“Quick, Seymour!” he gasped. “Your elephant gun!”
Quick as thought the baronet leapt back into the turret, and took down the great gun from its rack.
Slipping a couple of shells into the breech, he took a quick aim at the great, glaring orbs of the cephalopod, and fired both barrels.
The recoil of the weapon sent him reeling backward against the wheelhouse wall, but he recovered himself in a moment, and sprang forward to note the result of his shot.
The explosive cartridges had almost shattered the monstrous, pulpy body, and the mighty tentacles were feebly beating the deck.
A few strokes with the hatchet quickly freed the two victims, both of whom were more dead than alive by this time.
Carefully they bore them below to their cabins; then, leaving them in the care of the scientist, Garth and Seymour returned to the deck, to clear away the remains of their terrible visitor.
“What a brute!” the inventor exclaimed with a shudder, as he plied his axe upon the ghastly, slippery mass; “if it hadn’t been for that gun of yours, Seymour, he’d have had the lot of us.”
“True enough,” replied the baronet; “but who would have imagined the brute would board us?”
Three hours it took to clear the deck of the mass of jelly-like pulp, Garth chopping it into fragments, which Seymour shovelled over the rail. And even then there was life in the creature, the severed feelers twitching feebly when they were touched. Two of the longest of these latter they measured, finding both to be over twenty feet long.