Page:Weird Tales Volume 12 Issue 05 (1928-11).djvu/106

to batter this nightmare with. But the sands here were far above high water and bare of a single splinter, and the loose debris fringing the nearest cliff at least fifty feet distant; and at any second that ghastly living tide might sweep over its victim.

"Then my eye alighted on a weapon that somehow I had forgotten—the pick at my feet, where I had dropped it. These simple tools are marvels of efficiency and in a practised hand produce results; I do not doubt but with a single blow I could split the skull of an ox. In a second I had swung it aloft and at the extreme limit of my reach dealt the brute a savage stroke. It was indeed fortunate that I had not hit closer to the edge, for I might easily have seriously wounded if not slain my friend. The eight-inch prong went through the substance as though it were butter, and haft and hand were deeply pressed into a soft resilience.

"It was as flimsy as a sponge, or rather like hitting a cushion that would give but not rend before the mightiest fist, yet a child could drive a pin through it. At once there arose a series of little explosions such as might be made by the bursting of small air-filled paper bags or toy balloons.

"Astonished but elated by this unexpected vulnerability, instantly without raising the weapon I raked it down toward me. Thus attacked, it was more resistant, and I had to exert some force as if opposed by the strands of a half-rotten net. But I rent it to where the prong bit into the sand close beside Daimler. The deep laceration closed behind the steel like molten tar, and a line of grayish scum, greasy and frothy, welled out to mark the ravage.

"'All right, Daimler, I'll have you clear in a moment!' I cried. 'It's as soft as a jelly-fish!' I cried exultingly as I feverishly plied my pick and with blow after blow roughly raked a great V-shaped wedge of it to tatters.

"Nevertheless, though I had spoken so assuredly, I was still in a state of panic. For the bulk of the thing was so appalling that my efforts seemed those of a pigmy assailing a whale with a bodkin: every second I expected to see some vast movement convulse it, some gigantic offensive that would erase us both as simply as my hand would crush a mosquito. Moreover each blow was meeting with a greater resistance, and if my attack was to be confined merely to stabbing the prong into it, then my friend was doomed to a certainty. For if I could not weaken it by scoring the portion that lay above him, I realized that there was no hope of saving him. So rigidly did this nightmare confine him that it seemed as if they were cemented together, or welded by suction like a glutinous limpet to a rock; and of course, in spite of its loose construction, this stupendous brute must have weighed tons.

"From start to finish, the whole experience could only have been a matter of moments, but to me the time seemed infinite.

"I ceased to attack the inner mass and confined my blows to the edge about the prisoner. It was much tougher, but I tore it to pieces for a couple of feet inward.

"'Quick, Daimler! Put all your strength to it!' I cried, as, dropping the pick again, I caught him under the shoulders and strove to pull him from under. Whether unaided we would have been successful I can not say, but aid came from a most unexpected quarter.

"I suppose even that unnatural monster possessed the rudiments of feeling and its wounding reached some center of sensation; for suddenly it shook—one might better say 'shuddered'—violently, and there came a shrinking, a sort, of retrogression of the wounded portion into itself; and a