126 GLAUCUS; OR, 



salmon or on trout. The victim is tired now ; and 

 slowly, and yet dexterously, his blind assailant is 

 feeling and shifting along his side, till he reaches 

 one end of him ; and then the black lips expand, 

 and slowly and surely the curved finger begins pack- 

 ing him end-foremost down into the gullet, where 

 he sinks, inch by inch, till the swelling which marks 

 his place is lost among the coils, and he is probably 

 macerated to a pulp long before he has reached the 

 opposite extremity of his cave of doom. Once safe 

 down, the black murderer slowly contracts again into 

 a knotted heap, and lies, like a boa with a stag inside 

 him, motionless and blest* 



There; we must come away now, for the tide is 

 over our ankles : but touch, before you go, one of 

 those little red mouths which peep out of the stone. 

 A tiny jet of water shoots up almost into your face. 



* Certain Parisian zoologists have done me the honour to hint 

 that this description was a play of fancy. 1 can only answer, that 

 I saw it with my own eyes, in my own aquarium, I am not, I 

 hope, in the habit of drawing on my fancy in the presence of 

 infinitely more marvellous Nature. Truth is quite strange enough 

 to be interesting without lies. 



