The shadows of the clouds ran races over the bright blue bay , and yet never caught each other up ; and the breakers plunged merrily upon the wide white sands , and jumped up over the rocks , to see what the green fields inside were like , and tumbled down and broke themselves all to pieces , and never minded it a bit , but mended themselves and jumped up again . And the terns hovered over Tom like huge white dragon-flies with black heads , and the gulls laughed like girls at play , and the sea-pies , with their red bills and legs , flew to and fro from shore to shore , and whistled sweet and wild . And Tom looked and looked , and listened ; and he would have been very happy , if he could only have seen the water-babies . Then when the tide turned , he left the buoy , and swam round and round in search of them : but in vain . Sometimes he thought he heard them laughing : but it was only the laughter of the ripples . And sometimes he thought he saw them at the bottom : but it was only white and pink shells . And once he was sure he had found one , for he saw two bright eyes peeping out of the sand . So he dived down , and began scraping the sand away , and cried , `` Do n't hide ; I do want some one to play with so much ! '' And out jumped a great turbot with his ugly eyes and mouth all awry , and flopped away along the bottom , knocking poor Tom over . And he sat down at the bottom of the sea , and cried salt tears from sheer disappointment . To have come all this way , and faced so many dangers , and yet to find no water-babies ! How hard ! Well , it did seem hard : but people , even little babies , can not have all they want without waiting for it , and working for it too , my little man , as you will find out some day . And Tom sat upon the buoy long days , long weeks , looking out to sea , and wondering when the water-babies would come back ; and yet they never came . Then he began to ask all the strange things which came in out of the sea if they had seen any ; and some said `` Yes , '' and some said nothing at all . He asked the bass and the pollock ; but they were so greedy after the shrimps that they did not care to answer him a word . Then there came in a whole fleet of purple sea-snails , floating along , each on a sponge full of foam , and Tom said , `` Where do you come from , you pretty creatures ? and have you seen the water - babies ? '' And the sea-snails answered , `` Whence we come we know not ; and whither we are going , who can tell ? We float out our life in the mid-ocean , with the warm sunshine above our heads , and the warm gulf-stream below ; and that is enough for us .
Yes ; perhaps we have XXXXX the water-babies .
asked find flopped knocking looking minded said seen thought whistled