him, but the’ wa’n’t a tooth mark onto Jonah nowheres. Not a tooth mark. My idee is this here Jonah was one of them fellers that always wants to git his friends all het up with a tall story, and that he never even seen a whale.”

“Let’s try and settle this here thing scientific,” says Naboth. “How long’s a whale?”

“Sixty-seventy feet.”

“Good. How long be you?”

“Nigh six feet.”

“Any whale that amounts to anythin’ is ten times as long as you be, hain’t he?”

“Calc’late he is.”

“But a whale runs to mouth and head, don’t he? Whale’s mouth’s more’n ten times as big as your’n?”

“Yes,” says Rameses III, “but I hain’t sure it’s ten times bigger’n your’n.”

“It’s fifty times bigger,” says Naboth.

“Mebby.”

“Why? I ask you why. Tell me that, consarn ye. Tell me why has a whale got a mouth as big as that.”

“To chaw with,” says Rameses III.

“Naw. To fit his stummick. Got to have a big mouth to keep company with his stummick. A feller can stand up and walk around inside a whale’s stummick, can’t he?”

“Hain’t never seen it proved.”

“The size of the mouth proves it. No use havin’ a big mouth ’less you got a big stummick. No use havin’ a big stummick ’less you got a big mouth. And, here’s where the science comes in, by gum! It ’ud be foolish to have a stummick bigger’n a cave and a mouth bigger’n a cellar if the’ wa’n’t some hole connectin’ ’em that was big enough to let sumthin big through it, because the mouth it takes in big things and the stummick has to have big things to fill it, and neither the mouth nor the stummick would be any good if big things couldn’t git from the one to the other. And there you be, and that’s proof. It’s science. It’s how I jest know a whale could ’a’ swallered Jonah if he’d ’a’ wanted 

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