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.

He was nearly spent.  In a paroxysm of despair he resolved to give way, and with one mad effort seek to bury the axe in the monster’s brain.  But ere he could execute this fatal project—­for the cuttle would have instantly swept him into the trailing weeds—­five revolver shots rang out in quick succession.  Iris had reached the nearest rock.

The third bullet gave the octopus cause to reflect.  It squirted forth a torrent of dark-colored fluid.  Instantly the water became black, opaque.  The tentacle flourishing in air thrashed the surface with impotent fury; that around Jenks’s waist grew taut and rigid.  The axe flashed with the inspiration of hope.  Another arm was severed; the huge dismembered coil slackened and fell away.

Yet was he anchored immovably.  He turned to look at Iris.  She never forgot the fleeting expression of his face.  So might Lazarus have looked from the tomb.

“The rope!” she screamed, dropping the revolver and seizing the loose ends lying at her feet.

She drew them tight and leaned back, pulling with all her strength.  The sailor flung the axe to the rocks and grasped the two ropes.  He raised himself and plunged wildly.  He was free.  With two convulsive strides he was at the girl’s side.

He stumbled to a boulder and dropped in complete collapse.  After a time he felt Iris’s hand placed timidly on his shoulder.  He raised his head and saw her eyes shining.

“Thank you,” he said.  “We are quits now.”

CHAPTER VI

SOME EXPLANATIONS

Fierce emotions are necessarily transient, but for the hour they exhaust the psychic capacity.  The sailor had gone through such mental stress before it was yet noon that he was benumbed, wholly incapable of further sensation.  Seneca tells how the island of Theresaea arose in a moment from the sea, thereby astounding ancient mariners, as well it might.  Had this manifestation been repeated within a cable’s length from the reef, Jenks was in mood to accept it as befitting the new order of things.