"It was something like a lizard in shape," I said slowly. "It had a long trailing tail, and two big hind legs it walked on; it had two sets of little forearms, only they weren't like arms, but more like big snakes: no fingers, no hands, just oozy rounded arms. It looked as if it had just crawled out of the sea, and around it there were a lot of thin silvery-blue lines, running at a tangent like this—" I chopped my hands through the air at a forty-five degree angle—"that seemed like a background to the creature. There were glowing eyes in its chest, and for a head it had what looked like a dead fish. Right?"
"Right." He gave me a long blank stare. Then he batted his lids up and down. "'Ow did you know? I never told you all that!"
"I saw it too."
"Garn!" he said scornfully. "Wotcher givin' us?"
"If I didn't see it, then how did I know just what it looked like?"
He thought that over, sucking his yellow teeth. Then he gasped. "My Gawd! You got 'em too?"
"Do I look drunk?"
"No, but—"
"And if I were, would I have seen exactly what you saw, unless it were really there?"
Arold Smiff sank back in the rocker and let out a wheeze that began in the tips of his toes. "My old mother! I'm off it for good. The snykes are catchin'. Ow! 'O are you, mister?"