ultitude did not stir. They were but empty shells.

These groups were scattered here and there among the masses of pebbles
in irregular constellations.

Gilliatt, having his eyes fixed elsewhere, had walked among them without
perceiving them.

At this extremity of the crypt, where he had now penetrated, there was a
still greater heap of remains. It was a confused mass of legs, antennae,
and mandibles. Claws stood wide open; bony shells lay still under their
bristling prickles; some reversed showed their livid hollows. The heap
was like a _melee_ of besiegers who had fallen, and lay massed together.

The skeleton was partly buried in this heap.

Under this confused mass of scales and tentacles, the eye perceived the
cranium with its furrows, the vertebrae, the thigh bones, the tibias, and
the long-jointed finger bones with their nails. The frame of the ribs
was filled with crabs. Some heart had once beat there. The green mould
of the sea had settled round the sockets of the eyes. Limpets had left
their slime upon the bony nostrils. For the rest, there were not in this
cave within the rocks either sea-gulls, or weeds, or a breath of air.
All was still. The teeth grinned.

The sombre side of laughter is that strange mockery of expression which
is peculiar to a human skull.

This marvellous palace of the deep, inlaid and incrusted with all the
gems of the sea, had at length revealed and told its secret. It was a
savage haunt; the devil-fish inhabited it; it was also a tomb, in which
the body of a man reposed.

The skeleton and the creatures around it oscillated vaguely in the
reflections of the subterranean water which trembled upon the roof and
wall. The horrible multitude of crabs looked as if finishing their
repast. These crustacea seemed to be devouring the carcase. Nothing
could be more strange than the aspect of the dead vermin upon their dead
prey.

Gilliatt had beneath his eyes the storehouse of the devil-fish.

It was a dismal sight. The crabs had devoured the man: the devil-fish
had devoured the crabs.

There were no remains of clothing anywhere visible. The man must have
been seized naked.

Gilliatt, attentively examining, began to remove the shells from the
skeleton. What had this man been? The body was admirably dissected; it
looked as if prepared for the study of anatomy; all the flesh was
stripped; not a muscle remained; not a bone was missing. If Gilliatt had
been learned in science, he might