ound as his
weapon would permit.

The arm relaxed, but a score of others took up the attack. Again the
sickening stench was about them as gaping jaws gleamed fiery beneath
the hateful eyes and tore at the flimsy structure. Thorpe jammed more
cartridges into the gun and fired again and again, then dropped the
weapon to fumble for the rockets that Brent had given him.

He lighted one with trembling fingers; the first ball shot straight
into a waiting mouth. Another ignited a searing flame of acetlylene
gas where a wet arm writhed in the hot carbide trail. The man leaned
far out through the broken window.

No time to look around. He let the red flares stream upward high into
the air, then dropped the rocket hissing on the deck to seize once
more the rifle.

A mass of muscle crashed against the door; it went to splinters under
the impact, and only the two oak bars remained to hold in check the
horrible tentacles and the darting heads. One mouth closed to a
pointed end that forced its way between the bars. The oak gave under
the strain as Robert Thorpe pulled vainly at an empty gun. Beside him
rose shrieks of terror as the monstrous thing came on, and Thorpe beat
with frantic fury with his clubbed rifle at the fleshy snout.

He knew as he swung the weapon that the shrieks had ceased, then
smiled grimly in the numbing horror as he realized that Ruth Allaire
was beside him. A piece of oak was in her hands, and she was striking
with desperate and silent fury at the slimy flesh.

* * * * *

It was the end, Thorpe knew, and suddenly he was glad. The nightmare
was over, and the end was coming with this girl beside him. But Robert
Thorpe was fighting on to the last, and he tried to make his blows
reach outward to the hateful devilish eye.

He saw it plainly now, for the deck was a glare of white light. He saw
the eye and the thick arm behind it and the score of others that made
a heaving, knotted mass were brilliant and wetly shining. He could see
now how best to strike, and he turned his gun to thrust with the
barrel at the eye.

It withdrew before his stroke--the jaws slid backward to the deck.
There were sounds that hammered at his ears. "The guns! The guns!" a
girl was screaming. Across the deck, where a search-light played,
huge arms were lashing backward toward the sea. The waves beyond had
vanished where a monstrous body shone wetly black in a blinding glare.

And the man hung pant