In the shimmering depths of the ocean, there lived a fine little fish called Finn. He was small, but very clever—a sort of fish you would not expect anyone to swallow. The water overhead was warm; great yellow sunbeams danced about; tall, waving plants grew up from the sea bottom, and among the leaves might be seen small glittering fish, playing hide and seek. Near by was the Coral Reef, which stretched a long way out, here and there varying its shape as if in a grand sleep. On this the sea-palms waved, the red sea anemones moved about, and the grey ostræas opened and shut.
But oh! what a misfortune had occurred! A great shark had got through the opening of the reef, and was swimming backwards and forwards, opening and shutting his enormous jaws. It was all over with the fish, unless they could manage to outwit him.
At that very moment, Finn came swimming out, for he had a great many friends, who lived among the waving plants further in. He swam faster than ever before. When he came in sight of his friends, there they all were, pressing closely to each other.
“My dear friends!” said he, “why do you all press together so closely?”
“Oh, Finn!” exclaimed they, “have you not heard the dreadful news? There is a great shark here. All the fish have been swallowed up, one after another. Only some few have escaped, who have been swimming too far in, out of his reach, and here we stand, one more closely pressed to the other, begging for mercy. Surely he will pass us by!”
Finn had often heard of the big shark, and now that he was actually there, it was quite terrible! But he cleared his mind for the emergency, and said,
“I have a plan, my friends! Hark! do you hear that? Somebody is striking on a steel instrument of some kind. It is the fish-denouncing trumpet of the shark. We have yet a little time to save ourselves. Now that I am here, need we be afraid? He cannot see while he is beating that trumpet; we can slip off unnoticed.”
All the fish, one and all, thought that Finn was right; so they slipped through the opening of the reef, into a passage among the rocks. At the end of it grew fine, waving sea-plants, and there Finn arranged his little party, and said,
“Now, we are safe!”
But in that very moment a cry of horror was heard from the other fish, and one, only one, got into the passage. It was the martinet fish, which loved order and had terribly feared the shark. He begged the other to give help to those which had got into the shark’s stomach, by raising such a storm that they might throw up those unfortunate fish, as the ship’s keel does shells, when it glances over them.
“Oh mercy! oh mercy!” shrieked the other fish; but Finn made haste, and said, “We are going to see what the matter is; we shall return immediately!”
But when he came into the open water again—would you believe it?—his friends were all swallowed! Only the martinet had been rescued, as he had got into the passage just in time. They were neither of them sorry for it; the others of the fish were refined ones, and altogether of a good family, but this new fish was of much higher rank.
“We shall and we will punish the rascal!” now said Finn, and the others murmured, and they held a grand consultation.
Meanwhile the shark was lying on the coral rocks, and sunk in sleep. Then they set to work. They swam round him, and began to beat the water with their tails; then feeling they had no time to lose, they lifted their heads, and gave a splash with the tail; a column of water arose, the waves sounded loudly against the reef, and the shark sprang up and gave a roar and yawned, so that all the little fish near him had a narrow escape of being swallowed with him.
He opened his wide mouth still more, sígghéd, yawned again, then shook his head, and stroked his eyes with his fins, and Finn and his friends were all found in that very jaw now opening to devour them. All the other fish darted away to resist the outcry he made.
“Now we have him! Now we have him!” they shouted, and at the same moment they threw themselves against Finn. He darted forward a little way, and they followed him. The shark’s mouth was entirely shut; he beat the water furiously in order to open it. He opened it, however, to no purpose, and Finn and his brave friends swam off with a.-sigh of relief. The shark followed them, but they swam faster than he, returned through the opening in the reef, and lay down in peace and quietness.
“It might have been worse!” said they, when they saw that Finn was safe.
But they didn’t know how near they had been to being all swallowed, and how clever Finn had been in managing it.