o please the sea serpent. "Are you well?" he asked.

"Pretty fair," said Cap'n Bill. "How's yourself?"

"Oh, I'm very well, thank you," answered Anko. "I never remember to
have had a pain but three times in my life. The last time was when
Julius Sneezer was on earth."

"You mean Julius Caesar," said Trot, correcting him.

"No, I mean Julius Sneezer," insisted the Sea Serpent. "That was his
real name--Sneezer. They called him Caesar sometimes just because he
took everything he could lay hands on. I ought to know, because I
saw him when he was alive. Did you see him when he was alive, Cap'n
Bill?"

"I reckon not," admitted the sailor.

"That time I had a toothache," continued Anko, "but I got a lobster
to pull the tooth with his claw, so the pain was soon over."

"Did it hurt to pull it?" asked Trot.

"Hurt!" exclaimed the Sea Serpent, groaning at the recollection. "My
dear, those creatures have been called lobsters ever since! The
second pain I had way back in the time of Nevercouldnever."

"Oh, I s'pose you mean Nebuchadnezzar," said Trot.

"Do you call him that now?" asked the Sea Serpent as if surprised.
"He used to be called Nevercouldnever when he was alive, but this
new way of spelling seems to get everything mixed up. Nebuchadnezzar
doesn't mean anything at all, it seems to me."

"It means he ate grass," said the child.

"Oh no, he didn't," declared the Sea Serpent. "He was the first to
discover that lettuce was good to eat, and he became very fond of
it. The people may have called it grass, but they were wrong. I
ought to know, because I was alive when Nevercouldnever lived. Were
you alive, then?"

"No," said Trot.

"The pain I had then," remarked Anko, "was caused by a kink in my
tail about three hundred feet from the end. There was an old octopus
who did not like me, and so he tied a knot in my tail when I wasn't
looking."

"What did you do?" asked Cap'n Bill.

"Well, first I transformed the octopus into a jellyfish, and then I
waited for the tide to turn. When my tail was untied, the pain
stopped."

"I--I don't understand that," said Trot, somewhat bewildered.

"Thank you, my dear," replied the Sea Serpent in a grateful voice.
"People who are always understood are very common. You are sure to
respect those you can't understand, for you feel that perhaps they
know more than you do."

"About how long do you happen to be?" inquired Cap'n Bill.

"When last measured, I was seven thousand