e elders. They smiled sadly, and
shook their heads hopelessly. She argued with them earnestly, painting
a picture for them: Mercer and myself, as she viewed us, tall and very
strong and with great wisdom in our faces. We too walked along the
streets of the village. The hordes of shark-faced ones came, like a
swarm of monstrous sharks, and--the picture was very vague and
nebulous, now--we put them to rout.

She wished us to help her, she had convinced the elders that we could.
She, her mother and father, started out from the village. Three times
they had fought with sharks, and each time they had killed them. They
had found the shore, the very spot where we had put her back into the
sea. Then there was a momentary flash of the picture she had called
up, of Mercer and I putting the shark-faced hordes to rout, and then,
startlingly, I was conscious of that high, pleading sound--the sound
that I had heard once before, when she had begged us to return her to
her people.

The sound that I knew was her word for "_Please!_"

There was a little click. Mercer had turned the switch. He would
transmit now; she and I would listen.

* * * * *

In the center of the village--how vaguely and clumsily he pictured
it!--rested the _Santa Maria_. From a trap in the bottom two bulging,
gleaming figures emerged. Rushing up, a glimpse through the
face-plates revealed Mercer and myself. The shark-faced hordes
descended, and Mercer waved something, something like a huge bottle,
towards them. None of the villagers were in sight.

The noseless ones swooped down on us fearlessly, knives drawn, pointed
teeth revealed in fiendish grins. But they did not reach us. By
dozens, by scores, they went limp and floated slowly to the floor of
the ocean. Their bodies covered the streets, they sprawled across the
roofs of the houses. And in a few seconds there was not one alive of
all the hundreds who had come!

I looked down at the girl. She was smiling up at me through the clear
water, and once again I felt the strange, strong tug at my
heart-strings. Her great dark eyes glowed with a perfect confidence, a
supreme faith.

We had made her a promise.

I wondered if it would be possible to keep it.

* * * * *

In the day following, the _Santa Maria_ was launched. Two days later,
trial trips and final adjustments completed, we submerged for the
great adventure.

It sounds very simple w