spade-cut worm, the other tentacle was deftly twisted
loose from its hold on the rim, and the captive felt himself forced
down into the narrow prison. A cover was clapped on, and he found
himself in darkness, with his prey still gripped securely. Upset and
raging though he was, there was nothing to be done about it, so he
fell to feasting indignantly upon the prize for which he had paid so
dear.

CHAPTER II

Left to himself, the furious prisoner by and by disentangled himself
from the meshes of the net, and composed himself as well as he could
in his straitened quarters. Then for days and days thereafter there
was nothing but tossing and tumbling, blind feeding, and
uncomprehended distress; till at last his prison was turned upside
down and he was dropped unceremoniously into a great tank of glass and
enamel that glowed with soft light. Bewildered though he was, he took
in his surroundings in an instant, straightened his tentacles out
before him, and darted backwards to the shelter of an overhanging rock
which he had marked on the floor of the tank. Having backed his
defenceless body under that shield, he flattened his tentacles
anxiously among the stones and weeds that covered the tank-bottom, and
impassively stared about.

It was certainly an improvement on the black hole from which he had
just escaped. Light came down through the clear water, but a cold,
white light, little like the green and gold glimmer that illumined
the slow tide in his Caribbean home. The floor about him was not
wholly unfamiliar. The stones, the sand, the colored weeds, the
shells,--they were like, yet unlike, those from which he had been
snatched away. But on three sides there were white, opaque walls, so
near that he could have touched them by stretching out a tentacle.
Only on the fourth side was there space--but a space of gloom and
inexplicable moving confusion from which he shrank. In this direction
the floor of sand and stones and weeds ended with a mysterious
abruptness; and the vague openness beyond filled him with uneasiness.
Pale-colored shapes, with eyes, would drift up, sometimes in crowds,
and stare in at him fixedly. It daunted him as nothing else had ever
done, this drift of peering faces. It was long before he could teach
himself to ignore them. When food came to him,--small fish and crabs,
descending suddenly from the top of the water,--at such times the
faces would throng tumultuously in that open space, and for