Come: I suppose you consider yourself quite a good sailor by now?
Oh, yes. I have never been ill yet, though it has been quite rough again and again.
What you call rough, little man. But as you are grown such a very good sailor, and also as the sea is all but smooth, I think we will have a sail in the yacht to-day, and that a tolerably long one.
Oh, how delightful! but I thought we were going home; and the things are all packed up.
And why should we not go homewards in the yacht, things and all?
What, all the way to England?
No, not so far as that; but these kind people, when they came into the harbour last night, offered to take us up the coast to a town, where we will sleep, and start comfortably home to-morrow morning.
So now you will have a chance of seeing something of the great sea outside, and of seeing, perhaps, the whale himself.
I hope we shall see the whale. The men say he has been outside the harbour every day this week after the fish.
Very good. Now do you keep quiet, and out of the way, while we are getting ready to go on board; and take a last look at this pretty place, and all its dear kind people.
And the dear kind dogs too, and the cat and the kittens.
* * *
Now, come along, and bundle into the boat, if you have done bidding every one good-bye; and take care you don't slip down in the ice-groovings, as you did the other day. There, we are off at last.
Oh, look at them all on the rock watching us and waving their handkerchiefs; and Harper and Paddy too, and little Jimsy and Isy, with their fat bare feet, and their arms round the dogs' necks. I am so sorry to leave them all.
Not sorry to go home?
No, but-- They have been so kind; and the dogs were so kind. I am sure they knew we were going, and were sorry too.
Perhaps they were. They knew we were going away, at all events.
They know what bringing out boxes and luggage means well enough.
Sam knew, I am sure; but he did not care for us. He was only uneasy because he thought Harper was going, and he should lose his shooting; and as soon as he saw Harper was not getting into the boat, he sat down and scratched himself, quite happy. But do dogs think?
Of course they do, only they do not think in words, as we do.
But how can they think without words?
That is very difficult for you and me to imagine, because we always think in words. They must think in pictures, I suppose, by remembering things which have happened to them. You and I do that in our dreams. I suspect that savages, who have very few words to express their thoughts with, think in pictures, like their own dogs. But that is a long story. We must see about getting on board now, and under way.
* * *
Well, and what have you been doing?
Oh, I looked all over the yacht, at the ropes and curious things; and then I looked at the mountains, till I was tired; and then I heard you and some gentleman talking about the land sinking, and I listened. There was no harm in that?
None at all. But what did you hear him say?
That the land must be sinking here, because there were peat-bogs everywhere below high-water mark. Is that true?
Quite true; and that peat would never have been formed where the salt water could get at it, as it does now every tide.
But what was it he said about that cliff over there?
He said that cliff on our right, a hundred feet high, was plainly once joined on to that low island on our left.
What, that long bank of stones, with a house on it?
That is no house. That is a square lump of mud, the last remaining bit of earth which was once the moraine of a glacier.
Every year it crumbles into the sea more and more; and in a few years it will be all gone, and nothing left but the great round boulder-stones which the ice brought down from the glaciers behind us.
But how does he know that it was once joined to the cliff?
Because that cliff, and the down behind it, where the cows are fed, is made up, like the island, of nothing but loose earth and stones; and that is why it is bright and green beside the gray rocks and brown heather of the moors at its foot. He knows that it must be an old glacier moraine; and he has reason to think that moraine once stretched right across the bay to the low island, and perhaps on to the other shore, and was eaten out by the sea as the land sank down.
But how does he know that the land sank?
Of that, he says, he is quite certain; and this is what he says.--
Suppose there was a glacier here, where we are sailing now: it would end in an ice cliff, such as you have seen a picture of in Captain Cook's Voyages, of which you are so fond. You recollect the pictures of Christmas Sound and Possession Bay?
Oh yes, and pictures of Greenland and Spitzbergen too, with glaciers in the sea.
Then icebergs would break off from that cliff, and carry all the dirt and stones out to sea, perhaps hundreds of miles away, instead of letting it drop here in a heap; and what did fall in a heap here the sea would wash down at once, and smooth it over the sea-bottom, and never let it pile up in a huge bank like that. Do you understand?
I think I do.
Therefore, he says, that great moraine must have been built upon dry land, in the open air; and must have sunk since into the sea, which is gnawing at it day and night, and will some day eat it all up, as it would eat up all the dry land in the world, if Madam How was not continually lifting up fresh land, to make up for what the sea has carried off.
Oh, look there! some one has caught a fish, and is hauling it up.
What a strange creature! It is not a mackerel, nor a gurnet, nor a pollock.
How do you know that?
Why, it is running along the top of the water like a snake; and they never do that. Here it comes. It has got a long beak, like a snipe. Oh, let me see.
See if you like: but don't get in the way. Remember you are but a little boy.
What is it? a snake with a bird's head?
No: a snake has no fins; and look at its beak: it is full of little teeth, which no bird has. But a very curious fellow he is, nevertheless: and his name is Gar-fish. Some call him Green-bone, because his bones are green.
But what kind of fish is he? He is like nothing I ever saw.