"You tell me some stories first," said Geo.
"Oh, they talk about cannibals, women who drink blood, things neither man nor animal, and cities inhabited only by death. Sailors avoid it, save to curse by."
"Do you know anything more than that?"
"There's nothing more to know," shrugged Urson.
"She said the stories you'd tell would not be one tenth of the truth."
"She must have meant that there wasn't even a tenth part of the truth in them. And I'm sure she's right. You just misunderstood."
"No, I heard her correctly," Geo assured him.
"Then I just don't believe it. There are half a dozen things that don't match up in all this. First, how that little four-armed fellow happened to be at the pier after two months just when she was coming in. And to have the jewel still, not have traded it, or sold it already...."
"Maybe," suggested Geo, "he read her mind too, when he first stole it, the same way he read ours."
"And if he did, maybe he knows how to work the things. I say let's find out when he comes back. And I wonder who cut his tongue out. Strange one or not, that makes me sick," said the big man.