by George Worts
Mr. Barling had organized regular fishing expeditions. He had excellent deep-sea gear. And every day, several of the crew would go into the barrier reef in the tender. In an hour of fishing, they would always fill two or more barrels with their catch.
First Mate McTavish rigged up an ingenious catapult, by which a thirty-pound fish could be hurled several hundred feet. With this device, fish were hurled to the monster. It would strike the water, say, a hundred feet from the monster. Instantly, often before the fish landed, a tentacle would shoot out and seize and ingest the fish. Then the tentacle would leisurely return and be absorbed by the central mass.
When no fish were being thrown, the filmy, horrible body would lie there, close to the surface, moving about with an awful restiveness. And one day Mr. Barling discovered that the thing became curiously agitated whenever Julie walked along the deck. It would shoot out long tentacles following her passage, no matter whether she was alone or in the company of someone, and no matter how many accompanied her or were scattered along the rail.
Yet Julie was not the only person singled out by the Monster. It grew to know Mr. Barling, too, and in a most amazing way. Mr. Barling, as Sammy learned much later, could not quite restrain his hatred of the thing, nor could he put down impulses, typical of him, to express that hatred.
Secretly, he would slip out of his suite, in the dead of night, and with the catapult, would hurl at the monster various edibles — chunks of meat from the diminishing store in the great refrigerators, and fish.
On several occasions he catapulted to that malignant mass chunks of beef in which he had wrapped up several pounds of dry mustard. And on several occasions, he disemboweled a large bonita and filled it with red pepper.
On receipt of these delicacies, the monster would go into a sensational fury. It would lash about until the water resembled green flames.
And amazingly enough, it identified Mr. Barling as the perpetrator of these insults. Thus it was that when Mr. Barling appeared on deck, it would seem to grow frantic. It would shoot out tentacles and lash the water into foam. But this was different from its agitation when it “saw” or “felt” Julie’s presence on the yacht’s deck. It reacted to her in a sinisterly deliberate way, as if it merely hungered for her. Mr. Barling, however, it seemed to wish to destroy.
The work of the engine-room crew was finally finished. The hatch covering the steel swimming tank was so strong, at least in Mr. Barling’s estimation, that no creature on earth could dislodge it. At one end of it, in the center, a hole had been cut in a steel plate, an inch thick. Through this hole, if Mr. Barling’s plan worked, the giant amoeba would flow, in seeking the food with which the tank was to be filled. An electromagnet, actually a solenoid, had been rigged there, so that the closing of a switch would shoot a thick bolt over the hole, covering it and blocking any attempt on the part of the monster at escaping. This bolt was operated electrically by remote control. One switch was on the bridge, the other on the boat deck, aft.
Unknown to them at the time, the changing of the Wanderer’s anchorage had accidentally furthered Mr. Barling’s mad scheme. It blocked the entrance of the lagoon to a certain extent, so that the tidal currents themselves were diverted making it more difficult, or inconvenient for fish to swim in. So, little by little, the monster’s food supply was curtailed, and by the time Mr. Barling was ready to trap it, its hunger had increased to the point where it would go well out of its way for any food.
Unaware of this, however, Mr. Barling planned to capture the horrible, slimy mass at night. He reasoned that it was always bolder in the night, although Bryce Robbins argued that it was not a case of boldness, but of the creature’s sensitivity to the direct rays of the sun. He maintained that it shrank from direct sunlight.
In any event, having decided upon the night for the capture, Mr. Barling proceeded with his elaborate plans. Ever since the yacht had anchored across the entrance to the inlet, the monster had become bolder and bolder. At least it had, day by day, been coming closer and closer for the fish and chunks of meat the sailors catapulted to it. One afternoon, when Julie appeared on deck, the great filmy mass surged out of the inlet and a large cluster of tentacles shot out from the central mass to within forty feet of the Wanderer’s hull.
With a shriek, Julie ran to the music room. Mr. Barling, however, was wildly enthusiastic. He marked the time: two forty-five. The tide was ebbing rapidly, so that it could be assumed that the water all about the yacht was strongly diluted with lagoon water. Tonight’s ebb-tide, occurring approximately twelve hours later, would set the time for the experiment at between two-thirty and three.
