There is a lowering, soap-suddy thing a mile away from the more or less dry land which local ignorance and superstition call the sea.

The interim is mud--oozy, brown, malevolent mud.

Sometimes it seems to heave as if with the myriad bodies of slimy crawling eels and worms and snakes.

A few foul boats lie buried in it.
Here and there, on land, a surly inhabitant spits into it.

If you address him he snorts at you unintelligibly.