He waded into the water up to his waist, and bent forward with his arms beneath the surface, patiently waiting. It was thus that our remote ancestors fished. Fish ran larger in those days, as a rule. In the deeper waters they were monstrous. The smaller fish therefore sought the shallows where the big ones, greedy cannibals, could not follow them. A man seldom stood in the sea as Probably Arboreal was doing more than ten minutes without a fish brushing against him either accidentally or because the fish thought the man was something good to eat. As soon as a fish touched him, the man would grab for it. If he were clumsy and missed too many fish, he starved to death. Experts survived because they _were_ expert; by a natural process of weeding out the awkward it had come about that men were marvellously adept. A bear who stands by the edge of a river watching for salmon at the time of the year when they rim up stream to spawn, and scoops them from the water with a deft twitch of his paw, was not more quick or skillful than Probably Arboreal. Suddenly he pitched forward, struggling; he gave a gurgling shout, and his head disappeared beneath the water. When it came up again, he twisted toward the shore, with lashing arms and something like panic on his face, and shouted: “Oh! Oh! Oh!” he cried. “Something has me by the foot!” Twenty or thirty men and women who heard the cry stopped fishing and straightened up to look at him. “Help! Help!” he shouted again. “It is pulling me out to sea!” A knock-kneed old veteran, with long intelligent-looking mobile toes, broke from the surf and scurried to the safety of the beach, raising the cry: “A god! A god! A water-god has caught Probably Arboreal!” “More likely a devil!” cried Slightly Simian, who had followed Probably to the water. And all his neighbours plunged to land and left Probably Arboreal to his fate, whatever his fate was to be. But since spectacles are always interesting, they sat down comfortably on the beach to see how long it would be before Probably Arboreal disappeared. Gods and devils, sharks and octopi, were forever grabbing one of their number and making off to deep water with him to devour him at their leisure. If the thing that dragged the man were seen, if it showed itself to be a shark or an octopus, a shark or an octopus it was; if it were unseen, it got the credit of being a god or a devil. “Help me!” begged Probably Arboreal, who was now holding his own, although he was not able to pull himself into shallower water. “It is not a god or a devil. It doesn't feel like one. And it isn't a shark, because it hasn't any teeth. It is an animal like a cleft stick, and my foot is in the cleft.” But they did not help him. Instead, Big Mouth, a seer and _vers libre_ poet of the day, smitten suddenly with an idea, raised a chant, and presently all the others joined in. The chant went like this: “Probably, he killed Crooked Nose,