He called them progressive because in the course of years he had perceived in them a slight glacier-like movement.
To others they appeared fixed.
Wentworth's attitude towards life, of which he was so fond of speaking, was perhaps rather like that of a shrimper who, in ankle-deep water, watches the heavily freighted whale boats come towering in.

He does not quite know why he, of all men, with his special equipment for the purpose, and his expert handling of the net, does not also catch whales.
That they seldom swim in two-inch water does not occur to him.

At last he does not think there are any whales.

He has exploded that fallacy.
For, in a moment of adventurous enthusiasm, counting not the cost, did he not once wade recklessly up to his very shoulders in deep water: _and there were no whales_,--only pinching crabs.

Crabs were the one real danger, the largest denizens of the boundless main, whatever his former playmates the whalers might affirm.
When the shrimper and the whaler had dined together, and the Bishop had heard with affectionate sympathy the little there was to hear respecting Michael, and the conversation tended towards more general topics, the radical antagonism between the two friends' minds threatened every moment to make itself felt.
The Bishop tried politics somewhat tentatively, on which they had sympathised in college days, but it seemed they had widely diverged since.