So he sat down upon the parapet of the quay, and watched the shoals of sardines which played in and out over the marble steps below, and wondered at the strange crabs and sea-locusts which crawled up and down the face of the masonry, a few feet below the surface, scrambling for bits of offal, and making occasional fruitless dashes at the nimble little silver arrows which played round them.

And at last his whole soul, too tired to think of anything else, became absorbed in a mighty struggle between two great crabs, who held on stoutly, each by a claw, to his respective bunch of seaweed, while with the others they tugged, one at the head and the other at the tail of a dead fish.

Which would conquer ?....

Ay, which?
And for five minutes Philammon was alone in the world with the two struggling heroes....

Might not they be emblematic?
Might not the upper one typify Cyril ?--the lower one Hypatia ?--and the dead fish between, himself ?....