“Do you ever go down there?”
The Princess shuddered.
“No,” she said, “but we might have to. If the water ever came into our kingdom they would attack us, and we should have to drive them out; and then we should have to drive them right down to their own kingdom again. It happened once, in my grandfather’s time.”
“But how on earth,” asked Bernard, “did you ever get the water out again?”
“It wasn’t on earth, you know,” said the Princess, “and the Whales blew a good deal of it out—the Grampuses did their best, but they don’t blow hard enough. And the Octopuses finished the work by sucking the water out with their suckers.”
“Do you have cats here then?” asked Kathleen, whose attention had wandered, and had only caught a word that sounded like p*****s.
“Only Octopussies,” said the Princes
