his old skin hung before him.
First his head came free, and its old covering lay in tattered rags upon his neck. He pulled his hands out next, leaving their casing as the fingers of a turned glove. Next came his body’s turn, for this he had to squeeze himself between the weed-stalks. Lastly, he cleared his legs and tail.
His old skin hung before him on the starwort, white-gleaming and transparent, a perfect, neatly folded model of himself. Of himself, did I say? It scarcely did his present splendour justice. Along his back now rose the budding undulations of a crest. His flanks had lost their sombre olive shade, and were suffused with mottlings of velvet black, mottlings that turned to purple as they crept across his orange front.
the tadpoles were lazily browsing on the starwort.
Even these beauties paled before his tail—a ribbon whose jet black centre shaded into violet, and whose edges were flushed with crimson.
the very sticklebacks fought shy of him.
Had he not been consumed with hunger, he might well have lingered in complacent admiration of himself. But hunger such as he had never felt before rose superior to his æsthetic sense, and he left his weed-shelter in ravenous haste.
He had not far to go—a swim of ten yards, and he was among the tadpoles.