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His bewildered eyes indicated that he didn't know to what superhuman creatures he owed both his life and his fortune. At the captain's signal we returned to the bank of shellfish, and retracing our steps, we walked for half an hour until we encountered the anchor connecting the seafloor with the Nautilus's skiff. Back on board, the sailors helped divest us of our heavy copper carapaces.
Closer came the reeling City. I fumbled for my lenses, focussed them upon it. Now I saw that where the radiant lances struck they killed the blocks blackened under them, became lustreless; the sparkling of the tiny eyes went out; the metal carapaces crumbled. Closer to the City came the Monster; shuddering I lowered the glasses that it might not seem so near.
Right after catching them, our seamen dropped them in buckets of water. Its fishing finished, the Nautilus drew nearer to the coast. In this locality a number of sea turtles were sleeping on the surface of the waves. It would have been difficult to capture these valuable reptiles, because they wake up at the slightest sound, and their solid carapaces are harpoon-proof.
They're extremely valuable because of their carapaces, which are covered with big slabs of horn, thin, brown, transparent, with white and yellow markings. Besides, they were excellent from an edible viewpoint, with an exquisite flavor comparable to the green turtle. This fishing ended our stay in the waterways of the Amazon, and that evening the Nautilus took to the high seas once more.
The number of creatures who purely and simply bury themselves thus to obtain shelter is incalculable; I will only mention a few examples, and pass on from simple combinations to the more perfected industries, of which they present the first sketch. It is known that at a certain epoch of the year Crabs abandon their hard carapaces.
And yet to-day you can see quite clearly in these temples, for, since the suspended rocks which served for roof have fallen, floods of light descend from all parts. But formerly, when a kind of half night reigned in the deep halls, beneath the immovable carapaces of sandstone or granite, how oppressive and sepulchral it must all have been how final and pitiless, like a gigantic palace of Death!
I could barely glimpse the swift passing of longnose sharks, hammerhead sharks, spotted dogfish that frequent these waters, big eagle rays, swarms of seahorse looking like knights on a chessboard, eels quivering like fireworks serpents, armies of crab that fled obliquely by crossing their pincers over their carapaces, finally schools of porpoise that held contests of speed with the Nautilus.
Whatever may have been said of the devotion of our countrymen to material interests, the wise and winning lips had only to speak, and such a currency of plastrons and carapaces was set in circulation, that the contemplative stranger who saw the mighty coinage of Chelonia flowing in upon Cambridge might well have thought that the national idea was not the Almighty Dollar, but the Almighty Turtle.
The verdure of the country was lost in places beneath long sheets of yellow; carobs were shining like knobs of coral; vine branches drooped from the tops of the sycamores; the murmuring of the water could be heard; crested larks were hopping about, and the sun's latest fires gilded the carapaces of the tortoises as they came forth from the reeds to inhale the breeze. Matho would heave deep sighs.
The wheat was all garnered, and the land ploughed for a new crop. There was Indian corn standing, but I saw no pumpkins warming their yellow carapaces in the sunshine like so many turtles; only in a single instance did I notice some wretched little miniature specimens in form and hue not unlike those colossal oranges of our cornfields.
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