On one side of him sat a big skate-fish, which looked so ridiculous that Dick was afraid to stare at him long lest he should laugh out loud. He looked just like a big pie-plate, with an eye set in each side, and the funniest little wisp of a tail that you ever saw. On the other was a shark, with a gray back, white waistcoat effect, a square head, and two enormous sets of saw-like teeth. Next came a mackerel, all brown and dappled; then a bluefish, almost black in colour; then a silver salmon; then a huge-mouthed shad; then a haddock, a cod, and a porpoise which seemed to have some trouble in overcoming its desire to keep jumping all the time; then a butter-fish,—flat like a small pancake; then a short, stumpy porgie; then a bull-head, thick and dull-looking, with two little delicate horns on his ugly forehead; then a sea-trout, with the prettiest suit of orange-spotted brown and deep pink; then a swordfish, waving his sword-snout about in what looked like a very dangerous manner; then a bass, and a sunfish with fins set above and below, like enormous sun-rays. On the farther side of the great circle there were a number of even more extraordinary fish. There was an octopus, or devil-fish,—the kind that try to pull sailors out of their boats and crush them to death with their long, strong, innumerable arms; a tarpon, huge and beautiful; a cuttle-fish, floating in a sort of inky halo; and, far in the background, a monster whale. He had an appetite in keeping with his size, and the Old Witch of the Sea had to take him fifty shells of tea before he was even sufficiently satisfied to blow his thanks in a great spurt of foaming water. Dick also noticed a number of green lobsters and crabs of all sizes, and scattered about on the ground were masses of oysters, clams, mussels, and scollops,—their small round shells making the prettiest sort of a pattern in blue, gray, and black. Then, too, there were countless eels, wriggling their long grayish-green snaky bodies through the water on all sides. But after a while all the sea-weed tea was drunk, and even the whale swam lumberingly away, and all the smaller fishes wriggled their thanks to the Witch and departed likewise, and Dick was left quite alone with his hostess. “And now,” said the Old Witch of the Sea, “what can I do for you, little mortal boy?” Dick explained his trouble, and asked her if she could not possibly help him to reach the surface of the water and continue his journey to the City of the Wicked King. “No,” said the Witch, shaking her head thoughtfully. “I am wise and old,—oh, very, very old, indeed! But I cannot help you in this. But I can take you to someone who _can_ help you; only you must come with me obediently, and do everything that I tell you to, and not stop to talk with the sea-folk on your way.”