y.... Now the last desperate gauntlet was reached.... Keith felt
his blood pound hotly.

"I'm gaining, Keith. Gaining...."

Bowman had little breath for speech. His tiny form battled on, now
sinking from sight as he dropped into some masked gully, now wrestling
slowly with great swaying strands of kelp, but always struggling
ahead.

"I'm at the bow, Keith! The hawser arm's right in our mooring holes.
I'll go halfway before fastening the charge. Any signs of life from
the devil?"

"None yet, Hemmy. But go slow. Hide all you can, old man, for God's
sake!..."

Right beneath the metal arm, Bowman's dwarfed figure crept doggedly
ahead. Forward, inch by breathless inch. Kelp thickened, washed away;
the two hulking submersibles, captor and captive, surged onward--but
just a little faster went the valiant figure with the black charge on
its back.

The towing monster had its snout in the cavern. The darkness
thickened. Bowman was quarter way!

He plunged desperately. Half way!

"I'm there, Keith! Now for it!"

"Oh, God!" Wells cried. "They see you; they're coming!"

For he had seen strange shapes leaving the enemy submarine.

And at that same moment, Bowman saw them, too.

* * * * *

They came like the blink of a dark eye from a door that had quickly
slid open in the mysterious ship's bow. As tall as a man they were,
and there were two of them, though at first the nature of their
bodies merged with the wreathing kelp made them seem like a dozen.
Bowman stared at them, hypnotized with fear. His legs and arms went
dead, and his whole gallant spirit seemed to slump into lifeless clay.
Now he knew why the fishermen had shrieked "machine-fish." Each one of
them had eight tapering arms, eight restless tentacles. These were
octopi, most hideous scavengers of the ocean floor! And not only
octopi--but octopi sheathed in metal-scaled armor!

As they came closer, he realized this preposterous fact. The dark
substance of their writhing tentacles was not flesh: it was a coat of
metal scales. And the fat central mass which held their eyes and vital
organs and beaked jaw--this mass was completely enveloped by a globe
of glass. From inside, he could see great eyes staring at him. The
monsters came towards him quite slowly, obviously wary, advancing over
the sea-floor in what was a hideous mockery of walking, their forward
tentacles outstretched.

With a sob, Hemmy Bowman pulled himself from hi