After the first moment of fright, the three fugitives, dripping as if they had been immersed in a basin full of ink, hurried to get up. Blake took the rifle and Kaj took Jody's gun.
The lifeboat, after that sudden collision, stopped abruptly, perhaps due to the engine or propeller failure, and swayed among the foam, raised around by the mysterious being that had flooded them with that black stuff stinking of moss.
Blake, who first got to the bow, yelled in terror:
«Oh! What a horrible monster! Back off, friends!»
An animal of enormous size, with a long few meters long body, reddish in color, with eight arms equipped with suckers, each six or seven meters long, waved in front of the lifeboat, opening and closing the mouth which had an opening of a middle. meter, with two scary eyes, flat and with a yellow flash.
The spur of the lifeboat must have hurt him, because black matter escaped between two tentacles.
«An ocean vampire!» Kaj shouted.
«Or rather a colossal octopus, watch out Kaj! If one of those tentacles grabs you, it will suck your blood to the last drop.»
«I know those beasts, Mr. Blake» said Kaj, who wasn't scared «I've gutted several, but they were never so colossal».
The giant squid, furious at the injury received, waved its eight arms, two of which were longer than the others, and in a flash attacked the lifeboat, trying to overturn it.
«Be careful, friends!» Blake yelled pointing the rifle at the monster's gaping mouth.
Jody had come running, armed with a solid knife, the best weapon against those monsters.
The lifeboat, clutched in those mighty arms, was wrapped tightly around it and was lifted out of the water, causing them to scream in fear. Only Kaj did not lose his coolness and with a sudden leap he jumped into the water, shouting:
«Leave it to me!»
He disappeared under the water, then emerged behind the monstrous squid. In his right hand he always held the knife. Blake meanwhile unloaded the rifle to the monsterìs mouth and forced the squid to leave the lifeboat, causing it to fall back into the water.
«Kaj!» shouted Blake and Jody, scared to see him so close to the monster «Crazy, what are you doing? On board!»
The pearl fisherman had attacked him from underneath, sinking his knife into the gelatinous mass, slipping his arm into it to tear the three hearts that those monsters possess.
Its tentacles whistled through the air, with the speed of so many whips and plunged, trying to grab the daring fisherman and bleed him.
Suddenly the squid folded its terrible arms and collapsed.
The intrepid pearl fisherman, accustomed to facing the monstrous inhabitants of the ocean, was not as mad as they thought, because suddenly they saw the squid vomit up all its ink supply, then flee quickly, while its tentacles beat desperately the waters.
Blake and Jody, who had watched the brave fisherman's fight with anguish, for a moment thought that Kaj had been dragged to the bottom. Instead they saw him emerge not far from the lifeboat, with the cutlass raised.
«Are you hurt?» Blake asked eagerly.
«No», he replied smiling, «its tentacles were unable to grab me»
«You were crazy to throw yourself like that.»
«If I hadn't attacked him underwater, he would have overturned the lifeboat. Those ugly red monsters possess extraordinary strength, especially in the legs. I know for having tried it».
«Where is it?» Jody asked.
«In the depths sea of Manaar. Twice, while I was looking for pearls and escaped certain death.»
«It tells...»
«The car first, Jody,» said Blake. «If it's stopped it must have suffered some breakdown». «It works, sir; it is the helix that must have been broken by the monster's tentacles. Fortunately, we have a spare and it will be easy for me to fix it».
«We must not forget that we have the ship behind us.»
«Will he chase us again?» Kaj asked.
«I don't doubt it, they know that our supply of coal cannot last long, and they will wait until we have used it to surprise us.»
«Sure!» Jody said «I'm afraid to see that damned carcass coming».
They set to work, moving the coal forward. After twenty minutes they had discovered the propeller. As Jody had predicted, the three blades had been twisted in such a way by the squid's tentacles that they were no longer of any use.
«Let's go» Jody said, when the operation was over and they resumed their route south.
They had barely traveled three miles when they saw a huge whitish mass on the surface of the water that the waves were waving.
«The vampire!» exclaimed Kaj, who was the first to discover it «Here's a good bite for the sharks».
«Dead?» asked the other two.
«If he were still alive he would have a reddish tint.»
«Do these monsters change color like chameleons?» Jody asked «Are they good to eat?»
«I've never seen anyone feed on those musk-stinking meats.»
«You were in danger of being bled, right, Kay?»
«Yes, Jody, and I assure you I've always had a bad time.»
«Tell us a little, because no danger threatens us for now, we'll pass the time better». Blake asked.
«I met the first one I killed at the entrance to Condatsci bay. I was inside a pearl-producing reef among the corals, where the water was about ten meters deep, but so clear that the clusters of pearl oysters could be clearly seen, when my eyes fell on two kinds of arms coming out of the crevasse.»
«Was it one of those monsters?» asked Jody, whose fear had not yet passed.
«I had hardly touched the bottom, when it grabbed my body, feeling at the same time like the impression of a burn. When the water cleared I saw one of those ocean vampire. He had clung to my body with all his tentacles, to better savor my torture; and through that almost transparent body I saw my blood flowing from the suckers to my mouth».
«Kaj, you make my hair stand on end!» Jody said.
«I gathered all my strength and with the knife.» Kaj continued to tell: «I began to hit him with fury, forcing him to let me free. When I came to the surface and saw there wasen't the boat, the boy with me had run away in fear. While I was trying to save myself by swimming towards the coast, I felt myself grabbed by the legs again by one of those tentacles and dragged under the water. The vampire, teased by the first sips of blood, seemed determined to finish me».
The other two men were absorbed in the tale.
«Dragging me painfully and struggling with my fists and feet, I ended up reaching the shallow waters, but the octopus had followed me and tried the last attack, clinging with its terrible suckers to my body. Too bad for him, because I was ready to overturn, like a glove, that kind of hood that forms his head and to make him lose his strength immediately».
The pearl fishers sighed for a moment, then continued:
«I was taught that stroke, and I did it so well that I saw the monster's tentacles lose their shape and body, lousy emptying, filling with blood, falling limp and falling like a rag. The octopus was dead.
«This is a terrible test» concluded Blake «and one that few men could have endured».
«The second was even more terrible, Mr. Blake. I had gone down to the bottom of the sea, a little north of the great reef of Manaar, to examine those sands and rocks, before bringing my divers down there, and knowing that those waters were frequented by sharks, I had armed myself with a sharp iron pole. and a certain amount of lime powder, collected in a leaf, to blind them if they attacked me, when I saw between two rocks the eyes of a huge ocean vampire staring at me».
«That eyes are look terrible» Jody observed.
«Before it was possible for me to attack him, he unloaded such a storm of ink on me that I could no longer see anything around me. I felt the octopus slide down my back and grab my arm with such force as to be gripped by a real vice. I tried to free myself and use the pole, but one of the tentacles fixed itself on my left eye which I held wide open, so that I had no more free than the right».
«I can imagine the horror of that situation.»
«I was suffocated, almost unconscious, but I tried to remain calm. Fortunately for me, a friend of mine, imagining that something serious had touched me, broke a coconut and squeezed a few drops of oil on the water to see what was happening at the bottom of the sea. Seeing the octopus, he immediately plunged in armed with a cutlass and attacked the monster with such vigor that, not finding those blows to his liking, he left me, hiding in the sands».
«I couldn't face them» Jody said. «I'm sure I'm dying of fear. But yeah, I wasn't born to be a pearl diver».
They laughed to release the tension, but they did not yet know that their misadventures were only just beginning.