However, it did not. Just short of his lips, it halted. And after a few moments, it ceased to struggle.
Annoyed, but uncertain just why he was, Jerry attempted to re-mouth his tongue. It did not come back. His jaws lay open wide, and his tongue remained where it had shot forward to grasp the tentacled creature.
Something clicked in Jerry's mind, and he once more tried "seeing" out of the tongue's six eyes. He found that he still could, but dimly.
It took him about three seconds to figure out his peril.
The segment behind his own would never re-swallow his segment, which had been its tongue. It couldn't. It was dead. For the time-period in which his own segment had existed as the third segment's tongue, it had some control over it. It could extend the tongue, and could see through the eyes in the tongue. But then Jerry's segment had fed, had grown, and the parent-segment had died, as had its parent-segments before it. The thing, whatever it was, grew fast, too.
That was the frightening part.
Even while he thought this, he saw that the lump was gone from his tongue. But his tongue was twice the size it had been!
Repeated efforts on his part to withdraw it back within his jaws met with failure. Again he tried looking through its eyes, and found his tongue-vision even dimmer. Then with a tremor of shock, he realized that his own vision was dimmer, too.
His host was dying. It was no longer needed to house the tongue.