"Some of them are very beautiful. Some, I fear, are not beautiful at all."
"Then why do they live? It must be very unpleasant. Are any of them more beautiful than I am?"
"I have never seen anyone, Dream, as beautiful as you are."
"Say that again," she said, "it makes a pleasing sound."
I did not say it again. I felt my responsibilities towards this beautiful but wholly barbarous creature. It seemed to me my duty at the very first to purge her mind of her superstitions about that deformed, intelligent, and learned section of humanity in whose divine character she had been taught to believe.
"If your masters are indeed gods, as you say, why did they not destroy the creature from the sea?"
"Two of them went out to kill it, but they saw its eyes and horror overcame them so that they died. After that they saw that this was a very evil creature, and in their wisdom they left it alone."
"They must be poor creatures to be so easily frightened to death. In my country we could not believe in gods that ever die. Yet the very first of your masters that I saw when I reached this island has since died and his body has been burned."
"His body—yes. But he himself still lives. I was taught these things by the gods when I was a child, and it is wrong of you to try and make me think otherwise."
I began to realise the tremendous strength of early impression. I could call to mind that I had seen evidence enough of it before ever I came to Thule. It seemed almost impossible for me—one man—to fight against this crafty and complex organisation of tyranny and slavery that was here blindly accepted. I turned to another of her terrors—her terror of the sea.