“I RECKON it ’ud be powerful interesting to hear how you’ve been pegging along since Wilson left you.”
Haverly’s voice was little more than a whisper as he spoke these words. He was mending rapidly, but he had not yet got about again, and the inventor, who had long since recovered from his injuries, was taking a spell below to bear him company.
“Would you care to hear the yarn?” the inventor asked.
“I guess I would,” was the reply.
“Well, you see,” Garth began, “I was below when Wilson was attacked, attending to the damages we had sustained in our fight with the icthyosaurus. He will have told you of that?”
Silas nodded.
“Suddenly I heard the report of a revolver, and judging that something was wrong, I raced upstairs. You can guess my feelings when I saw Tom being carted away by some great flying creature. For a time I think I almost went mad. I raved up and down the deck like a maniac, cursing everything and everybody in this confounded underworld.
“As my frenzy lessened, I realised the futility of my blind rage, and returned to my task, with a heart heavy for the loss of my chum. For, you know, I did not doubt that Tom was as good as dead; I never dreamed that he would be able to escape from the clutches of the brute—whatever it was—which had carried him off. How I finished those repairs I don’t know, but finish them I did at last, and backing the old Seal off the beach, pushed her along up the coast. My movements were entirely aimless. I imagined that all of you were lost; that I alone was left of our party in this ghostly hole of a place, so I took little heed to my course, or perhaps I may have been spared one of the most fearful experiences that’s ever tumbled my way.
“For how long I steered on I cannot tell, but it must have been for a considerable time. I had long since passed the river-mouth where I was washed ashore when I escaped from the savages. Upon my right was a line of towering cliffs, rising sheer from the water’s edge, for perhaps three hundred feet or so. I was keeping well out from shore on account of the presence of numerous sunken rocks, whose jagged crests showed just a few inches below the surface of the water. Suddenly, rounding a rocky headland, the Seal swept into a sheltered bay, a splendid natural harbour in the heart of the cliffs, and here I determined to stay for a while. The cliffs precluded all chance of attack from shore, and the narrow entrance of the bay was sufficient guard against the visit of another saurian, though at the moment I doubt if I should have cared much had one appeared, so apathetic had I grown. But I paid clearly for my carelessness.
“As I brought the vessel to, I never noticed that the surface of the water around was covered with great floating masses of a jelly-like substance. This fact was only brought to my notice when I saw the deck swarming with what I took to be jelly-fish. The presence of the creatures did not trouble me, however, and feeling weary, I securely locked the turret door, and went below for a time.