The fisherfolk cried aloud in astonishment, and Opee-Kwan’s jaw lowered and remained lowered.

“And in the distance I saw a monster like unto a thousand whales.  It was one-eyed, and vomited smoke, and it snorted with exceeding loudness.  I was afraid and ran with shaking legs along the path between the bars.  But it came with the speed of the wind, this monster, and I leaped the iron bars with its breath hot on my face....”

Opee-Kwan gained control of his jaw again.  “And—­and then, O Nam-Bok?”

“Then it came by on the bars, and harmed me not; and when my legs could hold me up again it was gone from sight.  And it is a very common thing in that country.  Even the women and children are not afraid.  Men make them to do work, these monsters.”

“As we make our dogs do work?” Koogah asked, with sceptic twinkle in his eye.

“Ay, as we make our dogs do work.”

“And how do they breed these—­these things?” Opee-Kwan questioned.

“They breed not at all.  Men fashion them cunningly of iron, and feed them with stone, and give them water to drink.  The stone becomes fire, and the water becomes steam, and the steam of the water is the breath of their nostrils, and—­”

“There, there, O Nam-Bok,” Opee-Kwan interrupted.  “Tell us of other wonders.  We grow tired of this which we may not understand.”

“You do not understand?” Nam-Bok asked despairingly.

“Nay, we do not understand,” the men and women wailed back.  “We cannot understand.”

Nam-Bok thought of a combined harvester, and of the machines wherein visions of living men were to be seen, and of the machines from which came the voices of men, and he knew his people could never understand.

“Dare I say I rode this iron monster through the land?” he asked bitterly.

Opee-Kwan threw up his hands, palms outward, in open incredulity.  “Say on; say anything.  We listen.”

“Then did I ride the iron monster, for which I gave money—­”

“Thou saidst it was fed with stone.”

“And likewise, thou fool, I said money was a thing of which you know nothing.  As I say, I rode the monster through the land, and through many villages, until I came to a big village on a salt arm of the sea.  And the houses shoved their roofs among the stars in the sky, and the clouds drifted by them, and everywhere was much smoke.  And the roar of that village was like the roar of the sea in storm, and the people were so many that I flung away my stick and no longer remembered the notches upon it.”

“Hadst thou made small notches,” Koogah reproved, “thou mightst have brought report.”

Nam-Bok whirled upon him in anger.  “Had I made small notches!  Listen, Koogah, thou scratcher of bone!  If I had made small notches, neither the stick, nor twenty sticks, could have borne them—­nay, not all the driftwood of all the beaches between this village and the next.  And if all of you, the women and children as well, were twenty times as many, and if you had twenty hands each, and in each hand a stick and a knife, still the notches could not be cut for the people I saw, so many were they and so fast did they come and go.”