ight'll be glad to get him.
Maybe he won't need a third to fill the tanks."

Thought of his captain made him look up and around, hoping to see the
_Narwhal's_ light-beams come threading through the distant murk. He did
not see them, but what he did see caused his mouth to drop open, and his
veins to chill with a cold that was not that of the sea nor the ice
above.

"Good Lord!" he whispered. "That thing--again!"

Like a specter from the deep, some hundred feet away was a form,
seal-like in appearance, yet not wholly seal. It poised there
motionless, apparently looking straight at him.

Fear came over Ken as he studied it. Its body was perhaps ten feet long,
and sleek and fat under a brown-colored hide. But its flippers were not
those of a seal; they were too long and slender, especially the hind
ones. They unquestionably bore a remote resemblance to human arms and
legs.

"Yet it can't be anything but some kind of seal," Ken whispered to
himself. "It must be!"

But then, too, it did not have the ordinary seal's bullet head, set
squat between smoothly tapering shoulders, but rather something bulbous,
half like that of a man, in spite of the layers of fat that stream-lined
from it to the broad shoulders. It did have, however, two large, staring
eyes, and slitted holes inches below them for nostrils--which showed
that it breathed air and was therefore warm-blooded.

Quite motionless, each stared at the other, while minutes passed. Then
the creature moved slowly up and forward, impelled by a graceful and
hardly perceptible roll of its queer flippers. Very gradually it came
towards Kenneth Torrance; and he, peering with fear-tinged curiosity at
the animal's bold advance, saw two creases of fat that must have been
lips slide open in the smooth brown face, baring strong, pointed teeth.

Not knowing whether it was an attack or merely inquisitiveness, he
unsheathed his knife. At this the figure stopped and poised motionless
again, perhaps fifty feet away, and after a moment turned its sleek head
first to the left and then to the right. Automatically, Ken gazed around
likewise. He drew in his breath with a sharp hiss.

Like shadows, additional figures had appeared in the distant murk.
Silently they had come; he could see eleven--twelve--even more. He was
surrounded! No longer doubting their purpose, he gripped his knife
firmly. He knew he could never get down to the torpoon in time.

And then the circle began to close.