half-formed pictures, I saw her return to the
village, of her people; her welcome there, with curious crowds around
her, questioning her. Their incredulous expressions as she told them
of her experience were ludicrous. Her meeting with her father and
mother brought a little catch to my throat, and I looked across the
pool at Mercer. I knew that he, too, was glad that we bad put her back
into the sea when she wished to go.

* * * * *

These pictures faded hastily, and for a moment there was only the
circular swirling as of gray mist; that was the symbol she adopted to
denote the passing of time. Then, slowly, the picture cleared.

It was the same village I had seen before, with its ragged, warped,
narrow streets, and its row of dome-shaped houses, for all the world
like Eskimo igloos, but made of coral and various forms of vegetation.
At the outskirts of the village I could see the gently moving, shadowy
forms of weird submarine growths, and the quick darting shapes of
innumerable fishes.

Some few people were moving along the streets, walking with oddly
springy steps. Others, a larger number, darted here and there above
the roofs, some hovering in the water as gulls hover in the air,
lazily, but the majority apparently on business or work to be executed
with dispatch.

Suddenly, into the midst of this peaceful scene, three figures came
darting. They were not like the people of the village, for they were
smaller, and instead of being gracefully slim they were short and
powerful in build. They were not white like the people of the girl's
village, but swarthy, and they were dressed in a sort of tight-fitting
shirt of gleaming leather--shark-skin, I learned later. They carried,
tucked through a sort of belt made of twisted vegetation, two long,
slim knives of pointed stone or bone.

* * * * *

But it was not until they seemed to come close to me that I saw the
great point of difference. Their faces were scarcely human. The nose
had become rudimentary, leaving a large, blank expanse in the middle
of their faces that gave them a peculiarly hideous expression. Their
eyes were almost perfectly round, and very fierce, and their mouths
huge and fishlike. Beneath their sharp, jutting jaws, between the
angle of the jaws and a spot beneath the ears, were huge, longitudinal
slits, that intermittently showed blood-red, like fresh gashes cut in
the sides of their t