VI.
Three days passed, during which time Sailor Penny did not say more than half a dozen words to Peter Griffon on any one occasion nor give a satisfactory answer to any one of a score of questions. They were uneventful days. Griffon and Big Tom were given several airings above ground, but always under the eye of Henry or the Turtle or Penny himself; and the seaward vent of the cave was grated against the hungry crabs each night; and good food was cooked and eaten daily in generous portions. Griffon's strength returned to him swiftly. On the morning of the fourth day, he awoke to discover Sailor Penny and Henry gone again.
Inspired by consuming curiosity and something greater and deeper to which he was unable to affix a name, Griffon kept watch for the return of the old man and Henry. Each night, as soon as his companions were sound asleep, he took his mat forward to within a yard of the grating; and there, between naps, he arose frequently and prodded the great clawing crabs away from the iron bars and looked forth at the starlit lagoon and black reef. He always returned to his place at the back of the cave before dawn, so that the Turtle should not suspect his vigilant curiosity. Thus three nights of vigil passed without reward.
On the fourth night, late, having made himself a peephole with his stick in the wall of ravenous crabs for the tenth time, he glimpsed something unusual out in the starshine and pale fire of phosphorescent waters. It was a small boat drawing in to the seaward side of the reef. He had no more than glimpsed this thing than the cleared spot on the grating was refilled. Then he prodded with grim determination and frantic haste, knocking a great crab clear of the rusty iron at every prod. And then he became aware of an amazing thing. The crabs were all gone from the grating—which was a strange enough thing in itself—but, stranger still, they did not return. He could hear them scraping and scrambling down the face of the cliff.
Griffon looked out at the low black reef and the black boat beyond. The boat was close in against the tide washed coral. A man leaped from its bows to the reef, and the boat backed off. There looked to be something queer about the reef—or was it the starshine? It seemed to quiver from end to end, as if alive—to squirm, without shifting its position—to wrinkle its rough back in thousands of changing knobs and ridges. And what was wrong with the man who had leaped so eagerly ashore there but a moment before?
He staggered like a drunkard. He fell and staggered up again, screaming. His screams were of sheer horror. He sprang to the edge of the water, still screaming but the boat continued to draw away from him. He ran heavily to the ridge of the reef, fell again, staggered up once more; and now he looked to be bulkier of outline lumpy—distorted. Now there was agony as well as terror in his resounding outcry. He struggled toward the old hulk of wreckage as if seeking refuge, heavily, slowly, only to fall in a moment for the third and last time. His terrible screams ceased as suddenly as if a hand had been clamped upon his mouth; the boat vanished in the hazy starshine; the black surface of the reef continued to quake and crawl.