he cracked crazy sound of
his own voice.

But the bowlight shafted ahead in brilliant clarity, piercing no ocean
depths or ooze or mud-flats, but glancing over the racing ripples of a
flowing river. Above the river surface the rocks came down, so low Pete
could hear them touch the hull, scrape, grind free, as their touch sent
the craft deeper in the hurrying water.

"Holy old Harry," growled McCarthy, rubbing at his slackened features.
"She fell right through the bottom of the sea into some subterranean
flow...." He yawned, and stretched a little, and cursed again. "Sure, I
couldn't expect her to do anything else, with my luck aboard her. There
were trees and sunlight, and water ... ah, water ... up there,
somewhere. I saw them, falling in, I did. Do I land where I can get
anything like water? Hell no! I crash right on down into this hole!" He
laughed a weak bitter laugh. Then he leaned back and began to sing
through cracked and bleeding lips:

"_There's a hole in the bottom of the sea;
There's a rock in a hole in the bottom of the sea;
There's a crab on a rock in the hole in the bottom...._"

And he began to snore, having fallen asleep.

* * * * *

Some hours later, Peter McCarthy awoke, little refreshed because of the
raging thirst within him. With terrific effort he got to his feet,
noting that the ship was no longer moving.

The bow light was still burning, but it showed only a black wall of
smooth rock ahead. He switched it off, turning on the inside lights. He
staggered and cursed his weakness, but he made it to the airlock. With
feeble hands he tugged the little wheel around that pulled back the big
bars on the lock door.

"I'll get this over with, somehow. I'll just jump into the damned black
water and drink the damn river dry...."

The big outer lock door swung open, and he straightened, half expecting
a rush of icy water about his feet. But instead a warm and slightly
fragrant air drifted silently in, touched his tangled hair with idle and
somehow playful fingers.

"Still teasing me, you dirty old tramp!" growled the lean McCarthy, to
whom death had become a personal enemy, a figure he had both pursued and
fled from across a vast and empty space. A nemesis he could not escape,
and a fiend he could not quite catch.

He tugged loose a hand flash from the bracket by the lock, and staggered
out upon the smooth rock floor against which the ship had come to re