hroats. I could see even the hard, bony cover that
protected these slits, and I realized that these were gills! Here were
representatives of a people that had gone back to the sea ages before
the people of the girl's village.

Their coming caused a sort of panic in the village, and the three
noseless creatures strode down the principal street grinning hugely,
glancing from right to left, and showing their sharp pointed teeth.
They looked more like sharks than like human beings.

A committee of five gray old men met the visitors, and conducted them
into one of the larger houses. Insolently, the leader of the three
shark-faced creatures made demands, and the scene changed swiftly to
make clear the nature of those demands.

* * * * *

The village was to give a number of its finest young men and women to
the shark-faced people; about fifty of each sex, I gathered, to be
servants, slaves, to the noseless ones.

The scene shifted quickly to the interior of the house. The old men
were shaking their heads, protesting, explaining. There was fear on
their faces, but there was determination, too.

One of the three envoys snarled and came closer to the five old men,
lifting a knife threateningly. I thought for an instant that he was
about to strike down one of the villagers; then the picture dissolved
into another, and I saw that he was but threatening them with what he
could cause to happen.

The fate of the village and the villagers, were the demands of the
three refused, was a terrible one. Hordes of the noseless creatures
came swarming. They tore the houses apart, and with their long, slim
white weapons they killed the old men and women, and the children. The
villagers fought desperately, but they were outnumbered. The
shark-skin kirtles of the invaders turned their knives like armor, and
the sea grew red with swirling blood that spread like scarlet smoke
through the water. Then, this too faded, and I saw the old men
cowering, pleading with the three terrible envoys.

The leader of the three shark-faced creatures spoke again. He would
give them time--a short revolving swirl of gray that indicated only a
brief time, apparently--and return for an answer. Grinning evilly, the
three turned away, left the dome-shaped house, and darted away over
the roofs of the village into the dim darkness of the distant waters.

* * * * *

I saw the girl, then, talking to th