Along with my clothes and shoes of light canvas (no shoelaces, alas), I found in my pockets the key to my cabin (the cabin door now somewhere on the ocean fl oor, presumably), a handkerchief, a pair of leather gloves, and, gloriously, a small waxed paper bag of currants (I often ate them), rather sodden. These I promptly consumed, gloriously sweet, and felt my strength renewed. I also, I realized, had the corpse of one shelled animal. Reluctant, yet knowing its fl esh might preserve me for days, I let my fi ngers explore the mess. While I slept its fl esh had grown cold, and my fi ngers probed delicately at its broken carapace, encountering smooth shell, sharp ridges, claws, eyes, guts, and the horrifying mechanisms of its mouth-parts. It was crablike, but large as a collie: some scavenger in these depths. I leaned forward, sniff ed its fl esh, and gagged. It stank like rotting fi sh, though it was but freshly dead. Was it edible? I feared I would fi nd out. Rising again, I limped in the direction of the grooves on the fl oor until its slope rose in a rounded curve. I limped the other way, fi nding the same. Very well: I was in a tunnel. Keeping one hand on the wall, I moved perpendicularly to the curves, proceeding with caution, fi nding the tunnel rose abruptly, until I could not follow. The other direction was more promising. I walked for several minutes, and it seemed to open into a larger space, a cave: and here I nearly fell over some thigh-high obstacles. My exploring fi ngertips found splintered wood … my boat! Or at least, what was left of it. It had been shattered in the fall; this seemed to be its stern. The bow had been partially crushed, the timbers of one side of the hull sprung, bent and broken. Still, I wept at fi nding it. Careful exploration of the tunnel yielded treasure after treasure: rope, sailcloth, an oar, even — praise the Fates! — my canteen, still with a few mouthfuls of precious water! Slowly an image formed in my mind. I imagined Th’yaleh, whose amphibious minions had overrun the Robin, rising from the depths, drawn inexorably by the bone amulet even now secure in my coat pocket. (I had been a fool to think I could escape, but the amulet was the only hope of returning Eleanor to this world, and I would not give it up while I drew breath.) Th’yaleh’s great tentacled maw opened, its house-sized gullet convulsed as it swallowed my boat and I entire, washed down with a swimming pool’s worth of sea water. And then — it choked. As a man’s throat might hesitate on a mere morsel, my boat and I went down the wrong tube … literally. Now, instead of whatever lake of acid passed for its stomach in this mountain-sized monster, I had ended, miraculously alive, in some other part of its otherworldly corpus, some oversized bronchiole or vein. Who knew if the creature even had blood? Well, I would fi nd out. I would see where this tunnel went. I could not really imagine escaping; but I could live a while in the belly of the beast, and if escape indeed proved impossible, I would seek the chambers of its cold heart. There I would do what I could to still its thunderous beating (which, I realized, I could faintly hear, a slow funereal drum). I had wood and cloth, and thought I might be able to start a fi re with the batteries from the torch. A bonfi re, then, around which I would dance, a fl itting devil: a bonfi re in the belly of the beast. No. 139
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