All afternoon the crew of the Wanderer fished at the barrier reef. At dusk they came in with their catch — eight barrels of assorted deep-sea fish. Seven barrels were emptied into the tank. The other barrel was used for bait. A one-inch manila line a thousand feet long had been softened by soaking and stretching. It was the bait-line. At yard intervals along it, hunks of meat and whole fish were lashed with twine.
With the inboard end of the line made fast to the cleat, Mr. Barling coiled up the thousand feet of line with bait lashed in place, into the tender. Then, with the tender moving toward the lagoon, he payed out the line. When the end of it was reached, he dropped the kedge anchor. Theoretically, the hungry monster would work tentacles up the long line and eventually work itself entirely aboard and into the tank.
It was the opinion of the assembled company, with the lone exception of Singapore, that Mr. Barling’s scheme was wonderful. Sammy took exception to it on the ground that the monster might not be so readily managed. True, it might come aboard the yacht. But suppose it decided not to flow into the tank? Suppose it decided on a tour of inspection first?
It was decided that, when the zero hour approached the decks would be cleared, and all doors closed and bolted against possible intrusion by the slimy thing. Everyone would gather on the boat deck aft, where they could overlook the arrival of the giant amoeba and watch its descent into the tank. Mr. Barling was to stand beside the switch with which the hole in the hatch would be electrically sealed when all of the monster was in the tank.
At two o’clock they gathered along the rail of the boat deck. All but Dr. Plank were there. He was still confined to his bed by fever.
In the growing atmosphere of tension the watchers waited. A sailor suddenly cried: “It’s takin’ up the slack!”
They saw the monster deep in the water. It had dropped down for the bait nearest the lagoon. The inlet was a swift current of green fire, lashed by tentacles which were sharply delineated.
Mrs. Farrington cried: “I can’t stand it! I can’t stand it!” And rushed to her suite.
Sammy watched the line. There was a cry along the rail as the first fish tied to the line above water disappeared. He watched it come — an endless gray python, six inches in diameter. It swarmed up, up the line, coating it, surrounding it, moving upward with a swift wriggling like that of an earthworm, with the rope as its core, absorbing fish and hunks of meat as it came.
No one was crying out now. In a hush, broken only by the heavy breathing of the watchers, that transparent, pale-gray endless python came aboard. Tentacles shot out here and there like the antennae of a great caterpillar as it slithered across the afterdeck to the hatch. It reached the last tidbit lashed to the line. And it did not hesitate. It began to flow into the hole!
Sammy clocked it. It began to enter the tank at two thirty-five. For one hour and sixteen minutes that seemingly endless mass of protoplasm flowed into the tank. He began to wonder if it would never come to an end.
And he wondered what would happen if the great slimy mass completely filled the tank before the greater portion of it was aboard. But his fears were groundless. At precisely three fifty-one the seemingly endless python of gray, transparent slime entered the tank. The python became smaller and smaller. All of it — the very last inch of it — went into the tank.
With a triumphant shout, Mr. Barli
ng closed the switch. There was a metallic thump as the stout steel bolt shot across the hole. The monster was trapped!
He cried: “We’ve got it! It worked! It’s trapped! It’s ours!”
Sammy said, “Yeah. I hope so. I certainly hope so.”
Mr. Barling yelped. “Aw, don’t be such a gloom. It can’t get out. It’s practically hermetically sealed in there. I saw to that. There isn’t a crack anywhere big enough to insert a hair!”
Sammy watched the tank. He hoped Mr. Barling was right. But none of the others were so dubious. Like people suddenly and unexpectedly released from prison, they were leaping about and shouting.
Over the heady tumult, Mr. Barling presently made himself heard. “We’re going to celebrate! We’re all going to get drunk as owls. Steward! Henry! Jim! Clyde! Bring all the liquor you can carry into the main saloon! We’ve won! We’ve won! Sam, you can get your pearls in the morning. For the first time in millions of years that lagoon is safe for any man! Tomorrow we clear for New York! When Hector T. Barling puts his mind to a job, that job gets done! Who’s afraid now?”
