I made a rush and grappled him, but he tossed his head round and slipped away once more under my arm, as though he had been brought up by a Chinese wrestler.
Then he got on one side of a flat rock, I the other, and for three or four minutes we waltzed round that slab in the most insane manner.
But by this time we were both pretty well spent--he with age and I with faintness from my long fast, and we came presently to a standstill.
After glaring at me for a time, the woodman gasped out as he struggled for breath-- "Oh, mighty and dreadful spirit! Oh, dweller in primordial ice, say from which niche of the cliffs has the breath of chance thawed you ?" "Never a niche at all, Mr.Hunter-for-Haddocks'-Eyes," I answered as soon as I could speak.

"I am just a castaway wrecked last night on this shore of yours, and very grateful indeed will I be if you can show me the way to some breakfast first, and afterwards to the outside world." But the old fellow would not believe.

"Spirits such as you," he said sullenly, "need no food, and go whither they will by wish alone." "I tell you I am not a spirit, and as hungry as I don't particularly want to be again.

Here, look at the back of my trousers, caked three inches deep in mud.

If I were a spirit, do you think I would slide about on my coat-tails like that?
Do you think that if I could travel by volition I would slip down these infernal cliffs on my pants' seat as I have just done?
And as for materialism--look at this fist; it punched you just now! Surely there was nothing spiritual in that knock ?'' "No," said the savage, rubbing his head, "it was a good, honest rap, so I must take you at your word.