ad been a blade in that hand. Already the three were
turning away from the man so ruthlessly dispatched. Ashe? Or some
survivor of the wrecked ships?

Ross retreated to the end of the ledge. The narrow stream of water
dividing it from the rock where he had won ashore washed into a cave in
the cliff. Dare he try to work his way into that? Masked, with the
gill-pack, he could go under surface if he were not smashed by the waves
against some wall.

He glanced back. The lights were very close to the end of his ledge. To
withdraw to the second rock would mean being caught in a dead end, for
he dared not enter the whirlpool on its far side. There was really no
choice: stay and be killed, or try for the cave. Ross fastened on his
flippers and lowered his body into the narrow stream. The fact that it
was narrow and guarded on either side by the ledges tamed the waves a
little, and Ross found the tug against him not so great as he feared it
would be.

Keeping hand-holds on the rock, he worked along, head and shoulders
often under the wash of rolling water, but winning steadily to the break
in the cliff wall. Then he was through, into a space much larger than
the opening, water-filled but not with a wild turbulence of waves.

Had he been sighted? Ross kept a handhold to the left of that narrow
entrance, his body floating with the rise and fall of the water. He
could make out the gleam of light without. It might be that one of those
hunters had leaned out over the runnel of the cave entrance, was
flashing his torch down into the water there.

Behind mask plate Ross's lips writhed in the snarl of the hunted. In
here he would have the advantage. Let one of them, or all three, try to
follow through that rock entrance and....

But if he had been sighted at the mouth of the lair, none of his
trackers appeared to wish to press the hunt. The light disappeared, and
Ross was left in the dark. He counted a hundred slowly and then a second
hundred before he dared use his own torch.

For all its slit entrance this was a good-sized hideaway he had chanced
upon. And he discovered, when he ventured to release his wall hold and
swim out into its middle, the bottom arose in a slope toward its rear.

Moments later Ross pulled out of the water once more, to crouch
shivering on a ledge only lapped now and then by wavelets. He had found
a temporary refuge, but his good fortune did not quiet his fears. Had
that been Ashe on the shore? And why