As the wave struck the shore, it began to break and make breakers. As soon as it was broke, Gud dismounted and strolled along the beach looking for flotsam and jetsam.
He didn't find any, so he picked up a jeweled casket and started to wonder with a great curiosity what it contained. Then suddenly, he tossed the jeweled casket aside without even examining the padlock, for he had remembered that he knew all things and hence could not wonder nor possess curiosity. But upon further consideration he realized that lack of wonder and curiosity on his part would kill all the suspense in his story, so he began to wonder what the wild waves were saying, and why sea shells are pink inside, and what the ink-fish was writing on the sands of time.
Gud pondered these things as he walked along the beach until he saw before him a series of shallow depressions. At first he thought they were ordinary soul tracks. Then he looked again and gave forth a low whistle of surprise and amazement and bent low to examine the footprints—and shrank back in horror, for they were stained a deep crimson.
Cautiously Gud touched his finger to the stain and examined it critically. "'Tis blood!" he cried.
Gud began to trail the stained footprints along the beach and followed them until they turned and led into the sea. At the edge of the water he paused and sighed, for his robe was now nicely dehydrated. But curiosity is a compelling instinct and wonder a powerful emotion; and so Gud followed the trail as it led down the sloping beach and on down along the bottom of the sea.
At last the trail led to a rocky cavern where phosphorescent eyes stared out of opalescent water. Here the trail came finally to an end as it entered a door in the side of a barnacle-covered hull of an ancient galley.
"And what is this place?" asked Gud of a mermaid, who was sitting on one of the ship's knees: "and what bold criminal with a blood-stained trail has entered here?"
"Can't you read?" retorted the mermaid. "The sign tells you plainly enough that this is our Deep-Sea Butcher Shop, and he who just now entered was the butcher's boy, who had been up on the shore to get some red-blooded meat. We tire dreadfully down here of having seven Fridays in a week. And now if you will quit being silly and playing at amateur detective I will sing you a song." And so she sang: