It was the ray-fish with a flat head, ferocious eyes, and thong-like tail, moving the black mantle of its fleshy wings with a deliberation that rippled the edges.
From the sandy bottom was struggling forth a convex shield that, when floating, showed its lower face smooth and yellow.

The four wrinkled paws and the serpent-like head of the turtle were emerging from its cuirass of tortoise-shell.

The little sea horses, slender and graceful as chess-pieces, were rising and descending in the bluish environment, wiggling their tails and twisting themselves in the form of interrogation points.
When the captain approached the end of the four galleries of the Aquarium without having seen more than the maritime animals behind the glistening glasses and a few uninteresting people in the greenish semi-light, he felt all the discouragement of a day lost.
"She won't come now!..." In passing from this damp, cellar-like atmosphere to the sunlit garden, the report of the midday gun struck him like an atmospheric blow.

Lunch hour!...

And surely Freya was not going to lunch in the hotel! During the afternoon his footsteps strayed instinctively toward the hill streets of the district of Chiaja.