NONSUCH 



a grand time all to themselves on the ocean floor, 

 but all their own efforts to press down merely hurt 

 their spines and got them nowhere. 



The urge was insistent, however, and they never 

 gave up. When tired out they would probably sink 

 down and wearily lie over on one side for a time, 

 and their attempts at snatching food below the belt 

 resulted in a constant careening of the whole body. 

 In one, or in nine, or in nine and sixty ways they 

 persisted and finally they succeeded. 



If I watch very carefully and walk exceedingly 

 slowly over the sand of Almost Island I believe I 

 can safely count on a fresh marvel every fathom of 

 distance (we must be ultra-submarine in our lan- 

 guage) . Sometimes the adventure is so inexplicable 

 that I choose temporarily to call it a miracle — a 

 small one perhaps, like that invoked by Chubu and 

 Sheamish — but a miracle until my reluctant recol- 

 lection of schismatic facts of physics and zoology 

 demand the rejection of this, and the substitution, 

 as before, of wonder. 



On the last but one of my dives the sun was shin- 

 ing full strength and the shadow of my feet as I 

 walked six fathoms deep loomed large and black 

 on the sand. At my third step, like the charwoman's 

 active shadow in the house of magic, a shade slipped 

 away from beneath my feet, just before the sub- 

 stance would have met and destroyed it. Up and up 

 it floated and I froze still and watched. As it rose it 

 gained in substantialness and when near my eyes 

 was marked with a harmonious blending of gray 



98 



