Kearney, forgetting everything else for the moment, stood watching as the night life of the lagoon disclosed itself, showing visions never revealed to the day. Great eels passed, filled with fire, and a whip-ray, a yard across, turning, as it went, over and over, like a leaf blown by a leisurely wind.
Then, looking up from the deep entrance to the pool came something that was not a fish—something that walked the floor of the lagoon to-night spreading terror before it as it went, so that in an instant the pool flashed black, free of all fish traces and showing nothing but the newcomer.
What Kearney saw was exactly like the bole of a great oak-tree sawed off at the branches and roots, glowing and pulsating with phosphorescence and crawling like a cat on the floor of the pool. In its forefront two broad lamps burned with an emerald light, now brilliant, now smoky, and from around the lamps serpentine tendrils a foot thick at the base spread and twined through the water, searching, feeling, exploring, now radiating out like a fan, now up-writhing like the locks of Medusa.
It was a barrel-shaped decapod twenty-five feet in length and over ten feet in circumference.
It had risen with the night from some cave far below the outer reef and strayed into the lagoon, either across the reef or by way of the break.
When he had got a full view of the thing, one glance was enough for Kearney. He turned away and made for the house. The child was fast asleep and he crept in beside it. Dick was company, after that sight, and though the child slept without a sound or a stir, the knowledge that it was there lessened the feeling of lonesomeness. Lying on his side on Lestrange’s bedding, he could see the doorway, and beyond the doorway the star-showered night stood as if watching him.
If that thing were to come out of the “lagun” and appear at the doorway with those two lamps—God! He tried to forget it by thinking of Lestrange, and then tried to forget Lestrange by thinking of the Ranatonga.
Bowers, Bully Stavers, Jerdein, all the fo’c’sle crowd appeared before him, individually, then collectively, and they were leading him off into dreamland, when a voice hailed him.
It was Lestrange’s voice, thin and far away like a voice in a gramophone.
Leaning upon his elbow, he listened—nothing. Then he sank back, still listening—nothing.