at was the thought that by
such lay the road to safety. We must pass the grotto, or perish of
starvation.

Now, the first fright of this encounter was done with in a minute or
two, and when it was plain to us that the devil-fish was stuck in the
pool which some tide of the sea fed, perhaps, and that his suckers
could not reach the higher part of the rock, we began to speak of it
rationally, and to plan a way of going over. I was for emptying our
revolvers into the fish straight away; but the doctor would have none
of it, fearing the report, and, remembering what he had read in the
Dutchman's book, he came out with another notion.

"Hoyt went over the rocks," said he, calmly, while we still drew back
from the pool affrighted, our hearts in our boots I make sure, and not
one of us that did not begin to think of the fog again when he saw the
devil-fish struggling to be free. "It's not a sweet road, but better
than none at all. Keep behind me, boys, and mind you don't slip or
you'll find something worse than sharks. Now for it, and luck go with
us."

With this he began to clamber round the edge of the pool, but so high
up that it did not seem possible for the fish to touch him. There was
good foothold on the jagged hunks of rock, and a man might have gone
across safely enough but for the thought of that which was below him.
For my part, I say that my eyes followed him as you may follow a walker
on a tight-wire. One false step would send him flying down to a death I
would not name, and that false step he appeared to make. My God! I see
it all so clearly now. The slip, the frantic clutch at the rocks, the
great tentacle which shot out and gripped his leg, and then the flash
of my own revolver fired five times at the terrible eyes below me.

There were loud cries in the cave, the wild shouts of terrified men,
the smoke of pistols, the foaming and splashing of water, all the signs
of panic which may follow a fellow-creature about to die. That the
devil-fish had caught the doctor with one of his tentacles you could
not doubt; that he would drag him down into that horrid stomach, I
myself surely believed. Never was a fight for life a more awful thing
to see. On the one hand a brave man gripping the rocks with hands and
foot until the crags cut his very flesh; on the other that ghoul-like
horror seeking to wind other claws about its prey and to drag it
towards its gaping mouth. What miracle could save him, God alone knew;
and