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I could swim pretty well, and I managed to throw off my jacket and kick off my shoes, and as only a thin pair of trousers and a shirt remained, I had no difficulty in keeping myself above water; but the knowledge that sharks abounded in those seas, and that any moment one of those horrid monsters might catch hold of my leg and haul me down, gave me very unpleasant sensations.
I walked that way and was soon lost in wonderment at the contemplation of a vast bronze basin filled with curious brazen beasts, half men half fishes, the like of which I had never seen. Some had horns from which they blew sparkling streams; others astride of strange sea monsters plunged about and cast up jets of water.
Twenty men, who looked like bloated monsters, were removed on shore, and buried in them up to their chins. Some of the boys were sent with the sufferers to keep flies and insects from their faces. It was ridiculous enough to see twenty men’s heads stuck out of the ground. The patients were kept in fresh earth for two hours, and then put into their hammocks under a large tent.
Each had one or more sons, handsome, large-eyed, sedate little Mohammedans, who were being trained by Turkish mothers in all sorts of gentle ways and manners in thought and care for others, in courtesy and kindness; and who were very different in their childish work and play from the brawling, selfish, cruel little monsters that European children of the same age mostly are.
I must not forget to tell you that many of the extinct animals whose skeletons are to be seen in museums belonged to the class of Reptiles. We read that "God created great whales" or sea monsters and remains have been found of enormous lizard-like creatures. One has been called the Fish-lizard; it seems to have had a crocodile's head, with a body like that of a small whale.
We knew only that something terrible had happened; we could see only a blur with formless things in the void beneath our bars; and there were the choking fumes of chemicals surging at us. Polter rushed through the castle corridor. We heard rumbling distant shouts. "The drug is loose! The drug is loose! Monsters! Death for everyone!" The room swayed with horrible dizzying lurches as Polter ran.
And, in truth, we see that other opinions, being false and groundless, have already fallen into oblivion by lapse of time. Who now believes in Hippocentaurs and Chimæras? Or what old woman is now to be found so weak and ignorant as to stand in fear of those infernal monsters which once so terrified mankind?
But yet the darkness was full of horrors; unseen monsters leaped past her as in a surging torrent, devils' hands clawed at her, devils' mouths cried unspeakable things. She stood as it were on the edge of the vortex, untouched, unafraid, beyond it all since that awful devouring flame had flared and gone out.
But the successes of these war-balloons were sadly intermingled with reverses of fortune and harassing difficulties. The aeronauts had, indeed, won the respect and admiration of the army, but this did not compensate for the terribly fatiguing work of holding on, with scarcely a moment's intermission, to the ropes of the intractable monsters during long and frequent marches.
Of these monsters deified Let all the coffins be destroyed! Let their memory perish! These verses were the prelude to the discussion, some months later, in the National Convention, of the proposition to destroy the monuments of the Kings at Saint-Denis, to burn their remains, and to send to the bullet foundry the bronze and lead off their tombs and coffins.
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