144 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE 



Guinevere still danced in stately cadence, with 

 the other Redfins at a distance going about their 

 several businesses. She danced alone a dance 

 of change, of happenings of tremendous import, 

 of symbolism as majestic as it was age-old. Here 

 in this little glass aquarium the tadpole Guine- 

 vere had just freed her arms she, with waving 

 scarlet fins, watching me with lidless white and 

 staring eyes, still with fish-like, fin-bound body. 

 She danced upright, with new-born arms folded 

 across her breast, tail-tip flagellating frenziedly, 

 stretching long fingers with disks like cym- 

 bals, reaching out for the land she had never 

 trod, limbs flexed for leaps she had never 

 made. 



A few days before and Guinevere had been a 

 fish, then a helpless biped, and now suddenly, 

 somewhere between my salad and coffee, she be- 

 came an aquatic quadruped. Strangest of all, 

 her hands were mobile, her feet useless ; and when 

 the dance was at an end, and she sank slowly to 

 the bottom, she came to rest on the very tips of 

 her two longest fingers; her legs and toes still 

 drifting high and useless. Just before she 

 ceased, her arms stretched out right froggily, 

 her weird eyes rolled about, and she gulped a 



