Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 129, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 June 1919 — The Deep Sea Peril [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The Deep Sea Peril

VICTOR ROUSSEAU A COPYRIGHT BY W G. CHAPMAW

CHAPTER IX.—Continued. *—ll— Donald turned and began skirting the crinoid bed. The sea devil had disappeared. The water was like a thin, unstable jelly. As they made their way along the bottom of the sett, the fleshy lily arms., reached out toward them like children’s plucking fingers. At last the bed of' crinoids ended. Tffey trod on firmer ground. Their pace became accelerated. He had lost all sense of time. He did not know whether he’ had journeyed one hour or three. He halted because there seamed nothing to do. Then he began to lead the jway back between the two crinoid beds, with the Intention of reaching the clear ground near the entrance to the cave. There, there might be a chance of picking up Davies and Clouts; or, at least, it might be possible from there to return to the submarine with Ida to replenish their oxygen reservoirs. These still, seemed ample, but it was impossible to determine how much oxygen remained. They threaded the mazes of the winding path between the beds, while from either side the fleshy arms stretched out to grapple them. The touch of them was like fiery velvet. The suction of the branches made them cling, and Donald han to exercise all his might to break away. Sometimes their ankles became entangled and they would stumble. Always the arms hid formed a network above their heads before they could regain their feet, and these had to be broken. Under their feet the ooze was white with the skeletons of small fish which the lilies had rejected after devouring the substance that covered them. At length the crinoid beds ended abruptly. They rested on the bottom, seating themselves side by side. Donald felt confident that he could find the submarine. But the delay was sweet, because the disappoin'ment in store for them might prove unbearable. Death or a little life would be the alternative, and the difference was hardly perceptibly Donald raised Ida’s hand to his glass mask and pressed the fingers against it

She let her hand fall caressingly upon his shoulders. She rose to her feet, and he followed her. They looked Into each other's eyes, and. though they could read nothing there, some message of hope seemed to pass. They plunged together into the sea of jelly again . It clung to them, as If It, too, sought to suck them down. The light of the electric lamps was growing obscure. They wandered blindly, struggling in a' medium that was almost impermeable. Donald began to realize that the action of the caustic alkali within the metallic chamber was becoming exhausted. He was beginning to choke. His breath came in deep sighs, and he gulped in the thickening atmosphere. Their steps grew slower. Ida could hardly raise her hied"and fell, picked herself up, and started beside Donald again; then she sank down exhausted. She could not go farther. Death, horrible in form, awaited them. It was becoming imminent. Donald was growing delirious, and in fancy he was strolling with Ida through meadows, plucking flowers. They were to be married on the morrow, and he was going to get leave of absence to take her away. Where should they spend their honeymoon? Off the coast of the Shetlands. Why, he had been there once, long before — All the while he was aware that he was lying on the bed of the sea, but his personality seemed divided, and while one part of him walked in those Elysian fields beside his sweetheart, the other suffered and choked and pleaded impotently with a blind fate for aid —not for his life’s sake, but for Ida’s. . - - * -

The girl’s hand was unresponsive in his own. Perhaps she was dead already. Donald chafed it, but was hardly able to distinguish it in that jellylike environment, which was thickening perceptibly now. The fingers were limp and cold. They were both numbed from the exposure—and Ida was dead. He would follow her, then. Slowly and with deliberation he unfastened the copper cylinder from about his body. At once the little electric light went out. It had grown so dim that only then did Donald remember that it had been burning. He unbuckled the/ headpiece', and took off the mask of glass. He flung it from him. A moment he held his breath as he felt the cool water-jelly Upon his face. Then, very resolutely, be drew in his breath. f 'Vi i ■ i-i - . CHAPTER X The Cave of the Idol. A cry of amazement burst from his lips. He was breathing air—air df the bottom of the sea! \ It was surcharged'with oxygen. It invigorated him. He felt the thrill

of renewed life In Ms body, he felt his shrunken arteries tingle as his heart pumped the new, richened blood through them. It seemed unbelievable. At first he thought that he had died, and that this was the soul’s *awakening. ~' Then, with quick fingers, he unfastened Ida’s body-piece and tore the mask from its fastenings. He heard her sigh, ( . She sighed and stirred and sat up on the ocean bed. “Donaldl” she murmured. “I thought—l thought you were dead. Where are we?” “I don’t know.” he answered, In absolute bewilderment. At that moment he heard the mellow*, gonglike . sound that they had heard aboard the F 55. And slowly, as If 1 n answer to the call, the jellylike medium that surrounded them began to drift away, to be hung up, as if it were a curtain, find before their astonished gaze there evolved the strangest stage setting •that could ever have been conceived. First there came into view the submarine. occupying, as it were, the center of this stage, her bow sunk in the ooze, her stern, still lower. They had been lying within a hundred paces of her. Next appeared the sloping edges of the crater, seen, not through water but through clear air, with a border of yellow crinoids, ceaselessly stirring, ns though a breeze ruffled them. Then there began to be visible. In the flanks of themountain, structures, apparently of hardened mud. taking the shape of fantastic temples, w*ith pillars and doorways with low* lintels, a submerged city of cliff dwellers, and yet each identical wlthits neighbors, so that they seemed toTiave been fashioned with the same unchanging precision as the cells of the bee. And the whole crater swarmed with the sea-monsters, no longer Invisible, but outlined in phosphorescent fire. And, standing in front of Donald and Ida, his features clearly visible through the glass of his own diving mask, surveying them with a cool, dispassionate gaze, was Ira Macßeard! As they stared at him, he raised his hand and struck something suspended from his neck, giving out the mellow sound which they had heard before. Immediately he disappeared from view in the midst of a swarm of the monsters, which, surrounding Donald and the girl, began to push them toward the cavern in the mountain side. The push was gradual, and apparently the result of some natural quality not known on land. There was no sense of muscular movement. It

