But it was no good. Tissemao would have none of it, but simply said:
“Let me get away; let me go up into my village again, will you?”
The old Cuttle-fish got into an awful rage at hearing Tissemao plead so, for he had fallen deeply in love with her.
Now it so happened, and by the merest chance too, that the Cuttle-fish was terrifying Tissemao, trying to frighten her into subjection, when a very old Crab happened to be walking by the Cuttle-fish’s cavern door. The Crab distinctly caught sight of Tissemao looking up with terror-stricken eyes at the Cuttle-fish.
“Ho ho!” he muttered to himself; “so he’s at it again, is he!”
Now, this old Crab was good-hearted, one of the respectable kind. And, knowing the reputation the Cuttle-fish had as a roué of the worst type, he at once determined to thwart the Cuttle-fish in his endeavours to attempt to hurt so sweet a maid as Tissemao. So he gently looked round the corner of the cavern door, and said:
“Good afternoon.”
In a moment the vicious Cuttle-fish rushed to the door, so that its bulk could artfully hide Tissemao from the intruder’s eyes.
The old Crab, seeing through the ruse and not wishing to let the Cuttle-fish know that it had seen Tissemao, artfully put its claw to its mouth, then, yawning, said:
“Oh dear, my eyes are so bad lately, really I can’t see anything at all.” Then it looked straight into the Cuttle-fish’s eyes, and continued: “I suppose you feel very lonely here in this cave of yours?”