It is told in very simple words, but it's one of those vague stories that starts and ends in a jumbled, hard-to-believe-in otherwhere. Paul is a little boy who lives on an island. His friend Arthur is a talking, spotted bull who smokes a pipe, walks upright and wears bell-bottomed trousers. One day when the two were at the beach collecting shells, their sympathies were engaged by Mrs. Seagull who had lost her egg. They make a search for it and check with an odd assortment of people and animals -- unpiratical pirates, talking turtles, a goat with a telescope--until they find the egg among the shells in their own basket.