The things we do!

So, for want of better,
I talked to myself; I declaimed in the copper box which covered my head,
thereby expending more air in vain words than was perhaps wise.
Various kinds of isis, clusters of pure tuft-coral, prickly fungi,
and anemones formed a brilliant garden of flowers, decked with their
collarettes of blue tentacles, sea-stars studding the sandy bottom.
It was a real grief to me to crush under my feet the brilliant
specimens of molluscs which strewed the ground by thousands,
of hammerheads, donaciae (veritable bounding shells), of staircases,
and red helmet-shells, angel-wings, and many others produced by this
inexhaustible ocean. But we were bound to walk, so we went on,
whilst above our heads waved medusae whose umbrellas of opal
or rose-pink, escalloped with a band of blue, sheltered us from
the rays of the sun and fiery pelagiae, which, in the darkness,
would have strewn our path with phosphorescent light.
All these wonders I saw in the space of a quarter of a mile,
scarcely stopping, and following Captain Nemo, who beckoned me on
by signs.


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