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"It can be nothing else than one of those skeletons Polecrab talked about. And look there is another one over there!" "This brings it home!" remarked Maskull, smiling. "There is nothing comical in having died for beauty," said Gleameil, bending her brows at him.
Polecrab, turning to go with the cooked fish in his hands, said, "These are mine, not yours. When yours are done, you can come back and join me, supposing you want company." "How soon will that be?" "About twenty minutes," replied the fisherman, over his shoulder. Maskull sheltered himself in the shadows of the forest, and waited.
The raft immediately began to travel swiftly away from land, with a smooth, swaying motion. The boys waved from the shore. Gleameil responded; but Maskull turned his back squarely to land, and gazed ahead. Polecrab was wading back to the shore. For upward of an hour Maskull did not change his position by an inch.
"If you are not back by the morning," remarked her husband, "I will know you are dead." The meal was finished in a constrained silence. Polecrab wiped his mouth, and produced a seashell from a kind of pocket. "Will you say goodbye to the boys? Shall I call them?" She considered a moment. "Yes yes, I must see them."
"Is it Blodsombre yet?" asked Maskull, sprawling on the ground, well content. Polecrab resumed his old upright sitting posture, with his feet in the water. "Just beginning," was his hoarse response. "Then I must stay here till it's over.... Shall we talk?" "We can," said the other, without enthusiasm.
When the time had approximately elapsed, he disinterred his meal, scorching his fingers in the operation, although it was only the surface of the sand which was so intensely hot. Then he returned to Polecrab. In the warm, still air and cheerful shade of the inlet, they munched in silence, looking from their food to the sluggish water, and back again.
Maskull glanced at him through half-closed lids, wondering if he were exactly what he seemed to be. In his eyes he thought he detected a wise light. "Have you travelled much, Polecrab?" "Not what you would call travelling." "You tell me you've been to Matterplay what kind of country is that?" "I don't know. I went there to pick up flints." "What countries lie beyond it?"
The child was let down, and all the three formed a semicircle in front of Maskull, standing staring up at him with wide-open eyes. Polecrab looked on stolidly, but Gleameil glanced away from them, with proudly raised head and a baffling expression. Maskull put the ages of the boys at about nine, seven, and five years, respectively; but he was calculating according to Earth time.
When she spoke, it was in a rather weak voice, but full of lights and shades, and somehow intense passionateness never seemed to be far away from it. "Forgiveness is asked for listening to your conversation," she said, addressing Maskull. "I was resting behind the tree, and heard it all." He got up slowly. "Are you Polecrab's wife?" "She is my wife," said Polecrab, "and her name is Gleameil.
"Perhaps there is such another world," said Polecrab huskily. "But did that vision also seem real and false to you?" "Very real, but not false then, for then I didn't understand all this. But just because it was real, it couldn't have been Surtur, who has no connection with reality." "Didn't those drum taps sound real to you?" "I had to hear them with my ears, and so they sounded real to me.
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