14() THE OTHRK END OF A 



only find a little hole, as round as though some one had stuck 

 a common lead pencil into the sand and taken it out again. 

 There was a neat and perfect roundness in the hole, which 

 told me at once it was a tenement of some kind ; and sundry 

 cases of beetles, legs of gnats, and dried dew-moths, scattered 

 round it, signified, moreover, that it was inhabited by some 

 inhuman Polyphemus. I was soon down on my knees, and 

 had my knife out ready for digging, when, within a foot of 

 the first, I saw another stir — and another round hole instantly 

 appeared. It now occurred to me that I might, with quietness 

 and patience, get a sight of one of these hermits while he was 

 sunning himself: I therefore lay as still as a cat watching at a 

 mouse-hole, and was soon rewarded by seeing the gentleman 

 make his appearance almost close under my nose. Unluckily, 

 like Alexander, I had placed myself between the sun and my 

 Diogenes, and this seemed to make him very fidgetty and un- 

 easy, so I obliged him by moving quietly out of the way, and 

 letting the sun shine on him, by the same movement bringing 

 my eye within about fifteen inches of him. Nothing appeared 

 but a broad flat head, which fitted very accurately the mouth 

 of the hole, and which was furnished with bright shining eyes, 

 and a pair of horrible jaws, held wide apart : these shears had 

 doubtless cut the thread of existence for many a poor wan- 

 derer, whose luckless star had led him to the abode of this 

 child of Erebus. 



I cut off the gentleman's retreat by passing a stick into the 

 sand, sideways, so as to cross his burrow, and then with a bit 

 of a jerk unearthed him and laid him sprawling. O, such a 

 beauty ! the Parcas, sweet creatures, the Eumenides, gentle 

 turtle-doves, were lovely in comparison : I'll describe the 

 animal with an eye to science. — Aspect, vicious ; temper, fero- 

 cious ; eyes, infernal ; jaws, diabolical, stuck on the wrong 

 way, like a figure-head shipped looking aft ; head, big ; back, 

 humped, the hump adorned with two hooks ; — there, Mr. 

 Editor, there's a description ! it only wants putting into cat- 

 Latin to be perfect! When first unearthed, he was monsti'ous 

 sulky, and lay twisted in a kind of half-kink, for all the world 

 like a pot-hook : but he soon found the inconvenience of this, 

 and set to work to make another hole, for which he used his 

 feet and jaws, loosening the sand with his feet, and fetching it 

 out with his jaws; in this way he got down about half an inch, 



