The shark would descend, attracted by the appetizing prospect of a boneless animal,—­all flesh and weighing several tons.  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.  Even the bacteria and infusoria appear to flee from the liquid that envelops these ferocious solitudes.

Ferragut passed many mornings contemplating their treacherous immovability, followed by deadly unfoldings the moment that their prey came down into the tank.  He began to hate these monsters for no other reason than because they were so interesting to Freya.  Their stupid cruelty appeared to him but a reflex of that incomprehensible woman’s character that was repulsing him by fleeing from him and yet, at the same time, by her smiles and her signals, was sending out a wireless in order to keep him prisoner.

Masculine wrath convulsed the sailor after each futile daily trip in pursuit of her invisible personality.

“She’s just doing it to lead me on!...” he exclaimed.  “It’s got to come to an end!  I won’t stand any more bull-baiting....  I’ll just show her that I’m able to live without her!”

He swore not to seek her any more.  It was an agreeable diversion for the weeks that he had to spend in Naples, but why keep it up when she was fatiguing him in such an insufferable way?...

“All is ended,” he said again, clenching his hands.

And the following day he was waiting outside of the hotel just as on other days.  Then he would go for his customary stroll, afterwards entering the Aquarium in the same, old hope of seeing her before the tanks of the cuttlefish.

He finally met her there one morning, about midday.  He had been over to his boat and on returning entered, through force of habit, sure that at this hour he would find nobody but the employees feeding the fishes.