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Updated: June 17, 2025
But one lady had caught him by the right arm, and the other by the left, and pulled him into the mouth of a rocky cave, still down and down, as if on a steep hillside. The cave was very long, but it grew wider as they came to the bottom. Then Civil saw a faint light, and walked out with his fair company into the country of the sea-people.
"Tell any of them that would like to come down to visit us, that they must come here midway between the high and low watermark, when the tide is going out at morning or evening. Call thrice on the sea-people, and we will show them the way."
"You are a man of the land," said the lady, "and know not the sea-people. They never sleep but once a year, and that is at Christmas time. Then they go into the deep caverns, where there is always darkness, and sleep till the new year comes." "It is a strange habit," said Civil; "but all folks have their way.
Besides, the sea was calm and the evening fair, and, as a last attempt, they steered still farther out, and cast their nets beside a rock which rose rough and grey above the water, and was called the Merman's Seat from an old report that the fishermen's fathers had seen the mermen, or sea-people, sitting there on moonlight nights.
Why have the seals hung back? I believe I know the secret. It is the baby! No one knows where the porpoise and the whale cradle their newborn infants it is so difficult to pry into the domestic ways of these sea-people but evidently the seals cannot manage it, so they are forced to return to the land when the cares of maternity are on them.
They used stone axes and wooden shields and were no match for the Romans with their steel swords. The sea-people on the other hand were dangerous foes. We have found the remains of their cities and their cemeteries and their waterworks all along the Italian coast. We are familiar with their inscriptions.
Fair lady, as you and I are to be good friends, tell me, whence come all the wines and meats, and gold and silver vessels, seeing there are neither cornfields nor flocks here, nor any workmen?" "The sea-people are heirs of the sea," replied the maiden; "to them come all the stores and riches that are lost in it.
Of course, I fell in love with her, like the donkey that I was, and worshipped the rotting boards of the Skull and Spectacles because she was pleased to walk upon them. Her speech was all of strange lands, and it fed my frenzy as dry wood feeds a fire. Her people were all sea-people, her talk was all sea-talk, her words were all sea-words.
At last, when they heard over and over again of the merman's riches, neither mother nor son would stay any longer in the west country; and as nobody persuaded them, and they would not do what Civil told them, Sour got out his boat and steered away with his mother toward the Merman's rock. From that voyage they never came back to the hamlet. Some say they went down and lived among the sea-people.
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