ma took the tortoise and gave the money to the
boys, who, calling to each other, scampered away and were soon out of
sight.

Then Urashima stroked the tortoise's back, saying as he did so:

"Oh, you poor thing! Poor thing!--there, there! you are safe now! They
say that a stork lives for a thousand years, but the tortoise for ten
thousand years. You have the longest life of any creature in this
world, and you were in great danger of having that precious life cut
short by those cruel boys. Luckily I was passing by and saved you, and
so life is still yours. Now I am going to take you back to your home,
the sea, at once. Do not let yourself be caught again, for there might
be no one to save you next time!"

All the time that the kind fisherman was speaking he was walking
quickly to the shore and out upon the rocks; then putting the tortoise
into the water he watched the animal disappear, and turned homewards
himself, for he was tired and the sun had set.

The next morning Urashima went out as usual in his boat. The weather
was fine and the sea and sky were both blue and soft in the tender haze
of the summer morning. Urashima got into his boat and dreamily pushed
out to sea, throwing his line as he did so. He soon passed the other
fishing boats and left them behind him till they were lost to sight in
the distance, and his boat drifted further and further out upon the
blue waters. Somehow, he knew not why, he felt unusually happy that
morning; and he could not help wishing that, like the tortoise he set
free the day before, he had thousands of years to live instead of his
own short span of human life.

He was suddenly startled from his reverie by hearing his own name
called:

"Urashima, Urashima!"

Clear as a bell and soft as the summer wind the name floated over the
sea.

He stood up and looked in every direction, thinking that one of the
other boats had overtaken him, but gaze as he might over the wide
expanse of water, near or far there was no sign of a boat, so the voice
could not have come from any human being.

Startled, and wondering who or what it was that had called him so
clearly, he looked in all directions round about him and saw that
without his knowing it a tortoise had come to the side of the boat.
Urashima saw with surprise that it was the very tortoise he had rescued
the day before.

"Well, Mr. Tortoise," said Urashima, "was it you who called my name
just now?"

The tortoise nodded its head se