"Well now, that depends on how little you take them!" answered Uncle
Andy. "As they are hatched out of tiny, pearly eggs no bigger than a
white currant, which the little silver crabs can play marbles with on
the white sand of the sea-bottom till they get tired of the game and
eat them up, you've got a lot of sizes to choose from in a growing
sword-fish."
"I don't mean when they're so very little," answered the Babe, who did
not find things just hatched very interesting.
"I see," said Uncle Andy, understandingly. "Of course when they are
first hatched, and for a long time afterwards, they are kept so busy
trying to avoid getting eaten up by their enemies that I don't suppose
one in ten thousand or so ever manages to survive to the stage where he
begins to make things interesting for his enemies in turn. But _then_
things begin to hum."
"Tell me how they hum!" said the Babe eagerly, his eyes round with
anticipation.
"Well," began Uncle Andy slowly, looking far across the lake as if he
saw things that the Babe could not see, "in one way and another, partly
by good luck and partly by good management, Little Sword succeeded in
dodging his enemies till he had grown to be about two feet in length,
without counting the six inches or so of sharp, tapering blade that
stood straight out from the tip of his nose.
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