From one of their sides came forth a tube in the form of a tunnel that swallowed equally the respirable water and drew it through both entrances into its branching cavity.

Their multiple arms, fitted out with cupping glasses, functioned like high-pressure apparatus for grasping and holding prey, for paddling and for running.
The glassy eye of one of the monsters appearing and disappearing among its soft folds, stirred Freya's memories.

She began speaking in a low tone as if to herself, without paying any attention to Ferragut who was perplexed at the incoherence of her words.

The appearance of this octopus brought to her mind "the eye of the morning." The sailor asked: "What is the 'eye of the morning' ?"...

And he again told himself that Freya was crazy when he learned that this was the name of a tame serpent, a reptile of checkered sides that she wore as necklace or bracelet over there in her home in the island of Java,--an island where groves exhaled an irresistible perfume, covered in the sunlight with trembling and monstrous flowers like animals, peopled at night with phosphorescent stars that leaped from tree to tree.
"I used to dance naked, with a transparent veil tied around my hips and another floating from my head ...