“What?” I demanded; but she silenced me. She was pointing with a trembling hand. I saw what it was. Half a mile away perhaps, over the sand hills, I could see figures moving. Living things were advancing toward us along the water-bottom!
I sat up, alert. Living things! I would capture and kill one for food.
But as they came steadily closer, I saw that each of them was nearly as large as ourselves—and there were ten or more of them. I trembled; and Nona and I drew back into the fern to hide.
The things continued to advance. Soon I saw that they were upright, coming along the sand as though walking, slowly but steadily. I thought they had not seen us. Nona and I lay very quiet, with our hearts pounding with fright. Soon the things were so close that I could examine them in detail. They were apparently human as ourselves—made after a general plan like our own.
I have since named them Marinoids—a name that may serve as well as any other. The males—or shall I call them men?—were some five feet in height. Their bodies were pink-white, smooth, with a glistening skin. They were clothed—crude greenish garments wrapped around them tightly. They had feet and jointed legs, which, however, were connected by a flapping membrane. Their chests were over-large. There were four arms, two at each shoulder. The arms waved in the water sinuously, like the tentacles of an octopus. At the ends of the arms were fingers—very long and slim—and a huge pincer, like that of a crab.
Yet for all that, these beings seemed in human form. The heads were hairy and round, with two eyes only slightly protruding, a nose, and a mouth not much different from my own save that it was larger.
The women were slightly shorter and more slender than the men, with long dark hair that floated habitually above them.
In this party which now approached us were ten individuals—four of them women. In spite of their size, there was about them—both women and men—a curious aspect of unsolidity. I felt less afraid of them as I realized it. They looked as though I could crush them in my arms. Their chests especially seemed no more than thin, inflated membranes, expanding and contracting with extraordinary rapidity.
I wondered, with a sudden flush of triumph, if these things would be good to eat. I whispered it to Nona.
“I can capture one,” I said confidently.