d swiftly swam with
him out through the entrance hole.

* * * * *

They went to the left in the corridor, further into the heart of the
building. The bluish light became stronger. As Keith twisted in the
giant monarch's grip he glimpsed the other octopus following with the
two dead men. He saved his strength knowing it was hopeless just then
to try and struggle free.

Quick as was his passage, he noticed that the walls of the corridor
were covered with intricate designs, in bas-relief, and colored. He
passed row after row of mural paintings of octopi in various
activities, and guessed that they represented the race's history. One
was obviously a scene of battle, with a tentacled army locked in
combat with another strange horde of fishlike creatures; a second
showed the construction of the queer mound-buildings on the sea-floor,
with scores of monsters hauling great chunks of material into place,
and another pictured the huge audience chamber, with a gold-banded
king motionless on his throne.

As the king drew him rapidly along, he had a glimpse through a
circular doorway of a large room, inside which were clustered the
black shapes of thousands of baby octopi, tended by what were
evidently nurses. Other such rooms were passed, and the young
commander's brain whirled as he tried to measure the size and progress
of this undersea civilization. Perhaps the race of octopi was growing,
reaching out; needed new room to colonize. That would explain why
their submarine had been sent through the tunnel....

A voice sounded in his ears:

"Keith? Are you all right?" It was Graham, calling from the cell
behind.

"So far," Wells assured him. "I'll keep in touch, and let you know
what happens."

At that moment, his captor carried him into a large chamber at the end
of the corridor. He looked around, and decided it was a laboratory. He
beheld strange instruments, anatomical charts of octopi on the walls
and, in one corner, a small jar of glass, in which a dull flame was
burning. Many-shaped keen-bladed knives lay on various low tables, and
thin, wicked-looking prongs and pincers.

"I'm in their experimental laboratory, Graham," Wells spoke into the
mouthpiece of his tiny radio. And then his roving eyes saw something
that made him audibly gasp.

"What's the matter, Keith?" came the first officer's anxious voice.

After a moment the commander answered. "It's--it's a pile of human
bodies. The