Laughing, Julie cried, “Who’s afraid of the big bad monster now!”
She tossed her cutlass to the deck below, climbed over the rail and slid down a stanchion. With a shout, Mr. Barling followed. The others swarmed after him.
Mocking their enemy, taunting its malignant hunger, its horrible appetite, its hideous potentialities, Julie leaped on the hatch. She began a tap dance. Her feet twinkled and clattered. Sailors began clapping their hands in time, unaware that they were keeping time to the beat of the drums.
Sam Shay was the last to join that excited mob. He did not go down a stanchion, but went forward and down the stairway. His back was still bothering him, and he wasn’t yet up to athletics.
And he saw what no one else saw at the moment. He saw that the great lid on which she danced was swelling, that it was beginning to bulge ever so slightly in the middle.
Then a deckhand saw it and shrieked: “That thing is bustin’ loose! Look out!”
Chapter 23: The Monster’s Fury
NO ONE heard him. No one heard Singapore Sammy’s shouts of warning. He ran aft and seized Julie about the waist and carried her off the hatch.
There was a deep and sinister ripping sound. The hatch cover bulged more. The planks were beginning to splinter.
Sammy shouted to Julie: “There isn’t time to get off the ship. Go to your room. Larry! Take her to her room! And make her stay there! Don’t let her out until I tell you!”
Larry scooped her into his arms and ran with her to the main corridor door. He vanished into the corridor and the door slammed behind him.
But none of the others had moved. As if hypnotized, as if refusing to accept the evidence of their eyes, they stood, cutlasses in hand, and watched the swelling hatch.
It burst off with a sudden explosion of splintering planks and tortured steel. It seemed to vanish into the air. Sam backed away in horror. Where the hatch cover had been was now a huge, gray, greasy bubble welling up and down.
One of the deckhands had been knocked unconscious or dead by a chunk of flying metal or wood. Unerringly, a tentacle a foot in diameter shot up from that pulsing gray pulp and enveloped him. As the serang of the Blue Goose had done, the unfortunate man vanished into the tentacle, his body disappearing down the tentacle in a swift stream of fragments of bone and flesh and gobbets and long threads of blood.
With the swiftness of lightning striking, the insatiable pulp in the tank reached out and dealt death and mortal injury.
In this crowded space, it was more difficult for men to escape. And the monster, at closer quarters, a more compact mass, had many of the men at its mercy.
Sammy saw Captain Milikin, a dozen feet away entangled in at least a score of agile, milky-gray arms of the hideous stuff. The captain was a powerful man, and he chopped at the tentacles, but no sooner had he freed himself of one clinging mass than other flashing, slimy arms wrapped about him.
Sammy tried to fight his way to Captain Milikin’s side. Before he could reach him, he saw the captain’s arms and legs disjointed, his head crunched and dissolved. In an instant, that living, breathing, gallant man was utterly non-existent.
Others were going in the same incredible, horrible way. Fighting now for his own life, Sammy saw a steward lift a steamer chair to beat off a looping tentacle. The chair vanished magically in a cloud of splinters. The steward dived down and tried to crawl away. He was engulfed in a veritable wave of the protoplasmic slime — engulfed and absorbed!
A four-inch tentacle shot out of the tank and twined about Bryce Robbins’ left arm between elbow and shoulder. He saw that arm wrenched and twisted and pinched off. He saw Lucky Jones do a perfect back somersault to escape a lunging, three-headed tentacle. He saw Lucky seize the scientist’s legs as he sprawled back. Sam ran to them and grasped a handful of Bryce’s hair.
The after deck was now clear of everyone but Bryce Robbins, Lucky and Sam Shay. The monster was coming out of the tank. A great lip of slime was welling up over the edge toward the three men.
Sam and Lucky dragged the wounded man into the corridor. They ran down the corridor to Dr. Plank’s suite and ran in. As he closed and bolted the door behind him, Sam saw that wave of slime was swiftly following, sending great tendrils and shoots into the corridor.
