p was a quivering lance of steel that threw itself through
foaming waters, that shot with an endless, roaring surge of speed
toward that distant point in the heaving waste of the Pacific, and
that seemed, to the two silent men on the bridge, to put the dragging
miles behind them so slowly--so slowly.

"Let me see those papers," said Captain Brent, finally.

* * * * *

He read them in silence.

Then: "The eyes!" he said. "The eyes! That is what this other poor
devil said. My God, Thorpe, what is it? What can it be? We're not all
insane."

"I don't know what I expected to find," said Thorpe slowly. "I had
thought of many things, each wilder than the next. This Captain
Wilkins said the eyes were above him. I had visions of some sky
monster ... I had even thought of some strange aircraft from out in
space, perhaps, with round lights like eyes. I have pictured
impossibilities! But now--"

"Yes," the other questioned, "now?"

"There were tales in olden times of the Kraken," suggested Thorpe.

"The Kraken!" the captain scoffed. "A mythical monster of the sea.
Why, that was just a fable."

"True," was the quiet reply, "that was just a fable. And one of the
things I have learned is how frequently there is a basis of fact
underlying a fable. And, for that matter, how can we know there is no
such monster, some relic of a Mesozoic species supposed to be
extinct?"

He stood motionless, staring far out ahead into the dark. And Brent,
too, was silent. They seemed to try with unaided eyes to penetrate the
dark miles ahead and see what their sane minds refused to accept.

* * * * *

It was still dark when the search-light's sweeping beam picked up the
black hull and broad, red-striped funnels of the _Nagasaki Maru_. She
was riding high in the water, and her big bulk rolled and wallowed in
the trough of the great swells.

The _Bennington_ swept in a swift circle about the helpless hulk while
the lights played incessantly upon her decks. And the watching eyes
strained vainly for some signal to betoken life, for some sign that
their mad race had not been quite vain. Her engines had been shut
down; there was no steerage-way for the _Nagasaki Maru_, and, from all
they could see, there were no human hands to drag at the levers of her
waiting engines nor to twirl with sure touch the deserted helm. The
_Nagasaki Maru_ was abandoned.

The lights held steadily upon h