He would make his hostile invasion in all haste so as not to be obliged to endure for a long time the formidable pressure of the abyss.

The struggle between the two ferocious warriors disputing oceanic dominion was usually brief and deadly,--the mandible battling with the sucker; the solid and cutting equipment of teeth with the phosphorescent mucosity incessantly slipping by and opposing the blow of the demolishing head like a battering ram, with the lashing blow of tentacles thicker and heavier than an elephant's trunk.

Sometimes the shark would remain down forever, enmeshed in a skein of soft snakes absorbing it with gluttonous deliberation; at other times it would come to the surface with its skin bristling with black tumors,--open mouths and slashes big as plates,--but with its stomach full of gelatinous meat.
These cuttlefish in the Aquarium were nothing more than the seaside inhabitants of the Mediterranean coast,--poor relations of the gigantic octopus that lighten the black gloom of the oceanic night with their bluish gleam of burned-out planets.

But in spite of their relative smallness, they are animated by the same destructive iniquity as the others.

They are rabid stomachs that cleanse the waters of all animal life, digesting it in a vacuum of death.