Chapter XXXVI

After everyone else had drowned, Gud came up for air. He lit a cigarette and blew a smoke ring and tossed it on the water to see if it would float. It did and so Gud climbed upon it and sat there cross-legged to wait for his robe to dry.

Presently he saw a man coming toward him running on the water and carrying a package under one arm and a half-finished manuscript under the other. The man came up panting and out of breath and cried: "Save me!"

"Perhaps," said Gud. "But what have you in the package?"

At this the man hurled the package at Gud and sank into the depths with bubbling groan.

Gud unwrapped the package and found that it contained three mountains. These Gud tossed upon the water where they floated equidistant on the surface of the sea. On the first mountain was a man in dire agony of soul. On the second mountain was a beautiful woman about to plunge a dagger into her heart because of her love for the man. On the third mountain was another woman no less beautiful, and she was about to cast herself into the sea because of her hate of the woman who loved the man. But Gud, who knew all things, was not interested in what would happen next; and, his robe being dry, he arose and walked leisurely away on the water and did not once look back.

Tiring of walking on the water Gud looked about for a conveyance. Just then a deep-sea fish came to the surface and winked at Gud with his glassy eye.

"I came up to see if I could find out," said the fish, "who that fellow was who came tumbling down into my depths a little while ago."

"Why do you wish to know?" asked Gud.

"Because," replied the fish, "I feel as if I had swallowed a theological discussion and it is giving me indigestion."

"Suppose you turn over and let the sun shine on your belly," suggested Gud. "Sunlight is very healing."

"Thanks, but my belly is white and I do not wish to have it sunburned--but who do you suppose is coming in yonder boat?"

When the boat came nearer Gud and the fish saw that the boat also contained a man and two women. The man was talking. "Suppose," said he, "that the boat should upset: neither of you can swim, and what would I do? For I could not save you both. I could not let my dear old mother drown and yet how could I let my beautiful wife drown? If I had realized how I was going to worry about it, I should have insisted on going to the mountains for our vacation."

Upon hearing the man's words the two women set up a great weeping.

"I wonder," said Gud, "which one he would save!"

"Let's find out," laughed the fish; and without further ado he dived beneath the boat and upset it with a mighty stroke of his great scaly tail.

"Help!" screamed the mother.

"Help!" gurgled the young wife.

"Now I am in a devil of a fix," groaned the man, "which ever one I save, the neighbors will say I should have saved the other one." And he started off alone swimming rapidly toward the shore.

Then the fish remembered that the young wife was quite plump--even if she wasn't beautiful as her husband had said she was, so he dived deep into the sea and left Gud standing there on the water without a blessed thing to do and nothing to think about.

And now a wind came sighing over the deep blue sea, and little ripples stirred upon the surface of the water, and then the wind came soughing over the roughened sea, and larger wavelets raced and ran atop the cold, damp water. And soon the wind began to howl and tear the wild, wet sea, and mighty waves began to break and toss and splatter--and it made Gud seasick.

So he began to wonder why the waves kept going on and leaving him behind. The more he thought about it, the more it worried him; and finally it occurred to Gud that he was opposing the waves subconsciously. So he sublimated his subconscious conflict and harmonized his ego with the spirit of the waves, and when the next wave hit him he rode atop it like a cat on the ridgepole of a cabin going down the river in a June rise.

As the wave struck the shore, it began to break and make breakers. As soon as it was broke, Gud dismounted and strolled along the beach looking for flotsam and jetsam.

He didn't find any, so he picked up a jeweled casket and started to wonder with a great curiosity what it contained. Then suddenly, he tossed the jeweled casket aside without even examining the padlock, for he had remembered that he knew all things and hence could not wonder nor possess curiosity. But upon further consideration he realized that lack of wonder and curiosity on his part would kill all the suspense in his story, so he began to wonder what the wild waves were saying, and why sea shells are pink inside, and what the ink-fish was writing on the sands of time.

Gud pondered these things as he walked along the beach until he saw before him a series of shallow depressions. At first he thought they were ordinary soul tracks. Then he looked again and gave forth a low whistle of surprise and amazement and bent low to examine the footprints--and shrank back in horror, for they were stained a deep crimson.

Cautiously Gud touched his finger to the stain and examined it critically. "'Tis blood!" he cried.

Gud began to trail the stained footprints along the beach and followed them until they turned and led into the sea. At the edge of the water he paused and sighed, for his robe was now nicely dehydrated. But curiosity is a compelling instinct and wonder a powerful emotion; and so Gud followed the trail as it led down the sloping beach and on down along the bottom of the sea.

At last the trail led to a rocky cavern where phosphorescent eyes stared out of opalescent water. Here the trail came finally to an end as it entered a door in the side of a barnacle-covered hull of an ancient galley.

"And what is this place?" asked Gud of a mermaid, who was sitting on one of the ship's knees: "and what bold criminal with a blood-stained trail has entered here?"

"Can't you read?" retorted the mermaid. "The sign tells you plainly enough that this is our Deep-Sea Butcher Shop, and he who just now entered was the butcher's boy, who had been up on the shore to get some red-blooded meat. We tire dreadfully down here of having seven Fridays in a week. And now if you will quit being silly and playing at amateur detective I will sing you a song." And so she sang: