He was a human bark who, with the keel of his breast, cut the foam, whirling through the sunken rocks and the pacific waters in whose depths sparkled fishes among mother-of-pearl twigs and stars moving like flowers.
He used to seat himself to rest on the black rocks with overskirts of seaweed that raised or lowered their fringe at the caprice of the wave, awaiting the night and the chance vessel that might come to dash against them like a piece of bark.

Like a marine reptile he had even penetrated certain caves of the coast, drowsy and glacial lakes illuminated by mysterious openings where the atmosphere is black and the water transparent, where the swimmer has a bust of ebony and legs of crystal.

In the course of these swimming expeditions he ate all the living beings he encountered fastened to the rocks by antennas and arms.

The friction of the great, terrified fish that fled, bumping against him with the violence of a projectile, used to make him laugh.
In the night hours passed before his grandfather's little ships, Ulysses used to hear the _Triton_ speak of the _Peje Nicolao_, a man-fish of the Straits of Messina mentioned by Cervantes and other authors, who lived in the water maintaining himself by the donations from the ships.

His uncle must be some relative of this _Peje Nicolao_.
At other times this uncle would mention a certain Greek who in order to see his lady-love swam the Hellespont every night.