There also flashed past the purple of the salmonoids, the brilliant majesty of the gold fish, the bluish belly of the sea bream, the striped back of the sheep's head, the trumpet-mouthed marine sun-fish, the immovable sneer of the so-called "joker," the dorsal pinnacle of the peacock-fish which appears made of feathers, the restless and deeply bifurcated tail of the horse mackerel, the fluttering of the mullet with its triple wings, the grotesque rotundity of the boar-fish and the pig-fish, the dark smoothness of the sting-ray, floating like a fringe, the long snout of the woodcock-fish, the slenderness of the haddock, agile and swift as a torpedo, the red gurnard all thorns, the angel of the sea with its fleshy wings, the gudgeon, bristling with swimming angularities, the notary, red and white, with black bands similar to the flourishes on signatures, the modest _esmarrido_, the little sand fish, the superb turbot almost round with fan tail and a swimming fringe spotted with circles, and the gloomy conger-eel whose skin is as bluish black as that of the ravens.
Hidden between two rocks like the hunting crustaceans was the _rascaza_,--the scorpion of the Valencian sea that Ferragut had known in his childhood, the animal beloved by his uncle, the _Triton_, because of its substantial flesh which thickened the seamen's soup, the precious component sought by Uncle Caragol for the broth of his succulent rice dishes.

The enormous head had a pair of eyes entirely red.

Its great swimming bladders stung venomously.

The heavy body with its dark bands and stripes was covered with singular appendages in the form of leaves and could easily take the color of the deep where, in the semi-obscurity, it looked like a stone covered with plants.

With this mimicry it was accustomed to escape its enemies and could better detect its prey.
A gloomy creature, in Ferragut's opinion like a beadle of the Holy Office, was parading through the upper part of the tanks, passing from glass to glass, reflected like a double animal when it approached the surface.