Then he stretches out his free claw to seize hold of a root, and thus try to chain his captive to the bottom.
But the trick does not succeed. The jerk that follows is so violent that he loses his claw!
He has now lost his chance, and lets go.
Grim feeling herself relieved of his weight, and free in her movements, darts away with the speed of a run-away engine. In addition to the soreness of her mouth, she now has a pain in her tail. She will need some time to recover from both.
Things had gone against her, and to tell the truth she did not think there was much fun in being a fish; but then she had to learn her lesson, and once bitten, twice shy, both in and above the water.
The recollection of the strange little pearly fish long remained in her memory. Its stiff body, and continual turning about its own dorsal fin, without a single stroke of the tail, were long imprinted on her mind; and whenever afterwards the “tit-bit” appeared, her wounded mouth assured her voracious stomach that it was wiser to refrain.
[VI: THE MAN-ROACH]
Years went by; and Grim grew into a splendid fish. Her long, flat forehead was now continued straight into the strong duck-like beak of the upper jaw. A hollow in the middle enabled it, as it were, to project in canopies that hung down over her eyes, which thus acquired an expression even more cruel and scowling.
The cheeks stood perpendicularly on each side of the forehead, and enclosed the cranium as between walls; it was as though she had had a dent on both sides of her head. The back of her neck swelled up like that of a bull, for here the muscles lay over the cranium in large, thick curves, until down by the neck, they gave place each to its branchial cleft, which was as large as a barn door.
And what a mouth! It opened up far past the eyes! Generally, it only stood ajar; but to look into it when it opened wide was like looking into a barrel studded with nails.