THE WILD MAN
with the wife and children—don't say you won't." "But, Madam," I answered, "I am waiting for your promise to see the little one home." "My dear Sir," she replied at last, growing rather red in the face, "I can give you nothing of the kind, and must really refer you to the whale who captured me a little while ago, and only released me because I promised to procure him a lobster, which I persuaded him would be much more digestible and less bilious than I should prove to be as a meal."
'I now went in search of the whale, whom I discovered disporting himself in the sea a very little way from the shore. Taking my shoes and stockings off, I waded as near to him as I dared, and to conciliate him right off I wore as benignant an expression as I could assume and thus addressed him: "Of one thing I am convinced," said I, "and it is that you are the last person in all the world who would willingly give pain to anything,—least of all to a baby oyster." "Quite so, quite so," snorted the whale, "and what is more I never have and, upon my soul, I never will." "Bravo, good resolution," cried I, and then in moving terms I explained the situation and urged him to take the blue pointlet back to its mother on receiving it from the conger eel. "What is this you say," roared the whale; "do you mean to tell me that in exchange for her own fat self that villainous conger-eel now offers me a baby oyster instead of the promised lobster? Is it for this gross insult that I allowed her to resume 178
