tentacles, as I had now no doubt they were, were creeping over the side, and one of them touched my leg and immediately held fast. For an instant I was perfectly overcome with horror, as I was on the cliff, and, as it were, paralyzed in my will; but then, making a great effort, I jerked myself free, at the same time calling aloud to Billy and chopping with my axe, which I had seized, at the tentacles that held the canoe in their grip and had altogether stopped its motion. [Sidenote: A Shoal of Monsters] "The monster, is it?" cries Billy, who hated the thing with the same aversion as I did, but seemed to be quite exempt from its fascination. "I'll monster him," says he, and he dropped his paddle and took up his axe and began hacking away with all his might at the horrid feelers that were crawling over the vessel. There were the two of us, then, slashing and chopping with desperate energy, running, or rather creeping as quickly as we could, from end to end of the canoe whenever a tentacle showed itself above the gunwale, with the result that the grip of the creature (or creatures, for we knew not whether we had to do with one or many)--the grip of it, I say, relaxed, and we thought we could leave our axes and take to the paddles again. But we had not gone above two yards when the vessel was brought up again, and this time the paddles themselves were seized, and though I struggled with all my strength, my paddle was drawn out of my hands and I saw it no more. Billy was more lucky, and kept his, but he had to drop it into the bottom and take to his axe again, as I did to mine, and so we fell to it again, slashing and chopping at these hideous tentacles that came up over the side, parts of them falling into the bottom of the vessel as we severed them and writhing there. Once more we beat off the enemy thus, and then I seized Billy's paddle in feverish haste, and plied it with all my might, Billy doing what he could also with two spears held together. And this time we got clear of the rocky labyrinth, to my unutterable relief, though with some scraping of the outrigger, for you may be sure we were in so great a hurry to get away that we could not stop for nice steering; and we kept on paddling hard for some minutes after we were a fair distance along the shore, and, indeed, did not cease until we found ourselves in the channel between the island and the red rock, and then we had another alarm, but of a different kind, for our vessel was caught in the mighty current which rushed through the narrow passage, and was swept on as if it had been a cork, we gripping the thwarts and fearing every moment that we should either be dashed against the rocks on one side or the other, or be totally submerged in the boiling torrent. However, we came out at the further end safe, though very wet and terrified, and were carried on, though not so violently, past the place where the cascade fell from the