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They were large shellfish, running from three to six inches in length. The boys raked them out with sticks and placed them on a large piece of driftwood to cool. "When I was a boy, we did not laugh at our elders; we respected them." The boys took no notice, and Granser continued to babble an incoherent flow of complaint and censure. But this time he was more careful, and did not burn his mouth.
Well, all the small dogs, and the weak types, were killed by their fellows. Also, the very large ones were not adapted for the wild life and bred out. As a result, the many different kinds of dogs disappeared, and there remained, running in packs, the medium-sized wolfish dogs that you know to-day." "But the cats don't run in packs, Granser," Hoo-Hoo objected. "The cat was never a social animal.
"Let her go, Granser," Hoo-Hoo encouraged; for the old man was already maundering about the disrespect for elders and the reversion to cruelty of all humans that fell from high culture to primitive conditions. The tale began. "There were very many people in the world in those days. San Francisco alone held four millions " "What is millions?" Edwin interrupted. Granser looked at him kindly.
The bacteriologists fought all these sicknesses and destroyed them, just as you boys fight the wolves away from your goats, or squash the mosquitoes that light on you. The bacteriologists " "But, Granser, what is a what-you-call-it?" Edwin interrupted. "You, Edwin, are a goatherd. Your task is to watch the goats. You know a great deal about goats. A bacteriologist watches germs.
And if I catch Hare-Lip trying to bust your head, Hoo-Hoo, I'll fix him with that same gunpowder. Granser ain't such a fool as you think, and I'm going to listen to him and some day I'll be boss over the whole bunch of you." The old man shook his head sadly, and said: "The gunpowder will come. Nothing can stop it the same old story over and over. Man will increase, and men will fight.
Hare-Lip spat loudly his disgust, and Granser hastened to make amends. "We talked through the air in those days, thousands and thousands of miles. And the word came of a strange disease that had broken out in New York. There were seventeen millions of people living then in that noblest city of America. Nobody thought anything about the news. It was only a small thing.
"Granser, what for do you always say so much what nobody knows?" he asked. "Scarlet ain't anything, but red is red. Why don't you say red, then?" "Red is not the right word," was the reply. "The plague was scarlet. The whole face and body turned scarlet in an hour's time. Don't I know? Didn't I see enough of it? And I am telling you it was scarlet because well, because it was scarlet.
It might be there that life originated the 'abysmal fecundity, Soldervetzsky called it, applying the words of other men who had written before him...." It was at this point that Hare-Lip rose to his feet, an expression of huge contempt on his face. "Granser," he announced, "you make me sick with your gabble. Why don't you tell about the Red Death?
The boys' eyes ranged along from the teeth and from hand to hand, down through the pebbles and sand-grains to Edwin's fingers. And back again they ranged along the ascending series in the effort to grasp such inconceivable numbers. "That was a lot of folks, Granser," Edwin at last hazarded. "Like sand on the beach here, like sand on the beach, each grain of sand a man, or woman, or child.
"You're a queer un, Granser, talking about things you can't see. If you can't see 'em, how do you know they are? That's what I want to know. How do you know anything you can't see?" "A good question, a very good question, Hoo-Hoo. But we did see some of them.
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