tween puffs:

"Well, now, there's quite a lot of truth in that, considering that it's
one of Bill's yarns. The swordfish does carry a sword. And he does
jab it into things, whales, sharks, boats, seals, anything whatever
that he thinks might be good to eat or that he does not like the looks
of. And _you_ are quite correct in thinking that the lake would not be
a health-resort for us if it was occupied by a healthy swordfish. But
in one particular Bill has got you badly mixed up. The swordfish
carries his sword not in his tail, but on the tip of his snout more
like a bayonet than a sword. I don't think Bill has ever been at all
intimate with swordfish--eh, what?"

The Babe shook his blonde head sadly over this instance of Bill's
inaccuracy.

"And are they as big as Bill says?" he inquired.

"Oh, yes! He's all right _there_!" assented Uncle Andy. "When they
are quite grown up they are sometimes as long as a canoe, a seventeen
or eighteen foot canoe. And they _are_ quick as 'greased lightning'
all right!"

"But how big are they when they're little?" pursued the Babe, getting
around to his favorite line of investigation.

"Well now, that depends on how little you take them!" answered Uncle
Andy. "As they are hatched out of tiny, pearly eggs no bigger than a
white currant, which the little silver crabs can play marbles with on
the white sand of the sea-bottom till they get tired of the game and
eat them up, you've got a lot of sizes to choose from in a growing
sword-fish."

"I don't mean when they're so very little," answered the Babe, who did
not find things just hatched very interesting.

"I see," said Uncle Andy, understandingly. "Of course when they are
first hatched, and for a long time afterwards, they are kept so busy
trying to avoid getting eaten up by their enemies that I don't suppose
one in ten thousand or so ever manages to survive to the stage where he
begins to make things interesting for his enemies in turn. But _then_
things begin to hum."

"Tell me how they hum!" said the Babe eagerly, his eyes round with
anticipation.

"Well," began Uncle Andy slowly, looking far across the lake as if he
saw things that the Babe could not see, "in one way and another, partly
by good luck and partly by good management, Little Sword succeeded in
dodging his enemies till he had grown to be about two feet in length,
without counting the six inches or so of sharp, tapering blade that
stood straight out