CHAPTER V
FROM ONE DANGER INTO ANOTHER
"I am lost!"
Such was the agonizing thought which crossed Dave Fearless' mind when he beheld himself confronted by the fish known as the Eurypharynx Pelecanoides, commonly called the Sea Devil of the Ocean's Bottom.
The monster was all of twenty feet long, with a head closely resembling a black rubber balloon. Its eyes shone like two electric-light globes, while its mouth opened and shut with a strange, clicking sensation which went through the young diver like the piercing of a needle.
Dave's thought was to retreat to the diving bell, but this seemed impossible, for the monstrous fish was only a few yards off and approaching rapidly. It looked as if in another moment all would be over and he would be swallowed alive, like Jonah of old.
A million thoughts rushed through his brain—thoughts of his younger days, of his happy life around the lighthouse—and of how the Hankers might yet triumph over his father and himself. In the meanwhile the monster came closer, and now it emitted from its mouth a horrible green slime, with which to cover its victim before swallowing him, after the manner of its cousin on earth, the boa constrictor.
But at this moment, when the youth seemed surely lost, something happened as quickly as it was unexpected, and which changed the whole course of events.
Through the black waters rushed another fish, long, thin, and exceedingly bony. From the snout of this fish stuck a sword-like spear, fully three feet long, with a point like that of a dart.
This was the Devil's Needle, another monster of the deep, and dreaded by all other monsters, for it is the deadly enemy of everything that crosses its path.