None at all.  But what did you hear him say?

That the land must be sinking here, because there were peat-bogs everywhere below high-water mark.  Is that true?

Quite true; and that peat would never have been formed where the salt water could get at it, as it does now every tide.

But what was it he said about that cliff over there?

He said that cliff on our right, a hundred feet high, was plainly once joined on to that low island on our left.

What, that long bank of stones, with a house on it?

That is no house.  That is a square lump of mud, the last remaining bit of earth which was once the moraine of a glacier.  Every year it crumbles into the sea more and more; and in a few years it will be all gone, and nothing left but the great round boulder-stones which the ice brought down from the glaciers behind us.

But how does he know that it was once joined to the cliff?

Because that cliff, and the down behind it, where the cows are fed, is made up, like the island, of nothing but loose earth and stones; and that is why it is bright and green beside the gray rocks and brown heather of the moors at its foot.  He knows that it must be an old glacier moraine; and he has reason to think that moraine once stretched right across the bay to the low island, and perhaps on to the other shore, and was eaten out by the sea as the land sank down.

But how does he know that the land sank?

Of that, he says, he is quite certain; and this is what he says.—­Suppose there was a glacier here, where we are sailing now:  it would end in an ice cliff, such as you have seen a picture of in Captain Cook’s Voyages, of which you are so fond.  You recollect the pictures of Christmas Sound and Possession Bay?

Oh yes, and pictures of Greenland and Spitzbergen too, with glaciers in the sea.

Then icebergs would break off from that cliff, and carry all the dirt and stones out to sea, perhaps hundreds of miles away, instead of letting it drop here in a heap; and what did fall in a heap here the sea would wash down at once, and smooth it over the sea-bottom, and never let it pile up in a huge bank like that.  Do you understand?

I think I do.

Therefore, he says, that great moraine must have been built upon dry land, in the open air; and must have sunk since into the sea, which is gnawing at it day and night, and will some day eat it all up, as it would eat up all the dry land in the world, if Madam How was not continually lifting up fresh land, to make up for what the sea has carried off.

Oh, look there! some one has caught a fish, and is hauling it up.  What a strange creature!  It is not a mackerel, nor a gurnet, nor a pollock.

How do you know that?

Why, it is running along the top of the water like a snake; and they never do that.  Here it comes.  It has got a long beak, like a snipe.  Oh, let me see.