"Do tell me what mermen are," said Moses. "Wal'," said the Captain, sinking his voice confidentially, and hitching his chair a little around, "mermen and maids is a kind o' people that have their world jist like our'n, only it's down in the bottom of the sea, 'cause the bottom of the sea has its mountains and its valleys, and its trees and its bushes, and it stands to reason there should be people there too." Moses opened his broad black eyes wider than usual, and looked absorbed attention. "Tell 'em about how you saw 'em," said Sally. "Wal', yes," said Captain Kittridge; "once when I was to the Bahamas,--it was one Sunday morning in June, the first Sunday in the month,--we cast anchor pretty nigh a reef of coral, and I was jist a-sittin' down to read my Bible, when up comes a merman over the side of the ship, all dressed as fine as any old beau that ever ye see, with cocked hat and silk stockings, and shoe-buckles, and his clothes were sea-green, and his shoe-buckles shone like diamonds." "Do you suppose they were diamonds, really?" said Sally. "Wal', child, I didn't ask him, but I shouldn't be surprised, from all I know of their ways, if they was," said the Captain, who had now got so wholly into the spirit of his fiction that he no longer felt embarrassed by the minister's presence, nor saw the look of amusement with which he was listening to him in his chimney-corner. "But, as I was sayin', he came up to me, and made the politest bow that ever ye see, and says he, 'Cap'n Kittridge, I presume,' and says I, 'Yes, sir.' 'I'm sorry to interrupt your reading,' says he; and says I, 'Oh, no matter, sir.' 'But,' says he, 'if you would only be so good as to move your anchor. You've cast anchor right before my front-door, and my wife and family can't get out to go to meetin'.'" "Why, do they go to meeting in the bottom of the sea?" said Moses. "Law, bless you sonny, yes. Why, Sunday morning, when the sea was all still, I used to hear the bass-viol a-soundin' down under the waters, jist as plain as could be,--and psalms and preachin'. I've reason to think there's as many hopefully pious mermaids as there be folks," said the Captain. "But," said Moses, "you said the anchor was before the front-door, so the family couldn't get out,--how did the merman get out?" "Oh! he got out of the scuttle on the roof," said the Captain, promptly. "And did you move your anchor?" said Moses. "Why, child, yes, to be sure I did; he was such a gentleman I wanted to oblige him,--it shows you how important it is always to be polite," said the Captain, by way of giving a moral turn to his narrative. Mr. Sewell, during the progress of this story, examined the Captain with eyes of amused curiosity. His countenance was as fixed and steady, and his whole manner of reciting as matter-of-fact and collected, as if he were relating some of the every-day affairs of his boat-building.