And gradually they brought up all the corruption which lay buried at the bottom of the sea. Drowned cats, old shoes, decomposed fat from the candle factory, the refuse from the dye works called “The Blue Hand,” tanners’ bark from the tannery, and all the human misery which the laundresses had batted off the clothes for the last hundred years. And there was such a terrible smell of sulphur and ammonia that only a prisoner could be expected to bear it.
When the boat was full, the prisoners wondered what was going to be done with their cargo of dirt? The riddle was solved when the overseer steered for their own cliff.
All the mud was unloaded there and thrown on the mountain, and soon the air was filled with the foulest of smells. They waded ankle-deep in filth, and their clothes, hands, and faces were covered with it.
“This is like the infernal regions!” said the prisoners.
They dredged and unloaded on the cliff for several years, and ultimately the cliff disappeared altogether.
And the white snow fell winter after winter on all the corruption and threw a pure white cover over it.
And when the spring came once again and all the snow had melted, the evil smell had disappeared, and the mud looked like mould. There was no more dredging after this spring, and our stone man was sent to work at the forge and never came near the cliff. Only once, in the autumn, he went there secretly, and then he saw something wonderful.
The ground was covered with green plants. Ugly sappy plants, it was true, mostly bur-marigolds, that look like a nettle with brown flowers, which is ugly because flowers should be white, yellow, blue or red. And there were true nettles with green blossoms, and burs, sorrel, thistles, and notch-weed; all the ugliest, burning, stinging, evil-smelling plants, which nobody likes, and which grow on dust-heaps, waste land, and mud.
“We cleaned the bottom of the sea, and now we have all the dirt here; this is all the thanks we get!” said the prisoner.
Then he was transferred to another cliff, where a fort was to be built, and again he worked in stone; stone, stone, stone!