"Yes. But what do you want?" he repeated, kindly.
"I think I want you. Are not you the Old Man of the Sea?"
"I am."
"Then Grandmother says, have you any more fishes ready for her?"
"We will go and see, my dear," answered the old man, speaking yet more kindly than before. "And I can do something for you, can I not?"
"Yes—show me the way up to the country from which the shadows fall," said Tangle.
For there she hoped to find Mossy again.
"Ah! indeed, that would be worth doing," said the old man. "But I cannot, for I do not know the way myself. But I will send you to the Old Man of the Earth. Perhaps he can tell you. He is much older than I am."
Leaning on his staff, he conducted her along the shore to a steep rock, that looked like a petrified ship turned upside down. The door of it was the rudder of a great vessel, ages ago at the bottom of the sea. Immediately within the door was a stair in the rock, down which the old man went, and Tangle followed. At the bottom the old man had his house, and there he lived.
As soon as she entered it, Tangle heard a strange noise, unlike anything she had ever heard before. She soon found that it was the fishes talking. She tried to understand what they said; but their speech was so old-fashioned, and rude, and undefined, that she could not make much of it.