Down—down—down he went, and passed a shoal of big fishes who made dreadful faces at him as he whizzed by. Suddenly, before he had entirely grasped what had happened to him, he found himself on solid ground again, at the bottom of the sea, rather jarred but otherwise unhurt, and was staring at the oddest sort of creature that he had ever seen. This Creature was sitting just in front of him, in a sort of cave, lined with sea-shells and pink and white coral. On every side was growing sea-grass of scarlet and purple and green, and there were also sea-flowers and waving weeds of all kinds and colours. Quivering jelly-fish of pink and orange floated through the dim water, and star-fish lay about upon the pale, deep-sea sand. Sword-fish, porpoises, and other ocean things peered in upon the scene, with their queer, fixed goggle eyes. The light seemed to be filtered through a deep green shade. The Creature himself was shaped like a man, but he was covered completely with silver-green scales, and had hair like long, lank sea-weed. His eyes were as cold and pale and glassy as those of the fishes, and his expression, slight as it was, was entirely disagreeable. “This is most annoying,” he remarked, surveying Dick. “What are you?” “Do you mean ‘Who are you?’” asked Dick. “No,” said the Creature. “_What!_” “Oh!” said Dick. “I am a little boy.” “I never heard of it,” said the Creature. “I don’t think I like you. You may go!” “Certainly!” replied Dick, meekly. “Do—do you mind telling me how?” “I don’t care,” said the Creature. After that, conversation stopped for a while, and they merely stared at each other in silence. At last the Scaled One spoke again, this time very crossly: “Why don’t you go?” “I’d be _very_ glad to!” said poor Dick. “But you see, I don’t know how to go. Would it be too much trouble for you to tell me how to get to the City of the Wicked King?” “_What!_” roared the Creature, so suddenly and violently that Dick jumped. “_I_ tell anyone anything about the Wicked King? Don’t you know that he is the deadliest enemy that I have?” “Why, no!” answered Dick, a little disturbed by this outburst. “Won’t you tell me about it, please?” His new acquaintance looked fiercely at him for a moment, and then became suddenly plunged in utter melancholy. “Ah!” he sighed, while a tear oozed out of his eye and made a bubble in the green water, “’tis a sad tale! Listen, and hear the sorrowful story of the Sea Kobold!” “Is that you?” asked Dick. “Who else?” said the Scaly Creature. Then in mournful tones he began: “I am the Sea Kobold. I own this sea, and everything in it. Once I owned the surface of the sea too, but that was long ago. I owned the pretty green waves with silver crests, that break in the bright daytime, and the big black ones that come at night in the dark of the moon. And I owned too the little pink ones that you see at sunset, when the West is burning up all the horrid things that have happened during the day.