empty conch shells
when we hold them to our ears.

Yes, now they came to the place.

"There lies the animal!" said the big fishes, and the little one said
so, too.

They saw the cable, its beginning and end beyond their horizon. Sponges, polyps,
and seaweed swayed from the ground, rising and falling over the cable, so that now it was hidden and
then visible again. Sea porcupines, snails, and worms moved over it. Gigantic spiders, with whole fringes
of vermin on them, crawled along the cable. Dark-blue "sea sausages," or whatever the creatures
are called that eat with their entire bodies, lay beside it and smelled this new animal that had come
down to lie at the bottom of the ocean. Flounders and codfish turned about in the water, in order to
hear what was said from"and we may
be able to see the thing better, if necessary."

"At it! At it!" shouted the shark, showing all his teeth.

"At it! At it!" said the swordfish, and the whale, and the sea eel. They
rushed forward, the shark leading, but just as he was about to bite the cable, the swordfish, out of
pure anxiety, ran his saw right into the back of the shark; that was a great mistake, and the shark
had no strength left to bite. Everything became muddled in the mud. Big fishes, little fishes, "sea
sausages," and snails ran into one another, ate each other - clashed and gnashed. The cable lay
still and attended to its own business, as one should do.

The dark night brooded above; but in the ocean the millions and millions of small
living