ble in the slow, implacable deliberation of its movements, floated
down with the current. It was larger than the huge red-and-gray
creatures. It was formless, in the full irony of the definition--for it
assumed all forms. It was long--barrel-shaped; it shrank to a sphere,
then broadened laterally, and again extended above and below. In turn
it was a sphere, a disk, a pyramid, a pentahedron, a polyhedron. It
possessed neither legs, flippers, nor tentacles; but out from its
heaving, shrinking body it would send, now from one spot, now from
another, an active arm, or feeler, with which it swam, pulled, or
pushed. An unlucky invader which one of them touched made few more
voluntary movements; for instantly the whole side of the whitish mass
bristled with arms. They seized, crushed, killed it, and then pushed it
bodily through the living walls to the animal's interior to serve for
food. And the gaping fissure healed at once, like the wounds of
Milton's warring angels.

The first white monster floated down, killing as he went; then came
another, pushing eagerly into the fray; then came two, then three, then
dozens. It seemed that the word had been passed, and the army of
defense was mustering.

Sick with horror, he watched the grim spectacle from the shelter of the
projection, until roused to an active sense of danger to himself--but
not from the fighters. He was anchored by his tail, swinging easily in
the eddy, and now felt himself touched from beneath, again from above.
A projection down-stream was extending outward and toward him. The cave
in which he had taken refuge was closing on him like a great mouth--as
though directed by an intelligence behind the wall. With a terrified
flirt of his tail he flung himself out, and as he drifted down with the
combat the walls of the cave crunched together. It was well for him
that he was not there.

The current was clogged with fragments of once living creatures, and
everywhere, darting, dodging, and biting, were the fierce black
invaders. But they paid no present attention to him or to the small
tentacled animals. They killed the large, helpless red-and-gray kind,
and were killed by the larger white monsters, each moment marking the
death and rending to fragments of a victim, and the horrid interment of
fully half his slayers. The tunnel grew larger, as mouth after mouth of
tributary tunnels was passed; but as each one discharged its quota of
swimming and drifting creatures, ther