* * * * * `` For what are all our contrivings And the wisdom of our books , When compared with your caresses , And the gladness of your looks ? `` Ye are better than all the ballads That ever were sung or said ; For ye are living poems , And all the rest are dead . '' LONGFELLOW . Here begins the never-to-be-too-much-studied account of the nine - hundred-and-ninety-ninth part of the wonderful things which Tom saw on his journey to the Other-end-of-Nowhere ; which all good little children are requested to read ; that , if ever they get to the Other-end-of-Nowhere , as they may very probably do , they may not burst out laughing , or try to run away , or do any other silly vulgar thing which may offend Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid . Now , as soon as Tom had left Peacepool , he came to the white lap of the great sea-mother , ten thousand fathoms deep ; where she makes world-pap all day long , for the steam-giants to knead , and the fire-giants to bake , till it has risen and hardened into mountain - loaves and island-cakes . And there Tom was very near being kneaded up in the world-pap , and turned into a fossil water-baby ; which would have astonished the Geological Society of New Zealand some hundreds of thousands of years hence . For , as he walked along in the silence of the sea-twilight , on the soft white ocean floor , he was aware of a hissing , and a roaring , and a thumping , and a pumping , as of all the steam-engines in the world at once . And , when he came near , the water grew boiling-hot ; not that that hurt him in the least : but it also grew as foul as gruel ; and every moment he stumbled over dead shells , and fish , and sharks , and seals , and whales , which had been killed by the hot water . And at last he came to the great sea-serpent himself , lying dead at the bottom ; and as he was too thick to scramble over , Tom had to walk round him three-quarters of a mile and more , which put him out of his path sadly ; and , when he had got round , he came to the place called Stop . And there he stopped , and just in time . For he was on the edge of a vast hole in the bottom of the sea , up which was rushing and roaring clear steam enough to work all the engines in the world at once ; so clear , indeed , that it was quite light at moments ; and Tom could see almost up to the top of the water above , and down below into the pit for nobody knows how far . But , as soon as he bent his head over the edge , he got such a rap on the nose from pebbles , that he jumped back again ; for the steam , as it rushed up , rasped away the sides of the hole , and hurled it up into the sea in a shower of mud and gravel and ashes ; and then it spread all around , and sank again , and covered in the dead fish so fast , that before Tom had stood there five minutes he was buried in silt up to his ankles , and began to be afraid that he should have been buried alive . And perhaps he would have been , but that while he was thinking , the whole piece of ground on which he stood was torn off and blown upwards , and away flew Tom a mile up through the sea , wondering what was coming next . At last he stopped -- thump ! and found himself tight in the legs of the most wonderful bogy which he had ever seen . It had I do n't know how many wings , as big as the sails of a windmill , and spread out in a ring like them ; and with them it hovered over the steam which rushed up , as a ball hovers over the top of a fountain . And for every wing above it had a leg below , with a claw like a comb at the tip , and a nostril at the root ; and in the middle it had no stomach and one eye ; and as for its mouth , that was all on one side , as the madreporiform tubercle in a star - fish is . Well , it was a very strange beast ; but no stranger than some dozens which you may see . `` What do you want here , '' it cried quite peevishly , `` getting in my way ? '' and it tried to drop Tom : but he held on tight to its claws , thinking himself safer where he was .
So XXXXX told him who he was , and what his errand was .
Bedonebyasyoudid Tom contrivings fire-giants minutes steam-engines steam-giants three-quarters water-baby whales