Sawfish and Ship

The medieval Book of Beasts, a pseudoscientific treatise interspersed with moralizations on animals' habits, was adapted from the Physiologus,
a Greek text that had been translated into Latin by the fifth century.
Illustrated versions with line drawings appeared in large numbers by the
twelfth century, but the Morgan copy is one of the first with fully
painted pictures. Here a sawfish (called serra in Latin), having
seen a sailboat, starts to outfly it but cannot keep up the effort. The
boat symbolizes the righteous, who are firm in their faith; the sawfish,
those who cannot keep up good works. The moral: You don't get anywhere
by starting, but by pressing on.