human
Truly the crayter had the like of a woman's bubbies, and nursed a little one at them, and wasn't it meself was thinking I beheld the mermaid, for all she was that mortal ugly and her mouth ran up and down like a caterpillar's?
gpt
Now, said Gideon Hibbs--
human
I give you my word, sir, do I not? Daniel Shawn's flare of wrath was swiftly veiled.
gpt
Will a man be inventing such a thing? Wasn't it meself that saw that mouth munching a huge great gob of sea grass, the kind that groweth in brackish waters, and saw the lips churning from side to side? That other man started for a harpoon. I stayed him. Ochone!--how could a man be looking on the ugly thing, the mother she was, and not have pity?
human
Pity's a rare uneasy thing,
gpt
A bald black head round like a cannon ball, devil a bit of nose but only a pair of slits like a common seal. Shawn laughed abruptly.
human
And now I must ruin my tale, Mr. Kenny, for when I went below one of the crew who'd often sailed those parts told me the thing was called a manatee or sea cow, and had been well known for many years, the way the folk at Campeachy and elsewhere do fancy the meat highly and use the hide of the gentle beast for making whips. Thus I was spared the folly of telling abroad the marvel I had seen. But you understand me, sir?--in this manner, from such particulars glimpsed in a poor light, come many inventions. Reuben could smell Shawn, a muskiness not quite unpleasant; a wild smell.
gpt
In all waste places are wonders--in swamps, jungles, mountains, deserts. The greatest of all lies very far west of here, or say east if you like, for it's the other side of the world. Beside that these fancies of storytellers are pap for children. I have never beheld the sea serpent, though I've heard of him times enough, and spoke with those who'd seen him, honest men owning no more imagination than a block of holystone. The Kraken too, perhaps. Yet those mysteries, and all others, are nothing beside the sea's own self, the sea of the west, the Pacific.
human
The Kraken?
gpt
A titan of many arms, Mr. Cory, mightier than a right whale they say, who will drag down entire ships, or overturn them belike to feed on all aboard the way a cat will take her a nestful of little birds. It may be so. The sea is boundless. Anything might live therein.
human
Even mermaids,
gpt
No man knoweth the sea until he hath ventured the western sea, the Pacific. The fat Spanish ships travel it, but I tell you the route they follow is a single thread stretched over a Sahara. I have sailed it too, a very little of it, above and below the Line, in a whaler, once, and I young with no wisdom in me but with open eyes--and I was, say, like an insect crossing the continent of Europe, but I'm a wise insect, sir--Mother of God, I know the meaning of horizons! Pacific nights--deep as any night of the soul, and will you be telling me of a deeper dark than that? Out there only the sea is truth, only the sea, and this is a part of the truth: there be many islands.
human
Continents perhaps,