er from a crowd on shore.

"Silly Rabba and Ali Rabba, don't forget to bring back the moon," they
cried. "Find out where it goes when it is not here."

Soon the land was out of sight, and scudding before favorable breezes
the ship made good progress. In ten days it had reached a sea in which
no vessel had ever sailed before. Ali said he could tell this because
the fishes behaved queerly. They poked their heads out of the water
to gaze at the ship and then darted swiftly out of sight again. It was
quite plain that they had never before seen a ship, and they evidently
mistook it for some strange sea monster. Every day the fishes grew
larger, but no land was sighted until another five days had passed.
Then a desert island appeared straight ahead, and the captain steered
toward it. A few blades of grass grew here and there, and Rabba
determined to land and explore the island.

Accompanied by his faithful Ali, he entered a small boat and was rowed
to the shore. They found a few vegetables growing that they had never
seen before, and so, collecting twigs from the short, stumpy bushes,
they made a fire to cook them. While the vegetables were cooking they
looked around.

"It seems a vast land," said Rabba, "and yet over there, about three
or four miles away, I think I see water."

"I think so, too," said Ali. "This must be the width of the land, but
in the other directions I can see no end. But hark! What sound is
that?"

"'Tis like the rumbling of an earthquake," said Rabba, "and I am sure
I felt the ground move. Indeed, it seems to me as if it is heaving up
and down, like a living thing."

A shout from the boat caused them to look in that direction, and they
saw their comrades pointing wildly and calling upon them to come back.
Looking in the direction indicated, they saw the land rise up like a
huge mountain and a tremendous stream of water gush forth.

"This is not land; this is a whale," cried Rabba, in alarm. "Our fire
has wakened it from slumber. Let us hasten to the ship before the
monster plunges and drowns us."

They hurried back to the boat and boarded the ship just as the whale
began to move. It sank below the waves to quench the fire on its back,
but it rose again, and then the vessel found itself in a new danger.
It was lying between the body of the monster and one of its fins.

"Let me take command," said Ali. "I know best how to act in times of
danger like this. We must avoid being struck by the fin,