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Here, surely, he might be at peace and find some solace for his loneliness, some suitable food to replace that which he had hitherto always found awaiting him, and now would find nevermore. Moving gently through the interminably intricate avenues of this submarine world of stillness and beauty, his small lower jaw hanging down as usual, he found abundant store of sapid molluscs that glided down his gaping gullet with a pleasant tickling, and were soon followed by a soothing sense of hunger satisfied. When he rose to spout he was in the midst of a weltering turmoil of broken water, where the majestic swell fretted and roared in wrath around the hindering peaks of a great reef—a group of islands in the making. Here, at any rate, he was safe, for no land was in sight whence might come a band of his hereditary foes, while into that network of jagged rocks no vessel would ever dare to venture. After a few days of placid enjoyment of this secure existence he began to feel courage and independence, although still pining for the companionship of his kind. Thus he might have gone on for long, but that an adventure befell him which raised him at once to his rightful position among the sea-folk. During his rambles through the mazes and glades of this subaqueous paradise he had once or twice noticed between two stupendous columns of coral a black space where the water was apparently of fathomless depth. Curiosity, one of the strongest influences actuating the animate creation, impelled him to investigate this chasm, but something, he knew not what, probably inherited caution, had hitherto held him back. At last, having met with no creature nearly his own size, and grown bold by reason of plenteous food, he became venturesome, and made for that gloomy abyss, bent upon searching its recesses thoroughly. Boldly he swept between the immense bastions that guarded it, and with a swift upward thrust of his broad horizontal tail went headlong down, down, down. Presently he saw amidst the outer darkness a web of palely gleaming lines incessantly changing their patterns and extending over an area of a thousand square yards. They centred upon a dull ghastly glare that was motionless, formless, indescribable. In its midst there was a blackness deeper, if possible, than that of the surrounding pit. Suddenly all that writhing entanglement wrapped him round, each clutching snare fastening upon him with innumerable gnawing mouths as if to devour him all over at once. With a new and even pleasant sensation thrilling along his spine the young leviathan hurled himself forward at that midmost gap, his powerful jaws clashing and his whole lithe frame upstrung with nervous energy. Right through the glutinous musky mass of that unthinkable chimæra he hewed his way, heeding not in the least the wrenching, sucking coils winding about him, and covering every inch of his body. Absolute silence reigned as the great fight went on. Its inequality was curiously abnormal. For while the vast amorphous bulk of the mollusc completely dwarfed the comparatively puny size of the young cachalot, there was on the side of the latter all the innate superiority of the vertebrate carnivorous mammal with warrior instincts transmitted unimpaired through a thousand generations of ocean royalty. Gradually the grip of those clinging tentacles relaxed as he felt the succulent gelatinousness divide, and with a bound he ascended from that befouled abysmal gloom into the light and loveliness of the upper air. Behind him trailed sundry long fragments, disjecta membra of his late antagonist, and upon these, after filling his lungs again and again with the keen pure air of heaven, he feasted grandly.