respect like a French woman, except that she did not speak. Towards
the end of the seventeenth century, an English ship, a hundred and
fifty leagues from land, in the Greenland seas, discovered a flotilla
of sixty or seventy little skiffs, in each of which was a triton, or
sea man: at the approach of the English vessel the whole of them,
seized with simultaneous fear, disappeared, skiffs and all, under
the water, as if they had been a human variety of the nautilus. The
illustrious Don Feijoo has preserved an authentic and well-attested
story of a young Spaniard, named Francis de la Vega, who, bathing with
some of his friends in June, 1674, suddenly dived under the sea and
rose no more. His friends thought him drowned; they were plebeians and
pious Catholics; but a philosopher might very legitimately have drawn
the same conclusion.


THE REVEREND MR LARYNX

Nothing could be more logical.


MR ASTERIAS

Five years afterwards, some fishermen near Cadiz found in their nets a
triton, or sea man; they spoke to him in several languages--


THE REVEREND MR LARYNX

They were very learned fishermen.