She leaned toward the crystal in order to see better the devouring activity of that pyramidal stomach which had on its sharp point a diminutive parrot head with two ferocious eyes and around its base the twisted skeins of its arms full of projecting disks. With these it pressed the crab against its mouth, injecting under its shell the venomous output of its salivary glands, paralyzing thus every movement of existence. Then it swallowed its prey slowly with the deglutition of a boa constrictor.
"How beautiful it is!" she said.
The other beasts also seized their live victims, paralyzed and devoured them, moving their flabby bodies in order to permit the passage of their swelling nutritive waves and clouds of various colors.
Then the guard tossed in a crab, but one without any string whatever.
Freya screamed with enthusiasm.
This was the kind of hunt that takes place in the ferocious mystery of the sea, a race with death, a destruction preceded with emotional agony and hazards. The poor crustacean, divining its danger, was swimming towards the rocks hoping to take refuge in the nearest crevice. A polypus came up behind it, whilst the others continued their digestion.
"It's escaping!… It's escaping!" cried Freya, palpitating with interest.
The crab scrambled through the stones, sheltering itself in their windings. The polypus was no longer swimming; it was running like a terrestrial animal, climbing over the rocks by its armed extremities, which were now serving as apparatus of locomotion. It was the struggle of a tiger with a mouse. When the crab had half of its body already hidden within the green lichens of a hole, one of the heavy serpents fell upon its back clutching it with the irresistible suction of his air-holes, and causing it to disappear within his skein of tentacles.
"Ah!" sighed Freya, throwing herself back as though she were going to faint on Ulysses' breast.
He shuddered, feeling that a serpentine band of tremulous pressure had encircled his body. The acts of that unbalanced creature were fraying his nerves.
He felt as though a monster of the same class as those in the tank but much larger—a gigantic octopus from the oceanic depths—must have slipped treacherously behind him and was clutching him in one of its tentacles. He could feel the pressure of its feelers around his waist, growing closer and more ferocious.