floated on, charged on the next enemy
with renewed fury and courage born of their victory. This one died as
quickly.

And as though it had been foreseen, and a policy arranged to meet it,
the white army no longer fought in the open, but lined up along the
walls to defend the immovable caves. They avoided the working jaws of
the other kind, which certainly needed no garrison, and drifting slowly
in the eddies, fought as they could, with decreasing strength and
increasing death-rate. And thus it happened that our conservative
non-combatant, out in midstream, found himself surrounded by a horde of
black enemies who had nothing better to do than attack him.

And they did. As many as could crowd about him closed their wicked jaws
in his flesh. Squirming with pain, rendered trebly strong by his
terror, he killed them by twos and threes as he could reach them with
his tail. He shook them off with nervous contortions, only to make room
for more. He plunged, rolled, launched himself forward and back, up and
down, out and in, bending himself nearly double, then with lightning
rapidity throwing himself far into the reverse curve. He was fighting
for his life, and knew it. When he could, he used his jaws, only once
to an enemy. He saw dimly at intervals that the white monsters were
watching him; but none offered to help, and he had not time to call.

He thought that he must have become the object of the war; for from all
sides they swarmed, crowding about him, seeking a place on which to
fasten their jaws. Little by little the large red-and-gray creatures,
the non-combatants, and the phosphorescent animals were pushed aside,
and he, the center of an almost solid black mass, fought, in utter
darkness, with the fury of extreme fright. He had no appreciation of
the passing of time, no knowledge of his distance from the wall, or the
destination of this never-pausing current. But finally, after an
apparently interminable period, he heard dimly, with failing
consciousness, the reverberations of the thunder, and knew momentary
respite as the violent cross-currents tore his assailants away. Then,
still in darkness, he felt the crashing and tearing of flesh against
obstructing walls and sharp corners, the repetition of thunder and the
roar of the current which told him he was once more in a large tunnel.
An instant of light from a venturesome torch showed him to his enemies,
and again he fought, like a whale in his last flurry, slowly dyi