fter that 'vampa,'
as you call it, and as quick as you know how."

The negro was about to refuse, but he did not dare.

"Oh, Lordy, boss," he cried, "don' go any neaheh. Yas, sah, yas, sah,"
he added as he saw the yachtsman make a move towards him, "yas, sah,
Ah'll row. But we all gwine to be smoddehed alive. Ah jes' knows it."

Again, close at hand, came the swish and the dull 'boom,' and the negro
shivered. Colin was conscious that his heart was pounding a little and
he caught himself wishing that it were the middle of the day instead of
evening. Then out of the water not ten feet from the boat a dark
witch-like specter swooped into the sky, black, horned, with bat-like
wings and a long naked tail like a gigantic rat.

Pete gave a squeal of fright.

The monster rose till he was almost three feet clear of the surface,
then turned so as to strike the water absolutely flat, and just before
the crash and splash of the fall, Murren hurled the harpoon into the
fish, and sprang back to clear the line. Although drenched and gasping
from the torrent of water thrown over the boat by the devil ray, Colin
took a bight of the line from the second coil and passed it around the
foremost thwart. He was just in time, for a few seconds later the rope
tautened. There was just one jerk and the boat started flying through
the water, sending up a green wall on either side that threatened to
swamp it every instant.

With the fight really begun, Colin became at once quite calm. Paul, who
was an absolutely fearless youngster, was laughing in glee.

"Which way are we going, Pete?" asked the capitalist.

"Lordy, Lordy, don' as' me; gwine to de bottom, boss. Ah knows we'he
gwine to de bottom."

The negro crouched down in the bottom of the boat, and the sponge buyer
roared at him:

"Sit up and watch where we're going, you coward! You know these reefs."

"It don' matteh, boss, de vampa tuhn roun' in a minute an' jump on de
boat an' smoddeh we all."

It was not a pleasant suggestion. The ray was undoubtedly big enough to
do that very thing, and everybody in the boat had seen its power to
leap. But even the little study that Colin had given to fishes came to
his aid.

"All rays live on shellfish," he said, "and they have small mouths with
plates instead of teeth to crush the shells with. So that it really
couldn't do us any harm, any way."

"It's de smoddehin', boss, de smoddehin'. Oh, why did Ah try an' make
trouble ober dem durn