ey. In that same flash of time, I understood the
look of intent I had seen on her face earlier that night. She had kept
her resolve--even now she was herself trying to sound the mystery of her
uncle's disappearance. I understood her own exultation when I had
talked of my many scientific plans, and how I lacked means to carry them
out. Even then she had likely been working on the cryptogram. It was
wholly possible that either Nealman or herself had encountered a copy of
the script in the old house, and they had worked on it together.

But there had been some sort of a guard put over Jason's treasure! With
what right had we been so smugly certain that the old legend was not
true--that there was not still some evil, tentacled monster of the deep
left to slay and drag to his cavern those that dared to penetrate the
lagoon. Even now she was wading further and further from the rock wall.
I could see just her head and the top of her shoulders above water, the
heavy plank still guided beside her.

Fear is an emotion that speeds like lightning through the avenues of the
nerves. In the instant that these thoughts went home--thoughts that
would have taken moments to narrate in speech but which whipped through
the mind in the twinkling of an eye--I plumbed the utter depths of fear.
There can be no other word. The gray expanse seemed the waters of death
itself; the whole scene, in the gray of dawn, was eerie, savage,
unutterably dreadful. And the girl that had come to be my own life was
even now wholly within the power of any monstrous foe that should leave
its cavern to attack her.

Why had we been so sure! Why hadn't we guarded those deadly waters every
hour, day and night. Every day teaches that many things that seemed
incredible a day ago are true: how had we dared to be so arrogant in
regard to the legend of the lagoon. Even when three men, one after
another, had disappeared without trace we had refused to change our
ancient habits of thought: we had still refused to believe. I knew now
the fate of the missing men. They had gone in search of Jason's
chest--and the treasure guard that dwelt in the lagoon had put them to
death. And just before my eyes the girl I loved was following the path
they made, making the same quest.

And in that breathless, never-to-be-forgotten moment, I heard a
resounding splash of water. Against the craggy, opposite shore the water
flew far and white as some living thing that had been concealed in t