nd almost at once the body of the octopus and his tentacles began to
change to the same hue. When the change was complete, the gliding
monster was almost invisible. He was now directly beneath that
incomprehensible fish; but the fish had gently risen, so that it was
still out of reach.

For a few seconds the octopus crouched, staring upward with motionless
orbs, and gathering himself together. Then he sprang straight up, like
a leaping spider. He fixed two tentacles upon the tantalizing prey;
then the other tentacles straightened out, and with a sharp jet of
water from his propulsion tube he essayed to dart back to his lair.

To his amazement, the prey refused to come. In some mysterious way it
managed to hold itself--or was held--just where it was. Amazement gave
way to rage. The monster wrapped his prize in three more tentacles,
and then plunged his beak into it savagely. The next instant he was
jerked to the surface of the water. A blaze of fierce sun blinded him,
and strong meshes enclosed him, binding and entangling his tentacles.

In such an appalling crisis most creatures of sea or land would have
been utterly demoralized by terror. Not so the octopus. Maintaining
undaunted the clutch of one tentacle upon his prize, he turned the
others, along with the effectual menace of his great beak, to the
business of battle. The meshes fettered him in a way that drove him
frantic with rage, but two of his tentacles managed to find their way
through, and writhed madly this way and that in search of some
tangible antagonist on which to fasten themselves. While they were yet
groping vainly for a grip, he felt himself lifted bodily forth into
the strangling air, and crowded--net, prey, and all--into a dark and
narrow receptacle full of water.

This fate, of course, was not to be tamely endured. Though he was
suffocating in the unnatural medium, and though his great, unwinking
eyes could see but vaguely outside their native element, he was all
fight. One tentacle clutched the rim of the metal vessel; and one
fixed its deadly suckers upon the bare black arm of a half-seen
adversary who was trying to crowd him down into the dark prison. There
was a strident yell. A sharp, authoritative voice exclaimed: "Look
out! Don't hurt him! _I'll_ make him let go!" But the next instant the
frightened darky had whipped out a knife and sliced off a good foot of
the clutching tentacle. As the injured stump shrank back upon its
fellows like a