"Good lad! Good lad!" shouted Cathie.
Then the other three monsters, as though in answer to the challenge, as though endued with malignant understanding and most devilish determination, bent and swung and reeled over the reef and flung themselves towards the ships.
They saw Captain Pym suddenly throw up his hands above his head in a gesture of utter impotence and despair, and then turn and make for the hill.
The watchers crouched in a crevice of the hillside and gazed narrow-eyed, and their breaths came quick and short, not from the run but because their hearts were in their throats and choked their breathing.
It was a most terrible sight. The powers of all evil—death, destruction, and malignity—against the puny works of man.
The three awful whirling shapes danced and swung in the lagoon, showing off all their evil graces. Three ineffectual flashes broke from the gunboat, but they avoided them with an easy swing, as though they understood and were on their guard. They reeled towards one another and seemed to take evil counsel together. Then, as though moved by one mind, they swooped down straight on the ships.
"Oh, cruel! cruel!" moaned Jean, clasping her boy to her and hiding her face in him.
Captain Cathie groaned as he watched, and then burst into incoherent, and unusual, and most excusable blasphemies.
Aunt Jannet and Kenneth Blair stared in dreadful fascination.
For one of the whirling monsters reached the ships, picked them up, and smashed them and itself together in one dreadful destruction. When the wild welter settled down and permitted sight, the lagoon was bare save for scattered fragments and struggling figures.