and was staring with terrified eyes into the
water of the pool from whence the ropes issued. She was, despite her
terror, quite prepared to fling herself in and do battle with the
thing, whatever it might be.

What she saw was only for a second. In the deep water of the pool,
gazing up and forward and straight at Dick, she saw a face, lugubrious
and awful. The eyes were wide as saucers, stony and steadfast; a large,
heavy, parrot-like beak hung before the eyes, and worked and wobbled,
and seemed to beckon. But what froze one's heart was the expression of
the eyes, so stony and lugubrious, so passionless, so devoid of
speculation, yet so fixed of purpose and full of fate.

From away far down he had risen with the rising tide. He had been
feeding on crabs, when the tide, betraying him, had gone out, leaving
him trapped in the rock-pool. He had slept, perhaps, and awakened to
find a being, naked and defenceless, invading his pool. He was quite
small, as octopods go, and young, yet he was large and powerful enough
to have drowned an ox.

The octopod has only been described once, in stone, by a Japanese
artist. The statue is still extant, and it is the most terrible
masterpiece of sculpture ever executed by human hands. It represents a
man who has been bathing on a low-tide beach, and has been caught. The
man is shouting in a delirium of terror, and threatening with his free
arm the spectre that has him in its grip. The eyes of the octopod are
fixed upon the man--passionless and lugubrious eyes, but steadfast and
fixed.

Another whip-lash shot out of the water in a shower of spray, and
seized Dick by the left thigh. At the same instant he drove the point
of the spear through the right eye of the monster, deep down through
eye and soft gelatinous carcass till the spear-point dirled and
splintered against the rock. At the same moment the water of the pool
became black as ink, the bands around him relaxed, and he was free.

Emmeline rose up and seized him, sobbing and clinging to him, and
kissing him. He clasped her with his left arm round her body, as if to
protect her, but it was a mechanical action. He was not thinking of
her. Wild with rage, and uttering hoarse cries, he plunged the broken
spear again and again into the depths of the pool, seeking utterly to
destroy the enemy that had so lately had him in its grip. Then slowly
he came to himself, and wiped his forehead, and looked at the broken
spear in his hand.