An instant afterward the huge shadow
would be dissipated, and the reflection of the sands appear again in
full force.
All the time Benito was going deeper. He felt the increase of the
pressure with which his body was wrapped by the liquid mass. His
respiration became less easy; the retractibility of his organs no
longer worked with as much ease as in the midst of an atmosphere more
conveniently adapted for them. And so he found himself under the
action of physiological effects to which he was unaccustomed. The
rumbling grew louder in his ears, but as his thought was always
lucid, as he felt that the action of his brain was quite clear--even
a little more so than usual--he delayed giving the signal for return,
and continued to go down deeper still.
Suddenly, in the subdued light which surrounded him, his attention
was attracted by a confused mass. It seemed to take the form of a
corpse, entangled beneath a clump of aquatic plants. Intense
excitement seized him. He stepped toward the mass; with his spear he
felt it. It was the carcass of a huge cayman, already reduced to a
skeleton, and which the current of the Rio Negro had swept into the
bed of the Amazon.
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