ut in anger.
He wondered what it was. Before long, he knew.

The party of seal-creatures stopped before the second of the row of
hillocks. In its face, too, was a hole--a well of blackness--but with no
stakes across it. He twisted his head back and saw the carcass of the
killer whale he had slain being guided up to the entrance and shoved
through. Then, from the upper rim of the hole, three stakes similar to
the others he had seen slid down and barred it.

"Storehouses!" he muttered. "Storehouses, I'll bet anything. And killer
whales are their food. They keep 'em in the holes until they're needed.
But I'll swear it was a live whale I saw in the first one--and how in
the dickens could they capture a mighty killer with their dinky spears
and ropes?"

There he had to leave the question, for its answer implied greater
intelligence in the creatures than he would admit.

Intelligence--in seals!

And now he was guided smoothly forward to the third hillock, where the
leaders of the group glided through a V-shaped cleft in its face. His
guards brought him along behind.

A wry smile twisted Kenneth Torrance's lips. To him, the cleft was more
than an entranceway. To him it signified the beginning of the hopeless,
lonely end of his life....

* * * * *

The cleft led into a corridor, and the corridor was softly illuminated
with a peculiar light whose source he could not discover. It served to
show him a passageway that was wide rather than tall, and gouged from
the firm, clayey soil by blunt tools that had left uneven marks.
Straight ahead it led, and, as they continued, the mysterious
illumination brightened, until suddenly, rounding a turn, its source
appeared.

Like will-o'-the-wisps, a score of arrows of light flashed softly into
view down the corridor. They were of delicate green and orange and
yellow, glowing and luminous, and hovering like humming birds between
floor and ceiling. Ken looked at them in some alarm until his nearer
approach showed him what they were, and then he exclaimed in amazement:

"Why--they're fish! Living electric bulbs!"

A school of slender, ten-inch fish they were, each one a radiant,
shimmering, lacey-finned gem of orange or green or yellow. In concert
they shot to the ceiling over the party of seal-creatures, who still
swam impassively ahead, paying no attention to them, and from there
scattered in quick darts in all directions, showering the cortege with
was