to the
Chesapeake, and I'm afraid I've 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
coastguardsmen 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 winked at Tom: but he never could
get them to speak. They had eaten so many herrings that they were quite
stupid; and Tom was glad when a collier brig came by and frightened them
all away; for they did smell most horribly, certainly, and he had to
hold his nose tight as long as they were there.

And then there came by a beautiful creature, like a ribbon of pure
silver with a sharp head and very long teeth; but it seemed very sick
and sad. Sometimes it rolled helpless on its side; and then it dashed
away glittering like white fire; and then it lay sick again and
motionless.

"Where do you come from?" asked Tom. "And why are _you_ so sick and
sad?"

"I come from the warm Carolinas, and the sandbanks fringed with pines;
where the great owl-rays leap and flap, like giant bats, upon the tide.
But I wandered north and north, upon the treacherous warm gulf-stream,
till I met with the cold icebergs, afloat in the mid ocean. So I got
tangled among the icebergs, and chilled with their fr