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"Here a couple of old men in whiskers and spectacles leant over
us, making strange sounds. Some codling had got caught in the
net the same time as we were. These the old men threw back into
the sea; but us they seemed to think very precious. They put us
carefully into a large jar and after they had taken us on shore
they went to a big house and changed us from the jar into glass
boxes full of water. This house was on the edge of the harbor;
and a small stream of sea-water was made to flow through the
glass tank so we could breathe properly. Of course we had never
lived inside glass walls before; and at first we kept on trying
to swim through them and got our noses awfully sore bumping the
glass at full speed.
"Then followed weeks and weeks of weary idleness. They treated
us well, so far as they knew how. The old fellows in spectacles
came and looked at us proudly twice a day and saw that we had the
proper food to eat, the right amount of light and that the water
was not too hot or too cold. But oh, the dullness of that life!
It seemed we were a kind of a show. At a certain hour every
morning the big doors of the house were thrown open and everybody
in the city who had nothing special to do came in and looked at
us. There were other tanks filled with different kinds of fishes
all round the walls of the big room. And the crowds would go from
tank to tank, looking in at us through the glass--with their
mouths open, like half-witted flounders. We got so sick of it
that we used to open our mouths back at them; and this they
seemed to think highly comical.
"One day my sister said to me, 'Think you, Brother, that these
strange creatures who have captured us can talk?'
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