At another
time, you may see them both folded together in sleep, like the Babes in
the Woods all bestrewn with leaves.
Ah, you should have seen my Amphitrite! She bore her plumy crown so
grandly, you would have said she was indeed the queen of Actiniae. But,
alas! she could not brook imprisonment, and, pining for the unwalled
grottoes of Poseidon, she drooped and died.
Behind that sheltering rock, and overhung with sea-weed, there is a
dark, deep cave, the chosen abode of Giant Grim. Push one of those
soldiers to the mouth of the den and wait the result. At the first
movement made by the unwitting trespasser on guarded ground, two long,
flexile rods are thrust out, reconnoitring right and left. Two huge
claws follow, lighted up by two great glaring eyes. At last the whole
creature emerges, seizes the intruder, and bears him swiftly away, far
beyond his jealously kept premises. With dogged mien he stalks gravely
back to his stronghold. You exclaim, "It is a Lobster!" A lobster truly;
but saw you ever a lobster with such presence before? Does he resemble
the poor bewildered crustaceans you have seen bunched together at a
fish-stall? Bears he any likeness to the innocent-looking edibles you
have seen lying on a dish, by boiling turned, like the morn, from black
to red?
Those ghost-like Prawns are near relatives of the giant.
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