our keel, unspeakable slimy things with wide glaucous eyes are lying in
watch, with tentacles outspread.

"It all seems very dreadful to me," I said.

But the old fellow, though he nodded civilly in assent, had not
understood me in the least. This was clearly the only world with
which he was acquainted; the one particular bit of earth whereupon
fate had dropped him, as fertilizing seeds are dropped by wandering
birds. I daresay he is unable to realize any other sort of existence,
excepting perhaps in some such vague way as you and I may think of
those canal-diggers of Mars. Close to us, to port, we passed a big rock
that was jutting from the water and over which the long smooth seas
washed, foaming with hissing sounds.

"He nigh ketched us, day I fetched doctor back to yer father," Sammy
informed me. "Ye mind t'were a bit rough that day, and ye couldn't tell
yer hand afore yer face, hardly, t'were that thick, and tide she'd drawed
us furder inshore 'n I mistrusted. The wind he were middlin' high an'
gusty, too. I don't mind many sich hard times a-makin' th' cove. We was
sure glad enough ter get in."

"I never thought of it in that way," I exclaimed. "It certainly was an
awful afternoon, and it must have been horribly dangerous."

"I telled 'un afore startin' as how t'were a bit of a job, an' he asks me
kin I make it, an' I says I expect I kin, like enough, wid luck. Then he
tells me ter think o' th' old woman an' th' children, an' I says it's all
right. Frenchy he were willin' too, so in course we started."