THE WATER BABIES
got wrong somehow. Dear me! it was all by following that pleasant warm water. I'm sure I've lost my way."
And when Tom asked him again, he could only answer, "I've lost my way. Don't talk to me; I want to think."
But, like a good many other people, the more he tried to think the less he could think; and Tom saw him blundering about all day, till the coastguardsman saw his big fin above the water, and rowed out, and struck a boat-hook into him, and took him away. They took him up to the town and showed him for a penny a head, and made a good day's work of it. But of course Tom did not know that.
Then there came by a shoal of porpoises, rolling as they went—papas, and mammas, and little children—and all quite smooth and shiny, because the fairies french-polish them every morning; and they sighed so softly as they came by, that Tom took courage to speak to them: but all they answered was "Hush, hush, hush"; for that was all they had learnt to say.
And then there came a shoal of basking sharks, some of them as long as a boat, and Tom was frightened at them. But they were very lazy, good-natured fellows, not greedy tyrants, like white sharks, and blue sharks, and ground sharks, and hammer-heads, who eat men, or saw-fish, and threshers, and ice-sharks, who hunt the poor old whales. They came and rubbed their great sides against the buoy, and lay basking in the sun with their back fins out of water; and
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