We conversed freely as we crawled forward for some hours over the springy moss. I met here with a mind of a ready friendliness, and a very lively curiosity. I suppose, by our reckoning, she had lived for an enormous period, but the mind that met me gave an impression of an invincibly child-like quality,--but it had other characteristics which I was to learn more slowly. The impression which I gave to her was, no doubt, somewhat different. Her keen delight in the new world,--as new to her as to me,--through which we were passing, contended with her curiosity to learn the still stranger world of which I could tell her, and gave little time for me to learn of her, or of the life to which she was native. But she gave me glimpses of an existence which found its pleasure in wandering through a marine world which was as much more extensive than the dry ground as it is to-day, and which I judged to have changed but little. One episode she gave me vividly because of the indelible impression which it had made upon her. It appeared that her kind can wander freely among the huge savage creatures of the ocean-depths, exploring its heights and valleys, and penetrating its caves with impunity, because they can control every form of life it contains by a will-power which works without effort. She had attempted, in a spirit of mischief, to allow various savage creatures to attack her, intending to forbid them at the latest second, but she found invariably that though their minds were confused by a feeling of her complacence, the respect of her kind was too deep an instinct for them to disobey, until she tried the trick upon a species of shark of an exceptional ferocity. Vividly I saw it, under depths of green water, from which all weaker forms of life had withdrawn in terror. The savage rushes of the hungry fish which she had foiled at the last moment with a thought of derision, and the snap of his disappointed jaws. And then,--the instant’s diversion of mind in its too-confident certainty, and the half-second too late,--the passionate repulse that sent the great fish cowed and grovelling to the sea-floor a hundred feet below,--and the consciousness that her right arm was hanging torn and useless. And then the long swim homeward for two thousand miles to the only place where help could be given, and how she had told her tale to the Seven, and they had decreed that the arm should never entirely heal, so that it should be a warning to her and all her race for ever. And in evidence she showed the scars, where no fur grew, and I understood that the scar of a healed wound was something beyond the previous experience of her kind. Of the swimming of the great tunnel she told me also, which extends for several thousand miles from one sea to another, through an intervening continent, and of strange forms that lurk in its labyrinth of caves, such as the open oceans have never seen,--labyrinths in which you may wander for many months, seeking in vain for an exit.