der the water.

For some moments I detected nothing at all--except, with my dry ear, the
heavy breathing of the Doctor as he waited, all stiff and anxious, for
me to say something. At last from within the water, sounding like a
child singing miles and miles away, I heard an unbelievably thin, small
voice.

"Ah!" I said.

"What is it?" asked the Doctor in a hoarse, trembly whisper. "What does
he say?"

"I can't quite make it out," I said. "It's mostly in some strange fish
language--Oh, but wait a minute!--Yes, now I get it--'No smoking'....
'My, here's a queer one!' 'Popcorn and picture postcards here.... This
way out.... Don't spit'--What funny things to say, Doctor!--Oh, but
wait!--Now he's whistling the tune."

"What tune is it?" gasped the Doctor.

"John Peel."

"Ah hah," cried the Doctor, "that's what I made it out to be." And he
wrote furiously in his note-book.

I went on listening.

"This is most extraordinary," the Doctor kept muttering to himself
as his pencil went wiggling over the page--"Most extraordinary--but
frightfully thrilling. I wonder where he--"

"Here's some more," I cried--"some more English.... 'THE BIG TANK NEEDS
CLEANING'.... That's all. Now he's talking fish-talk again."

"The big tank!" the Doctor murmured frowning in a puzzled kind of way.
"I wonder where on earth he learned--"

Then he bounded up out of his chair.

"I have it," he yelled, "this fish has escaped from an aquarium. Why,
of course! Look at the kind of things he has learned: 'Picture
postcards'--they always sell them in aquariums; 'Don't spit'; 'No
smoking'; 'This way out'--the things the attendants say. And then, 'My,
here's a queer one!' That's the kind of thing that people exclaim
when they look into the tanks. It all fits. There's no doubt about it,
Stubbins: we have here a fish who has escaped from captivity. And it's
quite possible--not certain, by any means, but quite possible--that
I may now, through him, be able to establish communication with the
shellfish. This is a great piece of luck."

THE SECOND CHAPTER. THE FIDGIT'S STORY

WELL, now that he was started once more upon his old hobby of the
shellfish languages, there was no stopping the Doctor. He worked right
through the night.

A little after midnight I fell asleep in a chair; about two in the
morning Bumpo fell asleep at the wheel; and for five hours the Curlew
was allowed to drift where she liked. But still John Dolittle worked on,
tr