feeble voice:

"I'm sure I don't know; I've lost my way. I meant to go 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 coast-guardsmen 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,