Language: allusion and stress shift

An allusion is a brief, indirect reference to a famous person, event or story, which borrows its meaning.

Conrad gives Hagberd a 'beard of Father Neptune': like the Roman god of the sea, but one who has swapped his trident for a spade.

Other allusions in the story: a beard like Father Christmas; Bessie's cottage as an inferno without the inscription of Dante's hell over its door; and Davy Jones's locker (the bottom of the sea, where drowned sailors lie).

Stress shift: the stressed syllable often moves when a word changes its grammatical class: in-FORM becomes in-for-MA-tion.

In nouns ending in '-tion', the stress falls on the syllable just before '-tion': ex-am-i-NA-tion, dis-tri-BU-tion.