in these tubes, deprived
of their showy capitals, like beheaded palm trees. Then, slowly and
prudently the animated pincers would come protruding again through the
opening of their cylindrical scabbards, floating in the water with
anxious hope. All these trees and flower-animals developed a mechanical
voracity whenever a microscopic victim fell under the power of their
tentacles; then the soft clusters of branches would contract, close,
drawing in their prey, and the worm, withdrawing into the lowest part
of the slender tower secreted by himself, would digest his conquest.

The other tanks then attracted the attention of the sailor.

Slipping over the stones, introducing themselves into their caverns,
drowsing, half buried in the sand,--all the varied and tumultuous
species of crustaceans were moving their cutting and tentacular
grinders and making their Japanese armor gleam: some of their frames
were red--almost black--as though guarding the dry blood of a remote
combat; others were of a scarlet freshness as though reflecting the
first fires of the flaming dawn.

The largest of the lobsters (the _homard_, the sovereign of the tables
of the rich) was resting upon the scissors of its front claws, as
powerful as an arm, or a double battle-axe. The spiny lobster was
leaping with agility over the peaks, by means of the hooks on its
claws, its weapons of war and nutrition. Its nearest relative, the
cricket of the sea, a dull and heavy animal, was sulking in the corners
covered with mire and with sea weed, in an immovability that made it
easily confounded with the stones. Around these giants, like a
democracy accustomed to endure from time to time the attack of the
strong, crayfish and shrimps were swimming in shoals. Their movements
were free and graceful, and their sensitiveness so acute that the
slightest agitation made them start, taking tremendous springs.

Ulysses kept thinking of the slavery that Nature had imposed upon these
animals, giving them their beautiful, defensive envelopment.

They were born armored and their development obliged them repeatedly to
change their form of arms. They sloughed their skins like reptiles, but
on account of their cylindrical shape were able to perform this
operation with the facility of a leg that abandons its stocking. When
it begins to crack, the crustaceans have to withdraw from out their
cuirass the multiple mechanism of their members and appendages,--claws,
antennae and the