with a stubborn persistency I forged ahead toward the foothills.
Behind me no sign of pursuit developed, before me I saw no living
thing. It was as though I moved through a dead and forgotten world.

I have no idea, of course, how long it took me to reach the limit
of the plain, but at last I entered the foothills, following a pretty
little canyon upward toward the mountains. Beside me frolicked a
laughing brooklet, hurrying upon its noisy way down to the silent
sea. In its quieter pools I discovered many small fish, of four-or
five-pound weight I should imagine. In appearance, except as to
size and color, they were not unlike the whale of our own seas.
As I watched them playing about I discovered, not only that they
suckled their young, but that at intervals they rose to the surface
to breathe as well as to feed upon certain grasses and a strange,
scarlet lichen which grew upon the rocks just above the water line.

It was this last habit that gave me the opportunity I craved
to capture one of these herbivorous cetaceans--that is what Perry
calls them--and make as good a meal as one can on raw, warm-blooded
fish; but I had become rather used, by this time, to the eating of
food in its natural state, though I still balked on the eyes and
entrails, much to the amusement of Ghak, to whom I always passed
these delicacies.

Crouching beside the brook, I waited until one of the diminutive
purple whales rose to nibble at the long grasses which overhung
the water, and then, like the beast of prey that man really is, I
sprang upon my victim, appeasing my hunger while he yet wriggled
to escape.