right leg. Another coiled round his waist.

"My God!" he gurgled, as a horrid sucker closed over his mouth and
nose. He was in the grip of a devil-fish.

A deadly sensation of nausea almost overpowered him, but the love of
life came to his aid, and he tore the suffocating feeler from his face.
Then the axe whirled, and one of the eight arms of the octopus lost
some of its length. Yet a fourth flung itself around his left ankle. A
few feet away, out of range of the axe, and lifting itself bodily out
of the water, was the dread form of the cuttle, apparently all head,
with distended gills and monstrous eyes.

The sailor's feet were planted wide apart. With frenzied effort he
hacked at the murderous tentacles, but the water hindered him, and he
was forced to lean back, in superhuman strain, to avoid losing his
balance. If once this terrible assailant got him down he knew he was
lost. The very need to keep his feet prevented him from attempting to
deal a mortal blow.

The cuttle was anchored by three of its tentacles. Its remaining arm
darted with sinuous activity to again clutch the man's face or neck.
With the axe he smote madly at the curling feeler, diverting its aim
time and again, but failing to deliver an effective stroke.

With agonized prescience the sailor knew that he was yielding. Were the
devil-fish a giant of its tribe he could not have held out so long. As
it was, the creature could afford to wait, strengthening its grasp,
tightening its coils, pulling and pumping at its prey with remorseless
certainty.