could lie round idling the other six days, if he chose; only anybody
can't live on nothing but fish all the time".

Was it true? Yes! He remembered facts of Yarmouth....

But since true, it was--strange.

Was the sea, then, a more productive element for men to work in than
the land? No, that was absurd: the land, in the nature of things,
was more productive.

Then, why could not _all_ men procure an easy superfluity by one
day's work, as the fisher could, if he chose to live naked in a
cave, eating fish alone? In that case the fisher could change some
of his day's-work fish for the shore people's day's-work things, and
so all have a variety as well as superabundance.

At the interest of this question, he leapt from his hammock, peering
into that thing, and his fleet feet were away, running after the
truth with that rapt abandonment that had characterized his hunting
and football. This was clear: that there was some difference between
land and sea as working-grounds for men. Shore people, like a
shoemaker, did not have for themselves enough shoes from even five,
or six, days' work on which to live in plenty for a week: and hence
would take nothing less than an enormous quantity of the fisher's
fish in exchange for a pair of shoes, making him, too, poor as
themselves. But since land work was as productive as sea work, and
far more so, it could only be that the shoemaker did not get for
himself all the shoes which he made, as the fisher got for himself
all the fish which he caught: some power took from shore people a