages in his body, he could fill these legs and make them firm, and so crawl up the steepest rocks or creep slowly over the smooth sea-floor. When he did not wish to walk he drew the water from his legs and tucked them up inside his arms. The last foot of each ray-arm was at once his nose and finger, for by it he smelt and felt. On his back were spines, some of them snapping in the sea like scissor-blades, to keep his skin clean and free from parasites. He roamed slowly here and there in search of food. Companies of brother starfishes went with him. They were a hungry crowd, and so numerous that soon there was very little left to eat in their valley of the sea. "I shall travel," said Little Starfish. "Perhaps I shall find a better feeding-place."