o his mind. He knelt tenderly beside her and raised her
in his arms.

"Where is the yacht?" she repeated. "The _Adelaide_?"

"Gone," Thorpe told her. "Lost!" A thought struck him.

"Was your father on board, Ruth?"

Ruth was dazed.

"Lost," she repeated. "The _Adelaide_--lost!... No," she added in
belated response to Thorpe's question. "Daddy was not there. But the
men--Captain MacPherson ... that horrible monster...." She buried her
face in her hands as she realized what Thorpe's silence meant.

He held the trembling figure close as the girl whispered: "Where are
we, Robert? Are we safe?"

"We may win through yet," he told her through grim, set lips. He
realized abruptly that he was seeing the face of Ruth Allaire in the
light. He had left a lantern burning! He withdrew his arms from about
her and sprang quickly to his feet to put out the tell-tale light. In
darkness and quiet was their only safety. And he knew as he sprang
that he had waited too long. A soft body crashed heavily on the deck
outside.

* * * * *

The girl's voice was shrill with terror as she began a question.
Thorpe's hand pressed upon her lips in the dark where he stood
waiting--waiting.

A luminous something was glowing outside the cabin. It searched and
prodded about the deserted deck to whip upward at the audible hiss of
wet carbide. Another appeared; the rifle came slowly to the man's
shoulder as a pair of jaws gaped glowingly beyond the windows and an
eye stared unblinkingly from its hornlike sheath. It crashed madly
against the walls of the wireless room to shatter the glass and make
kindling of the woodwork of the sash. Thorpe fired once and again
before the specter vanished, and he knew with sickening certainty that
the wounds were only messages to some central brain that would send
other ravening tentacles against them. But the oak bars had held.

He reached in the brief interval for the key, and he sent out one
final call for help. He strained his ears against the head-set for
some friendly human word of hope.

"--rocket," the wireless man was saying. "Fire rockets. We can't
find--" A swift, writhing arm wrapped crushingly about the cabin as
the message ceased.

* * * * *

Thorpe seized his rifle and fired into the gray mass that bulged with
terrible muscular contractions through the window. He fired again to
aim lengthways of the arm and inflict as damaging a w