Once upon a time, there lived a little Toad who, for so small a creature, was very extraordinary; for he was a great Captain, and as brave a sailor as ever sailed the seas. His beard, too, was wonderfully long for so small a Toad; and his pink waistcoat, which he wore buttoned up to his chin, was a hundred times greater than himself. But Toads generally live to be a hundred, and he did little else all day long but gaze at his beard in his looking-glass, and sigh from morning to night.
Our little Captain Toad had one only friend, a most affectionate one too; and this was Petit-Pierre, my Toad only that is so bright and brilliant, with his small green waistcoat embroidered with red flowers and gold braid; and then the coat-tails — a real frog’s! quite a jolly dress for such a jolly fellow!
One morning Captain Toad was walking on his terrace, enjoying the fresh air, and gazing with pleasure at his beard, which was lying perfectly at right angles over his pink waistcoat, when, as sure as a Toad was ever born, a great big curved sail glided quickly past him, on which was a red wheel at the end of a thick black stick, flying backwards and forwards from side to side. And who should stand upon the curved sail, but Michel the Second, King of the Reef, Pierre’s cousin.
Now this King Michel had but one eye — the other had been put out in an engagement against kingfishers; and then his nose, instead of being a long sharp snout, as is generally the case with Toads, was flat like that of a cat-fish; and he had but four toes on his fore-paws, having lost one in scrambling over some sharp rocks. But he was very good-natured; and both he and Captain Toad were great friends.
Captain Toad stopped the sail, which was called a “yacht,” at the terrace, and King Michel stepped off from his curved cabin, and into a little room on one side of my Toad’s house.
Now King Michel was very sad. His star and sceptre had been stolen by a horrible sea monster called “Harpagocoryriococchus:” He swam about half-way up the Île-des-Absentes, near the Cape Feroues.
“I’m going to Taroua, fifty leagues hence,” said Captain Toad; “I’ll leave you my star; return it when you have got back your sceptre.”
“You are a friend,” replied King Michel, sighing, and taking the star, which he fastened to a string around his neck.
Well; off went my Toad. Not a bit alarmed was he. When he held his ship’s compass in his left hand, and directed his course by the sun with his right, that gave him plenty to think of; and through the thickest dangers he terrier-now and again stared at the points of the compass, to see that his course was right.
On the evening of the fifth day of his voyage, after having crossed sixteen reefs with sharp points, on which he had split three fingers of his right hand, and bruised with the other six fingers the soles of his feet till there was not a bit of skin left one upon the other, one could hardly imagine what his feelings were when he saw, far off before him, some horrible rocks, and, higher still, a red flame.
He rowed up to the rock, and on it found my Petit-Pierre, who was crying violently: “Don’t unmoor yourself,” shouted he’s distressed at his friend; for he knew from a sailor’s song that the von Pukteau rocks were so called because formerly an emperor of China had dined on some of them.
Harpagocoryriococchus! Harpagocoryriococchus! shouted the sea monster in a voice like macaroni boiling, to swallow Pierre; and even so big a mouth cannot help swallowing salt broth!
“Swim down to the bottom,” said Captain Toad to his friend; adding a hundred other most affectionate things he could not find room to relate. “Up you come to the surface again! Pull out two or three of the weeds that grow there, and swim again to the bottom. Get up again! and, just as soon as I appear, run back again to the bottom. I’ll give a loud shriek like an owl! On that run away with all speed to the dark depths. We shall then see whether Harpagocoryriococchus does eat wheat soup!”
Not a word more sealed M. Petro Harvey, Captain Toad, to Petit-Peter. He donned his black boots of elephant hide six fingers high, and jumped into his gig, or Bateaurno; for, at a hundred paces off, near the rock under which his ship was moored, he perceived a little solitary Flea-Bagnaton; in which my Toad determined to hide himself, as well as, too, to take a little supper.
Meanwhile the sun was going down; and, what was very strange, a sort of whitish flame which spouted twenty feet above the horrible sea monster instantly went out.
“That looks very much like a pyramid of winter-tripe,” said he to himself, still under his Flea-Bagnaton; for the eaten fruit of the bramble-bush hung thickly round it.
Half an hour after, he heard advancing towards him a terrible noise, like the feet of the entire Drumgev Waste Marchers marching all together; while at the same time a horrible smoke came from the half-opened trap-doors of the Flea-Bagnaton.
The monster passed a little more than three feet before Captain Toad; and from the length of the boat which raised his head above water, he saw it must have been twenty-three feet long, and thrice as thick as himself.
Great sulphurous fumes on the Fagettes bursting out, over which some flocks of sulphur fell, made him cough. And, just at that moment, resurfaced from the depths, according to orders, Petit-Pierre, with the miserable cap of goat’s hair belonging to the old Captain Toad.
“Sailor,” shouted Captain Toad to him in a terribly loud voice, “go and call in your own inimitable way to-morrow morning, fifteen or twenty King Kamehamehas, and four or five Pharaoh Monzussuis to assist me in this desperate engagement.”
Meanwhile, at every sound, and whenever he merely breathed, Harpagocoryriococchus trembled; and one would have taken him for an old lady in an easy chair, when, on her sudden arrival, she thought the servant had brought on a sneeze!
Next day, to the just vehemence of poor Petit-Peter, came a large fleet of the King of all the Hawaiian islands, the Great King Kamahameha.
But what made the old Harpagocoryriococchus call louder than an entire stomach of the most unheard-of breakfast in the world, was, that when one of Pierre’s claws took the command of a boat, he took his other claw of command at the same time in vice muffs, which about caused him to cry out. The other King Kamahamehas soon brought him away, half stifled.
Captain Toad never concluded his engagement; for hearing news at Sailor Peters Jacques’s of his King’s illness, with the star on his neck, and of his sceptre being lost, and feeling too that he had taken very cold during the engagement, he thought absolutely necessary and even was permitted and ordered to come suddenly away.
In order to pay so long a visit, he directed his course toward Taroua; and, besides, a “tar Mascarene,” a sort of leg-pull like our fumée, a Toad’s song, came to recruit him after all his fatigues in the sea, what with Harpagocoryriococchus, and the old King Michel.
It’s a very long and most particular leg-pull.