It would
certainly have been very easy for any person in mischief or malice to
have played the hoax, but no locality in the wide world would have
seemed more unlikely to be the scene of such a game; for who performs
theatricals to amuse the lonely shore, or the ebbing tide, or the
sea-birds that poise in the air or pounce upon the fish when the sea is
gray at dawn? And certainly the deception of the old man could not have
been the object of the play, for it was but by chance that he saw it,
and it could matter to no one what he saw or thought or felt, for he was
one of the most insignificant of earth's sons. Then Caius would think of
that curious gleam of deeper insight the poor old mind had displayed in
the attempt to express, blunderingly as it might be, the fact that truth
exceeds our understanding, and yet that we are bound to walk by the
light of understanding. He came, upon the whole, to the conclusion that
some latent faculty of imagination, working in the old man's mind,
combining with the picturesque objects so familiar to his eyes, had
produced in him belief in this curious vision. It was one of those
things that seem to have no reason for coming to pass, no sufficient
cause and no result, for Caius never heard that Morrison had related the
tale to anyone but himself, nor was there any report in the village that
anyone else had seen an unusual object in the sea.
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