seemed to be momentum devoid of the accompanying factor of speed. Irresistibly, and yet quietly, the two were pushed toward the entrance in the flank of the island. In vain Donald resisted. In vain he tried to force a path toward the submarine, dashing his fists against the bodies of the monsters. He made not the least impression upon those halfspherical forms. A sea-man under water and one in the air had very different powers of resistance. He might as well have fought an army of animated featherbeds. Slowly, without strain or attack, he felt himself being forced forward. He was held tightly on every side, except for the narrow gap that opened in front of him. He was forced to devote himself to supporting Ida. On every side the globular, translucent, phosphorescent forms seemed to crowd in on him, leaving only a tiny way in the direction of one of the mud-pillared entrances. Yet, even’ thus, Donald had the impression of sbme unconscious force that animated these monsters ; it seemed like the scouting expedition of a colony of red ants, returning with its booty. He could sense no conscious impulse in the sea monsters.

His pace became accelerated, and suddenly, Donald and Ida found theidselves Within a huge cavern, faintly illumined by phosphorescence, and roofed with the same cloudy substance that they had seen upon the ocean bed without. The monsters left them. The two stood there together, still in bewilderment. But they were not alone, for, with v a shout, Davies emerged from the dim recess, and ran toward them, followed by Clouts. Their cylinders and headgear had been removed. The four stared at one another in incredulous joy. - “They nabbed us the moment we left the air-lock," cried Davies, grabbing the lieutenant by the hand and,

forgetting Ms discipline for the first time. “And Clouts, too. They sort of edged us In here. We were afraid you were dead.” “They gave us a little longer respite,”* answered Donald. “Davies, am I mad or dreaming, or are we breathing under water?” “If you’re dreaming, then Clouts and I are too,” said the little middy. “Hello! There Clouts goes again! I’ve tried to keep him resigned, but he gets frantic occasionally.” With a sudden howl that seemed to rise from the depths of an outraged nature, Clouts, lowering his head, rushed like a battering ram into the doorway. The watchers saw him recoil as if he had butted a feather bed. He looked up, rubbed his head in perplexity, and then, retiring a few paces, repeated his experiment more furiously than before.

Again he_was hurled back, as a ball rebounds from the cushion of a billiard table. The monsters’ bodies blocked the entrance as effectively as If they were of rubber. Slowly Sam Clouts withdrew, looking back with a puzzled expression. Meanwhile the three glanced about. They were in a huge natural cave, in which the sea monsters had evidently been at work, for the interior was coated with mud, hardened in some peculiar manner to resist the water. And yet Donald had the same impression of a beehive. There was something of sameness everywhere, the same sense of automatism. It was quite bare, except at one end, where arose a mud mound, decorated with seashells, and upon this was what looked like the upright skeleton of a small mammal. . ■ • • ■ “Look!” exclaimed Donald. “It came from- —from behind the curtain!” said Davies in awe. “Donald, the air was thicker . . . something keeps rolling back . . . ?” They looked at each other, still unconvinced that they were awake and alive. Then they went toward the object at the end. , Sam Clouts, who had preceded them, fell back with an exclamation of horror. “Yes, Clouts?” said Donald. “I beg your pardon, sir, but don’t you see that it’s meant to be a person, sir?” He spoke the truth. The figure was a rough pile of bones, but high above them a grinning human face, made of the same plastered mud, looked down. It was the first sign of conscious process among the monsters, and some devil craftsman had contrived to catch, not so much the form as the humanness of it.

It was upon a larger scale, precisely such a figure as a child or a savage might have made In its first efforts to reproduce the human figure. There were even the dawnings of art in the shape of whales’ ear-bones, strung, braceletwise, across the breast. The mound beneath the figure consisted of innumerable bones, a sort of kitchen midden such as Neolithic man* left behind him as a testimony to bls oyster feasts. Davies picked up one of the bones and looked at it intently. “Donald!” he said softly, not to attract the attention of Ida, who, seated on the floor against the mound, seemed on the point of falling asleep from weariness. He held out the bone. Both looked at it. It was the bone of a flipper heel. The monsters were cannibal, beyond any doubt. “Davies!” cried Donald, a moment later. “Don’t you see what that figure is? It’s jan idol. And the bones are those of creatures of their own species, and others, sacrificed to it by the monsters in their abominable feasts. If the first dawnings of self-con-sciousness, the awakening of the religious perceptions!” There could be no other interpretation. They looked at each other in horror and something of awe. The thing had been fashioned, perhaps, after an ideal never seen, or perchance some forgotten ancestor, cast up on an inhabited shore, had seen man and returned, to embody him in his remembered guise.

So these half-blind and voiceless devils of the sea were groping slowly upward, as our ancestors had done jnany a hundred thousand years ago, toward hope and endeavor. The Spirit of God stirred in the dull souls of these cannibal monsters, as everywhere. . Donald felt somehow immensely elated at the thought. Even here they were not cut off from the sheltering hand of Providence. “Look, sir!” Clouts exclaimed suddenly. (TO BE CONTINUED.)

"Look!” Exclaimed Donald.