events. They
know what bringing out boxes and luggage means well enough.

Sam knew, I am sure; but he did not care for us. He was only uneasy
because he thought Harper was going, and he should lose his shooting; and
as soon as he saw Harper was not getting into the boat, he sat down and
scratched himself, quite happy. But do dogs think?

Of course they do, only they do not think in words, as we do.

But how can they think without words?

That is very difficult for you and me to imagine, because we always think
in words. They must think in pictures, I suppose, by remembering things
which have happened to them. You and I do that in our dreams. I suspect
that savages, who have very few words to express their thoughts with,
think in pictures, like their own dogs. But that is a long story. We
must see about getting on board now, and under way.

* * * * *

Well, and what have you been doing?

Oh, I looked all over the yacht, at the ropes and curious things; and
then I looked at the mountains, till I was tired; and then I heard you
and some gentleman talking about the land sinking, and I listened. There
was no harm in that?

None at all. But what did you hear him say?

That the land must be sinking here, because there were peat-bogs
everywhere below high-water mark. Is that true?

Quite true; and that peat would never have been formed where the salt
water could get at it, as it does now every tide.

But what was it he said about that cliff over there?

He said that cliff on our right, a hundred feet high, was plainly once
joined on to that low island on our left.

What, that long bank of stones, with a house on it?

That is no house. That is a square lump of mud, the last remaining bit
of earth which was once the moraine of a glacier. Every year it crumbles
into the sea more and more; and in a few years it will be all gone, and
nothing left but the great round boulder-stones which the ice brought
down from the glaciers behind us.

But how does he know that it was once joined to the cliff?

Because that cliff, and the down behind it, where the cows are fed, is
made up, like the island, of nothing but loose earth and stones; and that
is why it is bright and green beside the gray rocks and brown heather of
the moors at its foot. He knows that it must be an old glacier moraine;
and he has reason to think that moraine once stretched right across the
bay to the low island, and perhaps on to the othe