- Another Spenser quote, this one about a monster.
- Spenser writes about fairies, and The Enchanted Isles are a kind of blighted, evil faerie land. Is what Melville is getting at.
- Also, he just kind of likes burbling about fairy-lands. (See "The Piazza"—or don't, and just take Shmoop's word for it. You'll be happier. Stupid fairyland.)
- Anyway, Melville says that the Galapagos aren't all bad, and as proof points out that turtles are bright on their underbelly.
- Then he describes turning the turtles over so they can't get back up, which seems kind of mean and not cheerful at all.
- Then he talks about bringing the tortoises on board, and how they just keep walking and running into things.
- Which Melville finds depressing and eerie.
- But then he and his companions ate turtle steak, and that was cheerful. So some good with the bad.