However, on fine summer nights the stars shone bright even over the sciara, and the country round was just as black as it was, but Malpelo was tired with his long day’s work, and lay down on his sack with his face to the sky, to enjoy the peace and the glitter of the upper deeps; for that reason he hated moonlit nights, when the sea swarmed and sparkled, and the country showed up vaguely here and there: then the sciara seemed even more n***d and desolate. ‘For us who’ve got to live underground,’ Malpelo thought to himself, ‘it ought to be always dark and everywhere dark.’ The owl hooted above the lava bed, and flew hovering around; then he thought: ‘Even the owl smells the dead that are in the underground here, and is desperate because she can’t get at them.’
Frog was afraid of owls and b
