As the fishermen who were mending their nets at the end of the wharf kept on looking at him, Algy came to the conclusion that his presence must be making them a wee bit nervous. He certainly didn’t want to distract them from their work, or cause them any alarm, so he turned away and moved to the further side of a large bollard near the edge of the quayside, to make it clear that he was no longer watching them. The hard surfaces of these man-made structures were not at all congenial to perch upon or lean against, but Algy was so fascinated by the strange new environment he had discovered that he resolved to put up with the discomfort a little longer. As he tried to make sense of the confusing jumble of objects on the pier, and reflected upon the odd activities of the humans he had seen, he was reminded of some well-known verses by Lewis Carroll. So Algy started to sing quietly to himself:
He thought he saw an Elephant,
That practised on a fife:
He looked again, and found it was
A letter from his wife.
“At length I realise,” he said,
“The bitterness of Life!”
He thought he saw a Buffalo
Upon the chimney-piece:
He looked again, and found it was
His Sister’s Husband’s Niece.
“Unless you leave this house,” he said,
“I’ll send for the Police!”
He thought he saw a Rattlesnake
That questioned him in Greek:
He looked again, and found it was
The Middle of Next Week.
“The one thing I regret,” he said,
“Is that it cannot speak!”
He thought he saw a Banker’s Clerk
Descending from the bus:
He looked again, and found it was
A Hippopotamus
“If this should stay to dine,” he said,
“There won’t be much for us!”
[Algy is quoting some of the verses from The Mad Gardener’s Song, which appear scattered at intervals in chapters of Syvie and Bruno by the 19th century English writer and logician, Lewis Carroll.]
The Adventures of Algy 