Chapter 3

“Unless I am mistaken, gentlemen,” he said, “we are facing an unknown
organism of serious potentialities. May I ask that you do not go
ashore to-morrow unless you are well armed and in pairs?”

“What is it, professor?” asked de Salza.

“I would prefer not to hazard a guess just yet. I may be in error.”
And that was the last word on the subject that we could draw from
him, although de Salza laughed at the idea of anything sinister in
connection with this little spot of land.

The next day was bright and clear, and after attending the burial
service for Makoi Toa, I sought Greaves and together we made for the
spot where I had seen the moving rock. I admit we were culpable in
not going armed as the professor advised, but who would then have
thought….?

We reached the place about the same time I had been there the
previous day, climbed down the cliffs with each other’s help, and
walked across the white sand of the cove, to where I had seen the
moving rock. It was not more than ten yards from the edge of a place
where the receding tide of years had left a number of little arched
caves. Just where I had sketched the rock was a ridge of sand pushed
aside by the weight of whatever had been there, and in the center of
it, a round, hard ball, perhaps three or four inches in diameter.
Greaves picked it up, turning it over curiously.

“Why, it’s feathers and bones,” he said, extending it to me, “just as
though it had been regurgitated by a pelican or an eagle after a
meal.”

I reached my hand for it, and just then, by the grace of Providence,
caught a flicker of motion out of the tail of my eye. I turned to
meet it; my foot gave on the soft sand, and I fell prone. It was the
fall that saved me; for something sharp whistled not an inch past my
shoulder as I went down. The next instant I heard Greaves shout, and
felt him tug my arm, and in the same moment something cold and clammy
and hard grated and gripped against my foot. A horrible fear, the
fear of imminent death, turned me to ice; I seemed incapable of
movement, but somehow got to one knee, and between my own efforts and
Greaves’ pull, the grip on my foot relaxed. I half stumbled,
half-rolled down the sand, and as I did so, there was another
whistling flash and something struck the pocket of my coat, going
right through the cloth and the sketch pad beneath it, to fall short
of my skin by the narrowest of margins. Greaves was pulling me to my
feet, and in a moment we were running.

In the interests of science I regret that we stood not on the order
of our going. Neither of us spoke till we turned and paused at the
top of the cliff, after a breathless climb. The cove was as empty as
it had been before.

“My God! What was it?” I gasped.

“I don’t _know_, I don’t _know_.” Greaves was half sobbing with
excitement. “Something big and sort of–all soft–threw those things
at us–half a dozen of them–My God.”

We were both so much shaken that the journey back to the camp seemed
interminable, and it was some time after our arrival before a
consecutive story could be gotten out of Greaves. When he did tell
his tale, it appeared that he had noticed the thing almost as soon as
I–a great, dead brown object of uncertain form which had slid up
softly from the water and shot out the darts I had seen without
warning or sound, “as a cuttlefish does when you touch it,” said
Greaves, with a shudder. “The horrible part about it was that the
thing had no eyes but seemed to see perfectly and know just where to
move to head us off. I thought I’d never get you pulled loose…
All the time I was dodging those darts I kept thinking about Makoi
Toa….”

“I think you will agree,” said Professor Hertford, when he had
finished his rather incoherent account, “that my anticipations have
been realized. Everything points to the presence in these waters of
an efficient and destructive organism, capable not only of dominating
the whole animal environment, but possibly even of depopulating
Easter Island. From your description, which is very rough and
inaccurate, I should not be surprised to find it a giant new species
of infusorian or jellyfish. Both types have those stinging
tentacles. I am in favor of remaining until we obtain more data
about this animal, but as some–er–danger may attend such a course,
I should prefer to leave it to the majority.”

What could we do in the face of such an appeal? Personally, I had
felt the grip on my foot and had no desire to feel it again. I could
understand the flame of scientific interest driving the others, but
it was rather with foreboding than enthusiasm that I listened to the
eager plans they made for entrapping one of the animals which had
attacked us.

I doubt whether anybody except de Salza (who was a human fish,
intolerant of anything but the record of the rocks) was absent from
the group which gathered behind the top of the cliffs the next
morning to watch the fluttering antics of a chicken pegged out on the
sand where we had met our adventure. Howard and Grimm (the
conchologist) were armed with the only two rifles the expedition
afforded, it having been agreed that it was better to examine a dead
specimen before trying to take a live one.

The sun grew unconscionably hot as it swung across the sky. We
conversed in low tones and were wondering whether we had come on a
wild goose chase when I saw Howard beside me, stiffen to attention.
I looked around–there was a break in the ripple, and through it
slowly emerged the shape of the monster, dull brown in hue. I felt a
quiver of excitement; the chicken was straining to the limit of its
rope. There was a crack! that made all of us jump, as someone fired.
“No, not yet,” cried the professor, but the dark form took no notice,
only moved on, formless and flowing, with half a score of short
tentacles waving before it. Then it appeared to notice the chicken,
paused, waved a tentacle or two at it, and there was a flicking
motion as one of the darts shot out. The chicken went limp and the
monster flowed gently over it. When it had passed, chicken, rope,
and even the stake, were gone.

Both men were now firing, but they might as well have been throwing
peas. The fantastic mound of jelly rolled back into the water in the
same leisurely fashion it had come out, and disappeared.

Everybody began to talk at once, “The thing must be bullet proof!”
“Inverterbrate, but what an inverterbrate!” “So that’s what cleaned
up Easter Island!” “Did you notice the ossicles?” “It’s a hydroid!”
“More like a medusid.” “What do you think, Dr. Hertford?”

On one thing the conference that followed was agreed: that the
animal, whatever it was, must be captured and examined. Various wild
suggestions about dynamite and chemicals came up to be laughed down,
and it was Dr. Hertford, as usual, who supplied the determining
factor.