CHAPTER VII.


WHAT I SAW ONE DAY

Now I do not know how brave an English lord may be or how much it may
take to scare him, but I, Lord Dolphin, inhabitant of the great
Mediterranean Sea, was scared nearly out of my wits and skin by the
sight I saw one day.

But there is this to comfort me: if I was a coward at the sight, there
were plenty of other creatures in the sea to keep me company. Mercy on
us! Such a scuttling and rushing, such a whisking and a whacking, flying
and plunging, I for one never saw before. There was actually a chorus of
flapping fins and thumping tails as we raced for our lives.

Was it a steam-engine or a monster boiler that was coming right down
from upper regions into our midst? Or, had some new sea-monster fallen
from the skies to drive us from our hunting and fishing grounds?

We knew something about sea-lions, the huge creature that you may have
seen at the Zoo, or in a tank at the park, lifting itself like an
enormous sea-horse, and roaring like the animal whose name it bears. But
a sea-lion would not have cut through the water from way above. It would
have come steering along like a great black vessel, puffing and blowing,
while all the time it would have been a creature of the sea, and we
should have known it, and not have been so terrified.