sensation--Tedge of
the _Marie Louise_ who had never feared.

But this was different, this soft and moving web of silence. No, not
quite silence, for past his ear the splendid hyacinths drifted with a
musical creaking, leaf on leaf, the buoyant bulbs brushing each other.
The islets joined and parted; once he saw open water and plunged for
it--and over his shoulders there surged a soft coverlet. He turned and
beat it; he churned his bed into a furious welter, and the silken
curtain lowered.

He shrank from it now, staring. The feathery roots matted across his
chest, the mass of them felt slimy like the hide of a drowned brute.

"Drownin' cows"--he muttered thickly--"comin' on a man driftin' and
drownin'--no, no! Lilies, jest lilies--damn 'em!"

The tall spiked flowers seemed nodding--yes, just lilies, drifting and
singing elfin music to the sea tide. Tedge roared once again his
hatred of them; he raised and battered his huge fists into their
beauty, and they seemed to smile in the starlight. Then, with a howl,
he dived.

He would beat them--deep water was here in the pass, and he would swim
mightily far beneath the trailing roots--he would find the man with
the boat yet and hurl him to die in the hyacinth bloom.

He opened his eyes in the deep, clear water and exulted. He, Tedge,
had outwitted the bannered argosies. With bursting lungs he charged
off across the current, thinking swiftly, coolly, now of the escape.
And as he neared the surface he twisted to glance upward. It was light
there--a light brighter than the stars, but softer, evanescent. Mullet
and squib were darting about or clinging to a feathery forest that
hung straight down upon him. Far and near there came little darts of
pale fire, gleaming and expiring with each stir in the phosphorescent
water.

And he had to rise; a man could not hold the torturing air in his
lungs for ever. Yes, he would tear a path to the stars again and
breathe. His arms flailed into the first tenuous streamers, which
parted in pearly lace before his eyes. He breasted higher, and they
were all about him now; his struggles evoked glowing bubble-jewels
which drifted upward to expire. He grasped the soft roots and twisted
and sought to raise himself. He had a hand to the surface bulbs, but a
silken mesh seemed tightening about him.

And it was drifting--everything was drifting in the deep pass of Au
Fer. He tried to howl in the hyacinth web, and choked--and then he
merely f