You might, in a simpler world, have said it was magic. There was the illuminated rock of the sea-bed, every pebble clear, a living surface shifting with shadows as the ripples of the upper sea passed over it. Sea-weeds, scarlet and green and cinnamon, moved and swayed in drowsy patterns so beautiful that they drugged the eye. A school of small fish, torpedo-shaped, and barred like zebras, hung motionless, then turned as one, and flashed out of sight... There were shells everywhere.