as drowning....

* * * * *

Vaguely I felt the pressure loosen at last. An arm--with good, solid
flesh and bone in it--slipped under my shoulders and dragged me up into
the air.

"Don't you know--can't drown a fish--holding it under water?" panted a
voice.

I opened my eyes and saw Stanley, his face pale with the thrill of
battle, his chin jutting forward in a berserk line, his eyes snapping
with eager, wary fires.

I grinned up at him and he slapped me on the back--almost completing the
choking process started by the salt water I'd inhaled.

"That's better. Now--at it again!"

I don't remember the rest of the tumult. The air seemed filled with
loathsome tentacles and bright metal blades. It was a confused eternity
until the decreased volume of water in the tunnel gave us a respite....

As the tunnel slowly emptied the pressure dropped, and the incoming
flood poured squarely into the trough instead of half over it. From that
moment there was very little more for us to do.

Our little army--with about a fourth of its number gone--had only to
guard the ditch and see that none of the Quabos caught the edges as they
hurtled out of their passage.

For perhaps ten minutes longer the water poured from the break in the
wall, with now and then a doomed Quabo that goggled horribly at us as it
was dashed down the hole in the floor to whatever awesome depths were
beneath.

Then the flow ceased. The last oleaginous corpse was pushed over the
edge. And the city, save for an ankle-deep sheet of water that was
rapidly draining out the vents in the streets, presented its former
appearance.

The Zyobites leaned wearily against convenient walls and began telling
themselves how fortunate they were to have been spared what seemed
certain destruction.

* * * * *

The Professor didn't share in the general feeling of triumph.

"Don't be so childishly optimistic!" he snapped as I began to
congratulate him on the victory his ditch had given us. "Our troubles
aren't over yet!"

"But we've proved that we can stand up to them in a hand-to-tentacle
fight--"

His thin, frosty smile appeared.

"One of those devils, normally, is stronger than any three men. The only
reason all of us weren't destroyed at once is that they were slowly
suffocating as they fought. The foot and a half of water we were in
wasn't enough to let their gills function properly. Now if they were