Dr. Plank was sitting on the edge of his bunk, in pajamas, his eyes wide and his skin white and blotchy with terror.
Lucky panted: “It’s coming down the corridor! Is there any way out of here?”
The sick doctor dazedly shook his head. “No, No!”
Sam helped the half-conscious scientist across the room and barked: “You’ve got to fix up this man quick.”
The doctor staggered from the bed. He was like a man in a trance. But he fashioned a tourniquet above the amputation and checked the bleeding.
Sammy ran back to the door and placed his ear to the panel. The doctor shrieked: “Don’t open that door!”
The red-headed man had no intention of opening the door. With his ear flattened against the wood, he heard a splintering crash near by. This sound was followed by agonized screams.
Sammy had his hand on the knob. He jerked it away. Through the keyhole, a thin tentacle of the gray slime was oozing. And slime was oozing in a thin layer through the crack under the door. He trampled the stuff under his feet and kicked it about, but it continued to ooze in, yet not in dangerous quantities. Evidently this room was not its objective.
He shouted: “Is Julie’s room next door?”
Dr. Plank said: “Yes. Is it going there?”
“It’s broken in there! It’s got her!”
“Don’t open that door!” Lucky shouted.
Sam left the door and said. “No matter what else happens, doctor, you’ve got to fix this man’s arm. Now!”
Dr. Plank, white and shaking, answered, “Yes, I’ll operate. This minute. But someone must help.”
Sammy said grimly, “I’ll help.”
And while he dribbled ether into a cone, Dr. Plank cut and sewed. Lucky Jones stayed at the door, trampling on the slime as it trickled through the keyhole and oozed under the door.
Suddenly he shouted: “It’s stopped. It isn’t coming in any more.”
Dr. Plank said to Sammy, “All right — I won’t need you any more.”
Sammy ran to the door, listened, unbolted it, and jerked it open. The corridor was empty save for a thick coating of slime on floor and walls to a height of four feet. The carpet runner was already in rotting threads and paint was blistering from the walls.
Sammy ran into the hall and, with Lucky, entered the room adjoining. The door had been smashed in. The monster had forced its way into that room — into Julie’s parlor. The parlor was in ruins. Every piece of furniture it had contained was in rotting splinters and shreds. The floors and walls to a height of six feet were coated with slime.
Behind him, Lucky panted: “It got her! It got h
er and Larry and it went out that porthole!”
The two young men ran to the porthole, which was open. The two other portholes were closed. A familiar triangular pattern of slime from the floor to the porthole indicated how the monster had escaped.
They peered out the porthole into the night. And they saw the thing, a bulbous mass in the green flames of phosphorescence, as it writhed and twisted and wriggled and wallowed and churned through the inlet into the lagoon.
They suddenly heard yells. And Sam gasped: “Julie! It didn’t get her!”
A door across the room had not been smashed. It opened into Mrs. Farrington’s parlor. Here the monster had not visited. The two young men went on through her bedroom, likewise untouched — and empty.
There was a slight depression in the bed where Mrs. Farrington had been lying.
They entered another corridor, shouting as they went. They followed Julie’s answering cries; climbed the stairs to the bridge. In the pilot house they found Julie and her mother clinging to Larry McGurk. Huddled on a stool near the chart table, with glazed, stupefied eyes, was Mr. Barling. His body was limp. His mouth was open. He was breathing noisily through it.
Julie cried, “Oh, Sam! I thought it had got you!” She ran to him and threw her arms around his neck and began to sob. She whispered: “Where’s Bryce?”
“He lost an arm. But Dr. Plank says he’ll be all right.”
A little later she told him how she had made her escape. Larry had carried her into the room and bolted the door.
“He had hardly shot the bolt when it smashed against that door, and we only got into mother’s parlor when the door gave. We got her and came up here. Hector’s arm is broken again.”
“It’s too bad,” Lucky growled, “it wasn’t his neck.”
Sam left them and made a tour of the ship. There had been eight casualties: the captain, an oiler, the second engineer, two stewards and three deckhands. In less than ten seconds the monster had sucked these men into instant death. Sam did not check up on the broken arms and the lost fingers and ears.