He did not remark that in that case Caius must have seen the creature clearly, for it went without saying.
"Pity you hadn't my gun," he said.
Caius inwardly shuddered, but because he wished to confide as far as he might, he said outwardly: "I shouldn't have liked to shoot at it; its face looked so awfully human, you know." "Yes," assented the elder, who had a merciful heart "it's wonderful what a look an animal has in its eyes sometimes." He was slowly shuffling round to the next door with his keys.

"Well, I'm sure, my lad, I don't know what it could ha' been, unless 'twas some sort of a porpoise." "We should be quite certain to know if there was any woman paying a visit hereabout, shouldn't we?
A woman couldn't possibly swim across the bay." "Woman!" The old man turned upon him sternly.

"I thought you said it was a fish." "I said she _swam_ like a fish.

She might have been a woman dressed in a fish-skin, perhaps; but there isn't any woman here that could possibly be acting like that--and old Morrison told me the same thing was about the shore the summer before he died." His father still looked at him sharply.

"Well, the question is, whether the thing you saw was a woman or a fish, for you must have seen it pretty clear, and they aren't alike, as far as I know." Caius receded from the glow of confidence.