m back from the royal presence and began a
humble retreat from the throne room. Slowly they backed to the
entrance. Keith's last drowsy glimpse was of a grotesque, gold-ringed
monster on a throne, with a score of smaller tentacled creatures
around him, and a vast haze of weaving tentacles and unblinking eyes
above.

They passed from the huge chamber. The commander felt delirious, as in
a nightmare, but he knew that they were again in the long corridor,
and that their captors were taking them further into the mighty
building, further from the street outside. He glimpsed great rooms
branching off the corridor, and swarms of black octopi inside them.
The light became fainter; and at last the procession turned into a
separate, rough-walled chamber, dimly lit and empty.

Wells felt the grip around his arm loosen, and he floated limply to
the floor among his men. He slept....

CHAPTER VII

_The Glass Bell Jar_

Keith awoke hours later.

Slowly he became conscious of a cramped, stiff body, of a dull pain
racking his head. He stretched out his limbs--and, suddenly, realized
he could move.

Remembering the paralyzing ray that had struck him down, and half
afraid that his senses were tricking him, he kicked his left leg out.
It moved with its old vigor. He quickly found that his strength had
returned, that he could feel and move. The effect of the ray had worn
off!

With a glow of new hope he rose to his feet and exercised numb
muscles. Looking around, he saw the other men still stretched out on
the floor of their rough-walled, watery prison. He called into his
radiophone mouthpiece:

"Graham! Graham, wake up!" A grotesque figure stirred among its
fellows; turned over. "It's Wells, Graham," Keith continued. "Get up;
you can, now!" And he watched the form of his big first officer
stretch out and finally rise, while stupid, sleepy sounds came to his
radio receiver.

"Why--why; the paralysis is gone!" Graham said at length.

"Yes, but maybe the octopi don't know it. Rouse the other men at once,
and we'll see what we can do."

It was weird, the sight of the lifeless figures of the men stirring to
life in the dim-lit water as Graham shook each one's shoulder. The
radiophones buzzed and clicked with their excited comments and
ejaculations. Keith felt much better. With his men restored to
strength, and clustered in a determined, hard-fighting mass, he saw a
hope of breaking out and regaining the _NX-1_.

He let the