ing, helpless, on the one remaining bar across
the doorway to look where, beyond, her forward guns a spitting stream
of staccato flashes, the _Bennington_ tore the waves to high-thrown
spray. Her four clean funnels swung far over as the slim ship, with
her stabbing, crashing guns, swung in a sweeping circle to bear down
upon the black bulk slowly sinking in the search-light's glare.

The vast body had vanished as the destroyer shot like one of her own
projectiles over the spot where the beast had lain. And then, where
she had passed, the sea arose in a heaving mound. The big ship beneath
the watching man shuddered again as another depth charge grumbled its
challenge to the master of the deeps.

* * * * *

The warship went careening on an arc to return and throw the full
glare of her search-lights on the scene. They lighted a vast sea,
strangely stilled. An oily smoothness leveled waves and ironed them
out to show more clearly the convulsions of a torn mass that rose
slowly into sight.

Thorpe in some way found himself outside the cabin. And he knew that
the girl was again beside him as he stared and stared at what the
waters held. A bloated serpent form beyond believing was struggling in
the greasy swell. Its waving tentacles again were flung aloft in
impotent fury, and, beneath them, where their thick ends jointed the
body, a head with one horrible eye rose into the air. A thick-lipped
mouth gaped open, and the gleam of molars shone white in the blinding
glare.

The twisting body shuddered throughout its vast bulk, and the waving
arms and futile staring eyes dropped helpless into the splashing sea.
Again the revolting head was raised as the destroyer sent a rain of
shells into its fearful mass. Once more the oily seas were calm. They
closed over the whirling vortex where a denizen of the lightless
depths was returning to those distant, subterranean caverns--returning
as food for what other voracious monsters might still exist.

The man's arm was about the figure of the girl, trembling anew in a
fresh reaction from the horror they had escaped, when a small boat
drew alongside.

"They're safe," a hoarse voice bellowed back to the destroyer, and a
man came monkeywise up a rope where Thorpe had launched his boat.

And now, as one in a dream, Thorpe allowed the girl to be taken from
him, to be lowered to the waiting boat. He clambered down himself and
in silence was rowed across to t