The old man spoke in a trembling voice, "Rabbits are good, very good, but when it comes to a delicious delicacy, I prefer crabs. When I was a boy..."
Edwin impatiently interrupted Grandpa's useless chatter: "Why do you blather on so much?"
The boy hadn't said these exact words, but something remotely similar, something coarser, more violent, and sparing of euphemisms. His speech betrayed a distant kinship between him and the old man, and the latter spoke in English containing many misuses of words and structures.
"What I want to know," Edwin continued, "is why you call crabs a 'delicious delicacy'?" "A crab is a crab, isn't it? I don't know anyone who ever describes them in such strange terms."
The old man sighed but made no reply, and they continued on in silence. The sound of the waves suddenly rose as they emerged from the forest onto a carpet of sand dunes bordering the sea. A few goats were grazing on the sand dunes, guarded by a boy dressed in animal skins and assisted by a wolfdog that looked a bit like a collie. Mixed with the roar of the waves was the sound of barking or howling from a group of jagged rocks a hundred yards offshore. Here, sea lions dragged their bodies to bask in the sun or to quarrel with one another. Directly ahead, the smoke of a fire rose, tended by a third boy, also of a barbaric appearance. Several wolfdogs, similar to the one that had guarded the goats, crouched nearby. The old man hurried on, sniffing eagerly as he approached the fire.