The Sea-Thing Child Quotes

One stormy night the sea-thing child, a draggled heap of scales and feathers, is flung up on the beach.

“One day an albatross landed on the beach, pulled a little stubby black pipe out of his pocket, and sat down to have a smoke. The fiddler crab hid among the rocks, but the sea-thing child came over to talk to the albatross.”

‘Small!’ said the albatross. ‘What isn’t small compared to the ocean! The blue whale’s the biggest thing that swims, and that’s small in the ocean. If the ocean wasn’t big it wouldn’t be the ocean.”

“Oh ho,′ said the crab. His eye-stalks stood straight up, and both eyes stared hard at the sea-thing child. ‘I very much beg your pardon,’ said the crab.”

“The sea-thing child stopped building sea-stone igloos, but sometimes he made little heaps of stones and sea-glass and sea-china, and drew a circle in the sand and around them sat inside the circle.”

Afraid of the wild waves and the storm skies, he meets a fiddler crab with no bow and together they avoid facing their fears.

Finally, though, he finds his star, his courage and his ocean self.

“The sea-thing child was restless in the night, and he came out of his sea-stone igloo and went for a walk on the beach all alone, not very close to the edge of the water where the white foam gleamed in the dark.”

“There’s not such thing as an afraid albatross,” said the albatross. “The ocean wouldn’t bed the ocean without storms. And the ocean is where I live. How can you get lost when you’re were you live? I was born on a rock in the middle of the ocean, and Wandering is my name.”

“He ran back to the beach and up to the big old seaweed-bearded rocks. Then he ran up and down the beach and gathered together all his sea-stones and sea-glass and sea-china.”