"Well, I am much obliged to you," said the merchant, "for in my dream I was hanging up in Salonika by my feet, with my head downwards."
Then the merchant made the children leave the cavern.
"Come, my children," said he, "let us see if the sea has calmed down, and whether a ship is approaching from anywhere."
Thomar obeyed, quitted the cavern, and exclaimed, in astonishment:
"Look, my dear foster-father! How could a ship come here when the very sea has vanished, and only the bottom of it remains."
And indeed the district stretching out before them was quite bare and barren enough to be taken for the bottom of the sea.
Leonidas took the lad's words for a joke, and it was a joke he did not relish.
"Keep your witticisms for another time, my son," said he, "and rub your eyes that they may see the better."
But Milieva leaped after Thomar, and when she had got up to him she clapped her hands together, and exclaimed, with naïve amazement:
"Why, the sea has run away from us!"