a low whistling sound, like the wind blowing through the rigging of a
ship, or steam escaping through a narrow tube, could be heard. The sound
was made by the snails; but as they were of different sizes, each one of
them whistled in a different key; it sounded like a whole orchestra of
whistlers. Victor, who was born on a Thursday, and therefore understood
the birds' language, pricked up his ears and tried to catch what they
were whistling. It was not long before he understood what they were
saying.

"I have the prettiest name," said one of them, "for I am called Strombus
pespelicanus!"

"I'm much the best looking," said the purple-snail, whose name was Murex
and something else quaint.

"But I've the best voice," said the tiger-shell; it is called
tiger-shell because it looks like a panther.

"Oh! tut, tut!" said the common garden-snail, "I'm more in demand than
any other snail in the world; you'll find me all over the flower-beds in
the summer, and in the winter I lie in the wood-shed in a cabbage tub.
They call me uninteresting, but they can't do without me."

"What dreadful creatures they are," thought Victor, "they think of
nothing but blowing their own trumpets"; and to while away the time he
took up a book which lay on the counter. As he had learned to use his
eyes, he saw at a glance that it opened at page 240 and that chapter
51 began at the top of the left-hand side, and had for a motto a verse
written by Coleridge, the gist of which struck him like a flash of
lightning. With burning cheeks and bated breath he read... I'll tell
you what he read later on, but I may admit at once that it had nothing
whatever to do with snails.

Victor liked the shop and sat down at a little distance from the
cash-box, the immediate vicinity of which is never without a certain
risk. He began to ponder over all the queer animals which went down to
the sea as he did; he was sure that they could not find it too warm
at the bottom of the sea and yet they perspired; and whenever they
perspired chalk, it immediately became a new house. They wriggled like
worms, some to the right and some to the left; it was clear that they
had to wriggle in some direction and, of course, they could not all turn
to the same side.

All at once a voice came from the other side of the green curtain which
separated the shop from the back parlour.

"Yes, we know all that," shouted the voice, "but what we don't know is
this: the cockle of the ear b