llustration: "Without the slightest hesitation he whipped up two
writhing tentacles and seized him."]

This went on for several minutes, while the watching faces outside the
glass gazed in tense expectancy. Then at last the patience of the
octopus gave way. In a sudden fury he threw himself upon the
exasperating shell, tumbling it over and over, biting at it madly,
wrenching it insanely with all his tentacles. And the faces beyond the
glass surged thrillingly, wondering how long the turtle would stand
such treatment.

Shut up within his safe armor, the turtle all at once grew tired of
being tumbled about, and his wise discretion forsook him. He did not
mind being shut up, but he objected to being knocked about. Some
prudence he had, to be sure, but not enough to control his short
temper. Out shot his narrow, vicious-looking head, with its dull eyes
and punishing jaws, and fastened with the grip of a bulldog upon the
nearest of the tentacles, close to its base. A murmur arose outside
the glass.

The rage of the octopus swelled to a frenzy, and in his contortions
the locked fighters bumped heavily against the glass, making the faces
shrink back. The small stones on the bottom were scattered this way
and that, and the fine silt rose in a cloud that presently obscured
the battle.

Had the turtle had cunning to match his courage, the lordship of the
glass house might have changed holders in that fight. Had he fixed his
unbreakable grip in the head of his foe, just above the beak, he
would have conquered in the end. But as it was, he had now a
vulnerable point, and at last the octopus found it. His beak closed
upon the exposed half of the turtle's head, and slowly, inexorably,
sheared it clean off just behind the eyes. The stump shrank instantly
back into the shell; and the shell became again the unresisting
plaything of the tentacles, which presently, as if realizing that it
had no more power to retaliate, flung it aside. In a few minutes the
silt settled. Then the eager faces beyond the glass saw the lord of
the tank crouching motionless before his lair, his ink-like eyes as
impassive and implacable as ever, while the turtle lay bottom side up
against the glass, no more to be taken account of than a stone.

BACK TO THE WATER WORLD

BACK TO THE WATER WORLD

CHAPTER I

An iron coast, bleak, black, and desolate, without harborage for so
much as a catboat for leagues to north or south. A coast so pitile