He immediately withdrew them, uttering a cry which was loud enough to wake the dead.
"Oh, oh!" he cried.
"What's up?" exclaimed Carl, who could not help laughing.
"I see the dodge now," said Mont; "it's an electric battery applied to the metal of the staircase, and whoever touches it has a shock. I've had it before at Coney Island, and at fairs. You pay a dime and get electrified."
"Ah!" ejaculated the professor, upon whom a light began to dawn.
"You are right," said the captain calmly. "I have connected the brass staircase with the powerful storage battery that gives us light and power, and the ignorant savages are frightened at they know not what. If they had persisted in their attempt to enter the ship I should have applied all my electrical force, and they would have fallen as dead as flies on a fly paper; but I did not wish to harm them. They are enemies unworthy of my hatred."
The news of the dreadful and mysterious pains which they felt were spread by the shocked natives to their friends.
Alarmed and horrified, they beat a precipitate retreat, swimming and rowing back to the shore.
In half an hour the beach was deserted, and all flew away from the sea fiend whose nature they could not understand.
"They take us for the Old Nick," said Mont.