CHAPTER XXIII
We had no time to decide what we should do. The monster saw us. Beneath us—almost in sight now—the black fishes were mounting. And further below them—dim and muffled in the distance—we heard Og’s voice shouting a shrill command to urge them on.
We darted out sidewise, away from the wall. Atar was leading, and single-file, we others followed. Then Atar turned suddenly and doubled back upon himself. Strung out in a line, we turned with him. Making straight for the jagged cliff-face, we passed close under the monster, between it and the mounting black fishes.
The monster was slow, ponderous in its movements. It was coming down, and as we darted under it I stared up and saw it plainly. A gigantic black thing. A spherical head, twenty feet broad; a thick, elongated body—a hundred feet or more in length. There were no fins, and no tail. The head had two great protruding eyes, gleaming green, and beneath them a circular mouth—a mouth which even undistended was large enough to suck in our bodies. And around the head, fastened to it—framing the face—were a dozen arms! They were waving tentacles with a sucker disk at the end of some, and a hook at the end of others.
A squid! you perhaps explain. It was, indeed, fashioned somewhat after the plan of the squid of your earthly waters. Let me call it then, a squid. It came down ponderously, waving its tentacles and floundering with its unwieldy body.
Avoiding it, we struck the cliff-face. A depression was there—a sort of ledge. On it we huddled, panting; Nona and I were almost exhausted.
“We must go on!” Caan whispered. “The black fishes—they will find us. And that giant thing—it can suck us up—”
But Atar silenced him. Atar knew what he was doing. And most of all, this momentary inactivity was allowing Nona and me to rest. We could not have gone much further in any event.
The giant squid had swung awkwardly to follow us. Then evidently it heard the yelps of the uprushing fishes. It hesitated, turned downward; it was below us, and out from the wall, but still in plain sight; and we saw the black fishes sweep up to attack it.
On every side the monster was assailed. There must have been two hundred or more of those ugly, squat little things. The bulk of the squid dwarfed them into insignificance; but like bull terriers worrying a prostrate elephant, they tore at it.