They’re - they’re - ’ he began; but I never let him finish.
‘Get out of my way!’ I roared, and swept him to one side. I ran forward.
‘Haul in on that rope!’ I shouted. ‘Tail on to it! Are you going to stand there like a lot of owls and see them drown!’
The men only wanted a leader to show them what to do, and, without showing any thought of insubordination, they tacked on to the rope that was fastened to the stem of the boat, and hauled her back across the weed - cuttle-fish and all.
The strain on the rope had thrown her on an even keel again, so that she took the water safely, though that foul thing was straddled all across her.
‘’Vast hauling!’ I shouted. ‘Get the doc’s cleavers, some of you - anything that’ll cut!’
‘This is the sort, sir! ’ cried the bo’sun; from somewhere he had got hold of a formidable double bladed whale lance.
The boat, still under the impetus given by our pull, struck the side of the yacht immediately beneath where I was waiting with the gun. Astern of it towed the body of the monster, its two eyes - monstrous orbs of the Profound - staring out vilely from behind its arms.
I leant my elbows on the rail, and aimed full at the right eye. As I pulled on the trigger one of the great arms detached itself from the boat, and swirled up towards me. There was a thunderous bang as the heavy charge drove its way through that vast eye, and at the same instant something swept over my head.
There came a cry from behind: ‘Look out, sir!’ A flame of steel before my eyes, and a truncated something fell upon my shoulder, and thence to the deck.
Down below, the water was being churned to a froth, and three more arms sprang into the air, and then down among us.
One grasped the bo’sun, lifting him like a child. Two cleavers gleamed, and he fell to the deck from a height of some twelve feet, along with the severed portion of the limb.
I had my weapons reloaded again by now, and ran forward along the deck somewhat, to be clear of the flying arms that flailed on the rails and deck.
I fired again into the hulk of the brute, and then again. At the second shot, the murderous din of the creature ceased, and, with an ineffectual flicker of its remaining tentacles, it sank out of sight beneath the water.
A minute later we had the hatch in the roof of the superstructure open, and the men out, my chum coming last. They had been mightily shaken, but otherwise were none the worse.
As Barlow came over the gangway, I stepped up to him and gripped his shoulder. I was strangely muddled in my feelings. I felt that I had no sure position aboard my own yacht. Yet all I said was:
‘Thank God, you’re safe, old man!’ And I meant it from my heart.
He looked at me in a doubtful, puzzled sort of manner, and passed his hand across his forehead.
‘Yes,’ he replied; but his voice was strangely toneless, save that some puzzledness seemed to have crept into it. For a couple of moments he stared at me in an unseeing way, and once more I was struck by the immobile, tensed-up expression of his features.
Immediately afterwards he turned away - having shown neither friendliness nor enmity - and commenced to clamber back over the side into the boat.
‘Come up, Ned!' I cried. ‘It’s no good. You’ll never manage it that way. Look!’ and I stretched out my arm, pointing. Instead of looking, he passed his hand once more across his forehead, with that gesture of puzzled doubt. Then, to my relief, he caught at the rope ladder, and commenced to make his way slowly up the side.
Reaching the deck, he stood for nearly a minute without saying a word, his back turned to the derelict. Then, still wordless, he walked slowly across to the opposite side, and leant his elbows upon the rail, as though looking back along the way the yacht had come.
For my part, I said nothing, dividing my attention between him and the men, with occasional glances at the quaking weed and the - apparently - hopelessly surrounded Graiken.
The men were quiet, occasionally turning towards Barlow, as though for some further order. Of me they appeared to take little notice. In this wise, perhaps a quarter of an hour went by; then abruptly Barlow stood upright, waving his arms and shouting:
‘It comes! It comes!’ He turned towards us, and his face seemed transfigured, his eyes gleaming almost maniacally.
I ran across the deck to his side, and looked away to port, and now I saw what it was that had excited him. The weed-barrier through which we had come on our inward journey was divided, a slowly broadening river of oil water showing clean across it.
Even as I watched it grew broader, the immense masses of weed being moved by some unseen impulsion.
I was still staring, amazed, when a sudden cry went up from some of the men to starboard. Turning quickly, I saw that the yawning movement was being continued to the mass of weed that lay between us and the Graiken.
Slowly, the weed was divided, surely as though an invisible wedge were being driven through it. The gulf of weed-clear water reached the derelict, and passed beyond. And now there was no longer anything to stop our rescue of the crew of the derelict.
‘I’ve upset him now,’ was my thought. ‘I am a fool!’
‘Go to sea!’ he said. ‘My God! I’d give - ’ He broke off short, and stood suppressed opposite to me, his face all of a quiver with suppressed emotion. He was silent a few seconds, getting himself in hand; then he proceeded more quietly: ‘Where to?’
‘Anywhere,’ I replied, watching him keenly, for I was greatly puzzled by his manner. ‘I’m not quite clear yet. Somewhere south of here - the West Indies, I have thought. It’s all so new, you know - just fancy being able to go just where we like. I can hardly realise it yet.’
I stopped; for he had turned from me and was staring out of the window.
‘You’ll come, Ned?’ I cried, fearful that he was going to refuse me.
He took a pace away, and came back.
‘I’ll come,’ he said, and there was a look of strange excitement in his eyes that set me off on a tack of vague wonder; but I said nothing, just told him how he had pleased me.
It was Barlow’s voice that gave the order for the mooring ropes to be cast off, and then, as the light wind was right against us, a boat was out ahead, and the yacht was towed towards the ship, whilst a dozen of the men stood ready with their rifles on the fo’c’s’le head.
As we drew nearer, I began to distinguish the features of the crew7, the men strangely grizzled and old looking. And among them, white-faced with emotion, was my chum’s lost sweetheart. I never expect to know a more extraordinary moment.
I looked at Barlow; he was staring at the white-faced girl with an extraordinary fixidity of expression that was scarcely the look of a sane man.
The next minute we were alongside, crushing to a pulp between our steel sides one of those remaining monsters of the deep that had continued to cling steadfastly to the Graiken.
Yet of that I was scarcely aware, for I had turned again to look at Ned Barlow. He was swaying slowly to his feet, and just as the two vessels closed he reached up both hands to his head, and fell like a log.
Brandy was brought, and later Barlow carried to his cabin; yet we had won clear of that hideous weed-world before he recovered consciousness.
During his illness I learned from his sweetheart how, on a terrible night a long year previously, the Graiken had been caught in a tremendous storm and dismasted, and how, helpless and driven by the gale, they at last found themselves surrounded by the great banks of floating weed, and finally held fast in the remorseless grip of the dread Sargasso.
She told me of their attempts to free the ship from the weed, and of the attacks of the cuttlefish. And later of various other matters; for all of which I have no room in this story.