“See there!” cried Caan softly. “Is that perhaps a place where humans live?”
Below us, in the distance ahead, were a number of tiny pin-points of light. And even as Caan spoke, a human figure passed near us—a figure swimming swiftly downward with a fugitive, frightened speed. It seemed to hold a sort of lantern in one of its hands outstretched—a small, shrouded light to guide it through the darkness. It did not see us, and in a moment it had passed downward into the shadows. But the moving point of its light remained visible.
“Come!” urged Caan softly. “That will show us the way. Hurry!”
We swam downward, following the point of light.
CHAPTER XVIII
The light ahead of us winked like a will-o’-the-wisp as intervening branches of coral, the edge of a mud-bank, or perhaps the body of some living creature, momentarily blotted it out. We were close to the bottom now. Along here it was a rolling, but fairly even bank of ooze, with grotesque squat plants growing in it.
The light could not have been more than a few hundred feet in advance of us; in its glow we could sometimes see the outlines of the human figure carrying it. We did not dare speak aloud now; we swam with that speed and silence which only one who lives in the water can attain.
Presently the light dipped downward and vanished. We saw that this figure we were following had entered a black cave-mouth—an opening which ran diagonally down into a slimy bank of mud. And we saw, too, that the points of steady light which had first attracted our attention were the reflected glow of illumination from somewhere beneath the sea floor.
Silently we slipped into the cave-mouth. The moving light was down there: then abruptly it disappeared.
“Wait!” whispered Caan. “Go slower!”