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Then there came by a shoal of porpoises, rolling as they went papas, and mammas, and little children and all quite smooth and shiny, because the fairies French-polish them every morning; and they sighed so softly as they came by, that Tom took courage to speak to them: but all they answered was, "Hush, hush, hush;" for that was all they had learnt to say.
"Then we will go and the sooner we start the better." "I'm thinking of them porpoises," said Raft. "What about them?" "Well, there's a saying they hug the shore pretty close if bad weather is coming. It's fine to-day, but I've a feeling there's going to be another blow soon and maybe we'd better wait till it's over maybe it's instinc'," he finished, looking round shyly. The girl laughed.
Then we shot at birds, seals and porpoises whenever they were in sight, and from the success, apparently, at many when they were not in sight; put the finishing touches on our stowage, and kept three of the party constantly employed with our long bamboo-handled dip-net, in fishing up specimens for the professor and his assistants.
I did not feel up to answering him, but I managed to grin a little, and he went on: "I'm for thinking that I'd better let that broken head of yours alone till this fool of a ship is sitting still again instead of trying to teach the porpoises such tricks of rolling and pitching as never entered into their poor brute minds.
The curtains of her little bed saved her face. There was a slushing and swishing and gasping and blowing now, which might have done credit to a school of porpoises. The Captain was washing. Something between the flapping of a main top-sail in a shifting squall and the currying of a hippopotamus indicated that the Captain was drying himself.
It had a wonderful effect on the whole body; big and little sea-lions, and cows, and seals, all began floundering away in the greatest dismay into the water their awkward-looking movements being very amusing; at the same time, thousands of birds, which had been perched on the rocks, or floating in the water, rose into the air, with loud screams, circling round our heads; while porpoises, or some other huge monsters of the deep, kept gambolling around us, and now and then leaping out of the water in sportive humour.
You often warned me in the course of the past year how dull life would be. You knew how I loved a city. I still do. But the last word on earth one could apply to the life here is "dull." Nature takes care of that. I defy you to walk along any street in London and see six porpoises and a whale! That is what I saw this morning.
Nevertheless, I took my glass and swept the sea far and wide in search of a ship, but failed to discover anything but a spermaceti whale blowing in the distance, or a shoal of porpoises tumbling over each other nearer the shore, or a colony of seals basking in the sun on the rocks nearest the sea.
And when these grew tiresome we dashed boldly into the midst of a school of huge, beastly porpoises engaged at their eternal game of arching over a wave and disappearing, and then doing it over again and keeping it up always circling over, in that way, like so many well-submerged wheels. But the porpoises wheeled themselves away, and then we were thrown upon our own resources.
A couple of porpoises, too, swam by, playing leap-frog again; and, after these, a much larger monster, which might possibly have been a grampus, though Bob could tell nothing about it, not knowing what it was.
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