He found his voice. "Where did you come from?"
The little man smiled unpleasantly. "Mud and moss," he said.
Shoemaker wanted to yell. Holding a conversation with a hunk of mist, a non-existent goblin! He hardly recognized his own voice when he said, "What do you want?"
The green man walked toward him. "Heaved out my Scotch," he said, and leered.
Shoemaker did yell. Leaping to his feet, flinging his arms wide, he bellowed like a wounded carabao. The bottle slipped out of his fingers and looped gracefully into the sea. The goblin turned his head to follow it.
Then, astonishingly, he looked at Shoemaker, said, "It'll come back," and dived in after the bottle.
Neither of them came up, though Shoemaker hung onto the frame of the sallyport and watched for half an hour.
Shoemaker heard their voices through the hull when they came back that night.
"Where's the old soak?" That was Burford.