nk the Lord!"

George Abbot now reviewed this conversation as he crouched in his
diving-sphere in the purple darkness of the marine depths. Yes, old
Osborne would believe him. The diary must be written for Osborne's
eyes.

* * * * *

Abbot sent another beam from his pocket light suddenly out into the
water; and this time he surprised several of the peculiar fish. These,
like the first, had arms and hands and high intelligent foreheads.

Then suddenly Abbot laughed a harsh laugh. Old Osborne had been wrong
in one thing, namely in saying that the super-race of the deep would
never be a menace to anyone. They were being a menace to George Abbot,
right now, for it was undoubtedly they who had cut his cables.
Probably they were possessed of much the same scientific curiosity
with regard to him as he was with regard to them, and so they had
determined to secure him as a museum specimen.

The idea was a weird one. He laughed again, mirthlessly.

"What is the matter, sir?" came an anxious voice in his ear-phones.

"Hurry that grapple!" was his reply. "I have found out what cut my
cables. There are some very intelligent-looking fish down here, and I
think they want me for--"

An ominous click sounded in his ears. Then silence.

"Hello! Hello there!" he shouted. "Can you hear me up on the boat?"

But no answer came back. The line remained dead. The strange fish had
cut George Abbot's last contact with the upper world. The
grapple-hooks could never find him now, for there was now not even a
telephone cable to guide them down to his sphere.

The realization that he was hopelessly lost, and that he had not much
longer to live, came as a real relief to him, after the last few
moments of frantic uncertainty.

* * * * *

Hoping that his sphere would eventually be found, even though too late
to do him any good, he set assiduously to work jotting down all the
details which he could remember of those strange denizens of the deep,
the man-handed sharks, which he was now firmly convinced were the
cause of his present predicament.

He stared out through one of his windows into the brilliant blue
darkness, but did not turn on his flashlight. How near were these
enemies of his, he wondered?

The presence of those menacing man-sharks, just outside the
four-inch-thick steel shell, which withstood a ton of pressure for
each square inch of its surface, began to obsess