In the story, loosely based on the encounter of the whale in the Book of Jonah, Burt and the Giggling Gull, are fishing in Burt's only working boat, the Tidely-Idley, when a storm blows up.
According to the author, the species is in fact a biblical moth species mentioned in the Book of Jonah, in which there is a description of a worm that, nightly, infested a kikayon (Ricinus) plant, and caused it to wither.
book | American comic book | Domesday Book | National Book Award | Book of Genesis | Book of Exodus | Book of Common Prayer | children's book | Book of Revelation | The Jungle Book | Golden Book of Cycling | Book of Isaiah | The New York Times Book Review | picture book | Yellow Book | Book of Ezekiel | Doomsday Book | Book series | The Yellow Book | Book of Job | Project Blue Book | Jonah | Book frontispiece | National Book Critics Circle Award | Limca Book of Records | comic book artist | Book of Concord | The Walking Dead (comic book) | The Pillow Book | The Jungle Book (1967 film) |
He wrote the following commentaries: on the Pentateuch (Venice, 1567); on Canticles and Ecclesiastes, that on the latter being dedicated to King Henry II of France; on the Psalms (1586); "Mishpaṭ Ẓedeḳ," on Job (ib. 1589); on the books of Jonah, Habakkuk, and Zechariah, published with David ibn Hin's "Likkute Shoshannim" (Amsterdam, 1724).
Biblical examples include that of the prophet Jonah, who reluctantly obeys the command of God to go to the city of Nineveh and preach "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!".