“I say, though, don’t it seem queer to you that we’ve been here all our lives, and grown as old as we are, without ever going to the top of the cliff here and looking down into the Scraw?”
“Yes, that’s just what I’ve been thinking ever since old Joe talked to us as he did. But I don’t know that it is queer.”
“Well, I do,” said Mike: “it’s very queer.”
“No, it isn’t. Ever since we can remember everybody has said that you can’t get there, because nobody could climb up; and then while we were little we always heard people talk almost in a whisper about it, as if it were something that oughtn’t to be named; and so of course we didn’t think for ourselves, and took all they said as being right. But you know there may be whirlpools and holes and black caverns and sharp rocks, and I dare say there are regular monsters of congers down in the deep places that have never been disturbed.”
“And sharks.”
“No, I don’t think there would be sharks. They live out in the open sea more, where it’s not so rough.”
“I say, how big have we ever seen a conger?”
“Why, that one Carnach brought in and said he’d had a terrible fight with: don’t you remember?”
“Yes, I remember; he caught it on a dark thunderstormy day, and said when he hooked it first, baiting with a pilchard, it came so easy that he thought it was a little one, and swam up every time he slackened his line till he got it close to the top. But when he went to hook it in with his gaff he fell back over the thwart, because as soon as it saw him it opened its mouth and came over the gunwale with a rush, and hunted him round the boat till he hit it over the head with his little axe.”
“Yes, I remember,” said Vince, taking up the narrative; “and then he said they had a terrible fight, for it twisted its tail round his leg and struck at him, getting hold of his tarpaulin coat with its teeth and holding on till he got the blade of the axe into the cut he had made and sawed away till he got through the backbone. Oh yes, we heard him tell the story lots of times about how strong it was, and how it bruised his leg where it hit him with its tail, and how he was beginning to feel that, in spite of its head being nearly off, it seemed as if it would finish him, when all at once it dropped down in the bottom of the boat and only just heaved about. I used to believe it all, but he always puts more and more to it whenever he tells the tale. I don’t believe it now.”