Sally shouted after him 'before you go, would you be good enough to tell me which way the shore is?' and Fritz stopped his song and replied 'whichever way you go, you'll reach the shore eventually, but you can only go where the sea takes you', and off he went again singing away and bailing water out of his boat with his leaky bucket.

Sally thought it very strange that a cat should enjoy being in the sea, she had always believed that cats hated water. But curiously it never occurred to her that she had just been talking to a cat and the cat had been talking to her.

Just then Fritz's boat bumped into a turtle and overturned throwing the cat into the sea. Sally swam over to him and after turning his boat upright again helped him back into it with the aid of the turtle who was apologising most profusely to Fritz for knocking his boat over. 'I am most terribly sorry' the turtle declared 'I didn't see you coming, I was floating on my back in the sun'.

As soon as Fritz was back in his boat he shook himself vigorously and began to laugh. 'Don't worry Centa' he said 'there's no harm done, and now I know where the term ''turned turtle'' comes from. I've wondered about that every time my boat has turned over, it happens all the time' and off he went again, singing and bailing the water from his boat.

'I really must be more careful' Centa said 'I'm forever bumping into things, but I do love lying in the sun', and then a curious look came to his face and he said 'I don't often see little girls this far out in the sea though, are you strong enough to get back to the shore from here?'

This worried Sally and she asked how far away the shore was and Centa said 'it's about thirty of forty whales away' which didn't help her much but then Centa said 'Never mind, I'll take you back, get onto my shell, we'll be there in no time'. So Sally got onto Centa's back and held onto the edge on his shell and off they went at a tremendous rate over some of the waves and through others with Sally clinging on and gasping for breath. It wasn't more than a couple of minutes before the shore came into sight and Centa came to a halt and Sally fell back into the water rather relieved to have stopped. She thanked him and he waved a flipper at her as he turned and disappeared under the water.

Sally began to swim ashore but it seemed the more she swam the further away the shore became. After what seemed like a very long time she stopped swimming altogether thinking that the tide must be against her and if she waited it would turn eventually and wash her ashore. So she lay on her back again and floated around in the sea waiting for the tide to turn.

When it finally did Sally didn't even notice, she had been washed further out to sea again and could no longer see the land so she didn't know which way to go anyway. Then she saw an amazing sight, a dolphin leapt out of the water in front of her, and then another, and another, and soon there were lots of them, although Sally had no way of knowing how many there were.

The dolphins were talking to each other, she heard one say 'it's only a pup, they grow to about twice that size', and another one said 'they don't swim very well, do they?'

Sally was annoyed and said 'it is very bad manners to talk about someone in their presence as if they weren't there you know, and I'm not a pup, I'm a little girl'. The dolphins formed a circle around her. One of them, whose name apparently was Daphne said apologetically 'I am sorry, I didn't realise you could speak our language, in fact I didn't know that people could speak at all' and Sally said 'it's not your language, it's my language, and anyway it is still bad manners'.

'Well' said Daphne 'you are the first person we have come across who can talk, why don't you come and play, we are having a high jump contest'.

'I'm quite good at high jump' she said 'but I don't think I could jump out of the water, perhaps I could be the judge'. The dolphins muttered to each other and then one of them said 'we don't really need a judge, it's only a game and anyway we already know who can jump the highest, it's Esmeralda, she always wins'.