gaining on us. So we turned into a harbor. It happened
to be one on the west coast of the United States. Here we guessed, and
hoped, the dog-fish would not be likely to follow us. As it happened,
they didn't even see us turn in, but dashed on northward and we never
saw them again. I hope they froze to death in the Arctic Seas.

"But, as I said, luck was against us that day. While I and my sister
were cruising gently round the ships anchored in the harbor looking for
orange-peels, a great delicacy with us---SWOOP! BANG!--we were caught in
a net.

"We struggled for all we were worth; but it was no use. The net was
small-meshed and strongly made. Kicking and flipping we were hauled
up the side of the ship and dumped down on the deck, high and dry in a
blazing noon-day sun.

"Here a couple of old men in whiskers and spectacles leant over us,
making strange sounds. Some codling had got caught in the net the same
time as we were. These the old men threw back into the sea; but us they
seemed to think very precious. They put us carefully into a large
jar and after they had taken us on shore they went to a big house and
changed us from the jar into glass boxes full of water. This house was
on the edge of the harbor; and a small stream of sea-water was made to
flow through the glass tank so we could breathe properly. Of course
we had never lived inside glass walls before; and at first we kept on
trying to swim through them and got our noses awfully sore bumping the
glass at full speed.

"Then followed weeks and weeks of weary idleness. They treated us well,
so far as they knew how. The old fellows in spectacles came and looked
at us proudly twice a day and saw that we had the proper food to eat,
the right amount of light and that the water was not too hot or too
cold. But oh, the dullness of that life! It seemed we were a kind of a
show. At a certain hour every morning the big doors of the house were
thrown open and everybody in the city who had nothing special to do came
in and looked at us. There were other tanks filled with different kinds
of fishes all round the walls of the big room. And the crowds would go
from tank to tank, looking in at us through the glass--with their mouths
open, like half-witted flounders. We got so sick of it that we used
to open our mouths back at them; and this they seemed to think highly
comical.

"One day my sister said to me, 'Think you, Brother, that these strange
creatures who have captur