FISH. What [ho,] Pilch!

2. FISH. Ha, come and bring away the nets!

1. FISH. What, Patch-breech, I say!

3. FISH. What say you, master?

1. FISH. Look how thou stir'st now! Come away, or I'll fetch th' with a wanion.

3. FISH. Faith, master, I am thinking of the poor men that were cast away before us even now.

1. FISH. Alas, poor souls, it griev'd my heart to hear what pitiful cries they made to us to help them, when, well-a-day, we could scarce help ourselves.

3. FISH. Nay, master, said not I as much when I saw the porpas how he bounc'd and tumbled? They say they're half fish, half flesh. A plague on them, they ne'er come but I look to be wash'd. Master, I marvel how the fishes live in the sea.

1. FISH. Why, as men do a-land; the great ones eat up the little ones. I can compare our rich misers to nothing so fitly as to a whale: 'a plays and tumbles, driving the poor fry before him, and at last devour them all at a mouthful. Such whales have I heard on a' th' land, who never leave gaping till they swallow'd the whole parish, church, steeple, bells, and all.

PER [Aside.] A pretty moral.

FISH. But, master, if I had been the sexton, I would have been that day in the belfry.

2. FISH. Why, man?

3. FISH. Because he should have swallow'd me too, and when I had been in his belly, I would have kept such a jangling of the bells, that he should never have left till he cast bells, steeple, church, and parish up again. But if the good King Simonides were of my mind –

PER [Aside.] Simonides?

3. FISH. We would purge the land of these drones, that rob the bee of her honey.

PER [Aside.]

How from the [finny] subject of the sea

These fishers tell the infirmities of men,

And from their wat'ry empire recollect

All that may men approve or men detect! –

Peace be at your labor, honest fishermen.

2.