“My mortal eye!” shrieked Giles Habibula suddenly; and he fell td furious splashing, purple-faced, desperately groaning for breath.
“What’s the matter, Giles?”
“Some—frightful monster—nibbling away—at my blessed toes!”
They swam doggedly on, toward that black and distant object.
John Star felt a harsh, stinging rasp against his thigh; he saw his own blood staining the yellow water at his side.
“Something just took off a sample bit of me!”
“They must be just investigating us,” said Jay Kalam.
“When they find we don’t fight back———”
“That is a log, ahead!” shouted Hal Samdu.
“Then we must reach it, climb on it———” “—before these wicked creatures eat us up alive!” finished Giles Habibula.
Driving leaden-weary muscles to the utmost, they struggled on.
John Star was toiling for air, every breath a stabbing pain, every slow stroke a supreme act of will.
The others, he knew, were as near exhaustion; Hal Samdu’s red ugly face was savage with effort; Jay Kalam’s white and wet; Giles Habibula, panting, splashing desperately, was purple-faced.
The yellow surface for a time was clear. Then the black, saw-toothed fin came back; it cut the water in a deliberate curve, and came slicing directly at John Star.
He waited until it was near; then he splashed suddenly, shouted, kicked out at it.
His bare feet came laceratingly against sharp scales.
The fin turned, vanished.
For a while the surface was again unbroken.
On they swam, every breath a torturing flame, every stroke an agony.
The black log came near, a huge rough cylinder, a hundred feet long, covered with coarse, scaly bark.
On its upper side, at one end, they could see a curious greenish excrescence.
Ahead of them, something splashed again.
The curved black fin looped its silent way between them and the log.
They swam on, drawing the energy for every stroke from sheer desperation.
The curving rough surface was above them.
John Star was all but grasping for it, when he felt sharp jaws close on his ankle.
A savage tug dragged him strangling under the surface. He bent himself double, hands jabbing at a hard, sharp-scaled body, free foot kicking.
His hands found something soft that felt like an eye.
His fingers gouged into it; jabbed, hooked and tore.
The thing writhed under him, rolling and twisting furiously.
He jabbed again, kicked desperately.
His ankle came free; he struggled for the surface, strangling.
His head burst above the yellow water, and he cleared his eyes to see the curved black fin cutting straight at bun.
Then Hal Samdu’s giant hand clutched his arm from behind, hauled him up; he found himself seated with the others on the great black cylinder of the log.
“My mortal eye!” wheezed Giles Habibula.
“That was a wicked narrow———”
He stopped with a gasp, his fishy eyes bulging; Jay Kalam observed quietly:
“We’ve a companion on board.”
John Star saw the thing he had already observed as a greenish excrescence on the other end of the log.
A huge mass of muddily translucent, jelly-like matter, that must have weighed several tons, in color a dull, slimy green, it clung to the black bark with a score of shapeless pseudopods.
Slowly, with baleful, unknown senses, it became aware of them.
Semiliquid streams began to flow within its formless bulk, as they watched in puzzled horror; it thrust out extensions, flowed into them, and so began an appalling march down the log, toward them.
“What is the fearful thing?”
“A gigantic amoeba, apparently,” said Jay Kalam.
“Looking for dinner.”
“And he’ll find it,” estimated John Star, “at his present rate of motion, in about half an hour.”
The four men, naked, exhausted and defenseless, sat on their own end of the log, watching thin green arms thrusting out, and slow streams of semifluid jelly flowing to swell them.
The whole hideous bulk never seemed to move, yet was ever nearer.
How would it feel to be engulfed in it?
To be seized by the shapeless, creeping arms, drawn into the avid, boneless mass, inch by inch, smothered and consumed.