He levied on the puffins again, and, after a meal, prowled curiously
about his rock to see what damage the storm had done, but to his
surprise found almost none.
It seemed incredible that all should be the same after the deadly
onslaught of the gale. But it was only in the valley of rocks that he
found any consequences.
There the huge boulders had been hurled about like marbles: some had
been tossed overboard, and some, in their fantastic up-piling, spoke
eloquently of all they had suffered.
But one grim--though to him wholly gracious--deed the storm had wrought
there. For, out of the pool where the devil-fish dwelt, its monstrous
limbs streamed up and lay over the sloping rocks, and he dared not
venture near. But, in the afternoon when he came again to look at it,
and found it still in the same attitude, something about it struck him
as odd and unusual.
The great tentacles had never moved, so far as he could see, and there
was surely something wrong with a devil-fish that did not move.
He hurled a stone, picked out of the landslip at the corner, and hit a
tentacle full and fair with a dull thud like leather.
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