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of Black Bayou from a meal of fish; and had heard
him leap through the bushes and plunge into the water. It appears that
centuries of persecution have made these three-eyed men partly
amphibious--that is, capable of filling their lungs with air and
remaining under water almost as long as a turtle."
"That's impossible!" said Kemper bluntly.
"I thought so myself," she said with a smile, "until Tiger-tail told me a
little more about them. He says that they can breathe through the pores
of their skins; that their bodies are covered with a thick, silky hair, and
that when they dive they carry down with them enough air to form a
sort of skin over them, so that under water their bodies appear to be
silver-plated."
"Good Lord!" faltered Kemper. "That is a little too much!"
"Yet," said I, "that is exactly what air-breathing water beetles do. The
globules of air, clinging to the body-hairs, appear to silver-plate them;
and they can remain below indefinitely, breathing through spiracles.
Doubtless the skin pores of these men have taken on the character of
spiracles."
"You know," he said in a curious, flat voice, which sounded like the
tones of a partly stupified man, "this whole business is so
grotesque--apparently so wildly absurd--that it's having a sort of
nightmare effect on me." And, dropping his voice to a whisper close to
my ear: "Good heavens!" he said. "Can you reconcile such a creature as
we are starting out to hunt, with anything living known to science?"
"No," I replied in guarded tones. "And there are moments, Kemper,
since I have come into possession of Miss Grey's story, when I find
myself seriously doubting my own sanity."

"I'm doubting mine, now," he whispered, "only that girl is so fresh and
wholesome and human and sane--"
"She is a very clever girl," I said.
"And really beautiful!"
"She is intelligent," I remarked. There was a chill in my tone which
doubtless discouraged Kemper, for he ventured nothing further
concerning her superficially personal attractions.
After all, if any questions of priority were to arise, the pretty waitress
was my discovery. And in the scientific world it is an inflexible rule
that he who first discovers any particular specimen of any species
whatever is first entitled to describe and comment upon that specimen
without interference or unsolicited advice from anybody.
Maybe there was in my eye something that expressed as much. For
when Kemper caught my cold gaze fixed upon him he winced and
looked away like a reproved setter dog who knew better. Which also,
for the moment, put an end to the rather gay and frivolous line of small
talk which he had again begun with the pretty waitress.
I was exceedingly surprised at Professor William Henry Kemper, D.F.
As we approached the campfire the loathsome odour of frying mullet
saluted my nostrils.
Kemper, glancing at Grue, said aside to me:
"That's an odd-looking fellow. What is he? Minorcan?"
"Oh, just a beachcomber. I don't know what he is. He strikes me as
dirty--though he can't be so, physically. I don't like him and I don't
know why. And I wish we'd engaged somebody else to guide us."
Toward dawn something awoke me and I sat up in my blanket under
the moon. But my leg had not been pulled.

Kemper snored at my side. In her little dog-tent the pretty waitress
probably was fast asleep. I knew it because the string she had tied to
one of her ornamental ankles still lay across the ground convenient to
my hand. In any emergency I had only to pull it to awake her.
A similar string, tied to my ankle, ran parallel to hers and disappeared
under the flap of her tent. This was for her to pull if she liked. She had
never yet pulled it. Nor I the other. Nevertheless I truly felt that these
humble strings were, in a subtler sense, ties that bound us together. No
wonder Kemper's behaviour had slightly irritated me.
I looked up at the silver moon; I glanced at Kemper's unlovely bulk,
swathed in a blanket; I contemplated the dog-tent with, perhaps, that
slight trace of sentiment which a semi-tropical moon is likely to inspire
even in a jellyfish. And suddenly I remembered Grue and looked for
him.
He was accustomed to sleep in his boat, but I did not see him in either
of the boats. Here and there were a few lumpy shadows in the
moonlight, but none of them was Grue lying prone on the ground.
Where the devil had he gone?
Cautiously I untied my ankle string, rose in my pajamas, stepped into
my slippers, and walked out through the moonlight.
There was nothing to hide Grue, no rocks or vegetation except the
solitary palm