The pale creature, having reached a rock to which
he could anchor himself with a couple of his feelers, had turned
savagely upon his rash assailant. Little Sword was the prisoner of
those two longer tentacles. They were trying to drag him down within
reach of the other feelers, which writhed up at him like a lot of
hideous snakes."
"Ugh!" cried the Babe with a shudder. "But how did they hold on to
him?"
"You see," said Uncle Andy, "every feeler, long or short, had a row of
saucer-shaped suckers along its underside, like the heads of those
rubber-tipped arrows which I've seen you shooting at the wall, and
which stick where they strike. Only _these_ suckers could _hold on_, I
can tell you, so fast that _you_ could never have pulled off even the
littlest of them.
"Little Sword looked down into the awful eyes of the Inkmaker, and
realized that he had made a great mistake. But he was game all
through. It was not for a swordfish, however young, to give in to any
odds. Besides, just below those two great eyes, which stared up at him
without ever a wink, he saw a terrible beak of a mouth, which opened
and shut as if impatient to get hold of him. This sight was calculated
to encourage him to exert himself, if he had needed any more
encouragement than the grip of those two, pale, writhing feelers on his
flesh.
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