moment before. And as
suddenly clouds appeared in blackly banked masses and a cold, driving
rain began to beat down.

"Br-r-r, it's cold! Let's go in--Oh! _Shut the door!_" Clio shrieked,
and leaped wildly down into the compartment below, out of Costigan's
way, for he and Bradley had also seen slithering toward them the
frightful arm of the Thing.

Almost before the girl had spoken Costigan had leaped to the controls,
and not an instant too soon; for the tip of that horrible tentacle
flashed into the rapidly narrowing crack just before the door clanged
shut. As the powerful toggles forced the heavy wedges into engagement
and drove the massive disk home, that grisly tip fell severed to the
floor of the compartment and lay there, twitching and writhing with a
loathesome and unearthly vigor. Two feet long the piece was, and larger
than a strong man's leg. It was armed with spiked and jointed metallic
scales, and instead of sucking disks it was equipped with a series of
_mouths_--mouths filled with sharp metallic teeth which gnashed and
ground together furiously, even though sundered from the horrible
organism which they were designed to feed.

The little submarine shuddered in every plate and member as monstrous
coils encircled her and tightened inexorably in terrific, rippling
surges eloquent of mastodonic power; and a strident vibration smote
sickeningly upon Terrestrial ear-drums as the metal spikes of the
monstrosity crunched and ground upon the outer plating of their small
vessel. Costigan stood unmoved at the plate, watching intently; hands
ready upon the controls. Due to the artificial gravity of the lifeboat
it seemed perfectly stationary to its occupants. Only the weird
gyrations of the pictures upon the lookout screens showed that the craft
was being shaken and thrown about like a rat in the jaws of a terrier;
only the gauges revealed that they were almost a mile below the surface
of the ocean already, and were still going downward at an appalling
rate. Finally Clio could stand no more.

"Aren't you going to do something, Conway?" she cried.

"Not unless I have to," he replied, composedly. "I don't believe that
he can really hurt us, and if I use force of any kind I'm afraid that it
will kick up enough disturbance to bring Nerado down on us like a hawk
onto a chicken. However, if he takes us much deeper I'll have to go to
work on him. We're getting down pretty close to our limit, and the
bottom's a long way