The huge mass of black crags that towered at the head of the gloomy defile was exactly what one would picture as the enchanted castle of the evil magician, within sight of which all vegetation withered, looking from over the desolate valley of ruins to the barren shore strewed with its sad wreckage, and the wild ocean beyond....
The land-crabs certainly looked their part of goblin guardians of the approaches to the wicked magician’s fastness. They were fearful as the firelight fell on their yellow cynical faces, fixed as that of the sphinx, but fixed in a horrid grin. Those who have observed this foulest species of crab will know my meaning. Smelling the fish we were cooking they came down the mountains in thousands upon us. We threw them lumps of fish, which they devoured with crab-like slowness, yet perseverance.
It is a ghastly sight, a land-crab at his dinner. A huge beast was standing a yard from me; I gave him a portion of fish, and watched him. He looked at me straight in the face with his outstarting eyes, and proceeded with his two front claws to tear up his food, bringing bits of it to his mouth with one claw, as with a fork. But all this while he never looked at what he was doing; his face was fixed in one position, staring at me. And when I looked around, lo! there were half a dozen others all steadily feeding, but with immovable heads turned to me with that fixed basilisk stare. It was indeed horrible, and the effect was nightmarish in the extreme. While we slept that night they attacked us, and would certainly have devoured us, had we not awoke; and did eat holes in our clothes. One of us had to keep watch, so as to drive them from the other two, otherwise we should have had no sleep.
Imagine a sailor cast alone on this coast, weary, yet unable to sleep a moment on account of these ferocious creatures. After a few days of an existence full of horror he would die raving mad, and then be consumed in an hour by his foes. In all Dante’s Inferno there is no more horrible a suggestion of punishment than this.
E. F. Knight (The Cruise of the “Falcon”).
The scene is in the Island of Trinidad, off the coast of Brazil.
... Nor the end of love is sure,
(Alas! how much less sure than anything!)