“Being alone, I couldn’t help all the time thinking about the Water-devil, and although it seems a foolish thing now that I look back on it, I set to work to calculate how long it would take him to count his feet.  I made it about the same time as you did, sir,” nodding to the schoolmaster, “only I considered that if he counted twelve hours, and slept and rested twelve hours, that would make it seven days, which would give me a good long time with Miss Minturn, and that would be the greatest of joys to me, no matter what happened afterward.

“But then nobody could be certain that the monster at the bottom of the bay needed rest or sleep.  He might be able to count without stopping, and how did I know that he couldn’t check off four hundred claws a minute?  If that happened to be the case, our time must be nearly up.

“When that idea came into my head, I jumped up and began to walk about.  What could I do?  I certainly ought to be ready to do something when the time came.  I thought of getting life-preservers, and strapping one on each of us, so that if the Water-devil turned over the vessel and shook us out, we shouldn’t sink down to him, but would float on the surface.

“But then the thought struck me that if he should find the vessel empty of live creatures, and should see us floating around on the top, all he had to do was to let go of the ship and grab us, one at a time.  When I thought of a fist as big as a yawl-boat, clapping its fifty-two fingers on me, it sent a shiver through my bones.  The fact was there wasn’t anything to do, and so after a while I managed to get asleep, which was a great comfort.”

“Mr. Cardly,” said Mr. Harberry to the schoolmaster, “what reason can you assign why a seamonster, such as has been described to us, should neglect to seize upon several small boats filled with men who were escaping from a vessel which it held in custody?”

“I do not precisely see,” answered Mr. Cardly, “why these men should have been allowed this immunity, but I—­”

“Oh, that is easily explained,” interrupted the marine, “for of course the Water-devil could not know that a lot more people were not left in the ship, and if he let go his hold on her, to try and grab a boat that was moving as fast as men could row it, the steamer might get out of his reach, and he mightn’t have another chance for a hundred years to make fast to a vessel.  No, sir, a creature like that isn’t apt to take any wild chances, when he’s got hold of a really good thing.  Anyway, we were held tight and fast, for at twelve o’clock the next day I took another observation, and there we were, in the same latitude and longitude that we had been in for two days.  I took the captain’s glass, and I looked all over the water of that bay, which, as I think I have said before, was all the same as the ocean, being somewhere about a thousand miles wide.  Not a sail, not a puff of smoke could I see.  It must have been a slack season for navigation, or else we were out of the common track of vessels; I had never known that the Bay of Bengal was so desperately lonely.