He used to inspire the faith of the miracle-working saints and audacious highway captains.

On calm, sunshiny winter mornings the people would often go running down to the beach, looking anxiously over the lonely sea.

The veterans who were toasting themselves in the sun near the overturned boats, on scanning the broad horizon, would finally discern an almost imperceptible point, a grain of sand dancing capriciously on the waves.
They would all break into shouts and conjectures.

It was a buoy, a piece of masthead, the drift from a distant shipwreck.

For the women it was somebody drowned, so bloated that it was floating like a leather bottle, after having been many days in the water.
Suddenly the same supposition would arise in every perplexed mind.