like leaf-stalks out of the head of a beet. He noticed that two of
these feelers were twice as long as the rest, which did not seem to him
a matter of the least importance. But he noticed at the same time that
the creature looked soft and good to eat. The next instant, like a ray
of light flashed suddenly, he darted at it.

"But swift as he was, the pale creature's inky eyes had noted him in
time. His feelers bunched suddenly tight and straight, and he shot
backwards, at the same moment spouting a jet of black fluid from
beneath his beaked mouth. The black jet spread instantly in a thick
cloud, staining the clear, green water so deeply that Little Sword
could not see through it at all. Instead of the soft flesh he had
expected it to pierce, his sword met nothing but a mass of sticky
anemones, shearing them from their base.

"In a fury, Little Sword dashed this way and that, trusting to luck
that he would strike his elusive enemy in the darkness. But that
enemy's eyes, with their enormous bulging surface and the jetty
background to their lenses, could see clearly where the jewel-like eyes
of the young swordfish could make out nothing. Little Sword, emerging
into the half light at the edge of the cloud, was just about to give up
the idle search, when something small but firm fastened itself upon his
side, so sharply that it seemed to bite into the flesh.

"Little Sword's tense muscles quivered at the shock, and he gave a
mighty leap which should, by all his customary reckoning, have carried
him fifty feet from the spot. To his horrified amazement he did not go
as many inches, nor the half of it! And then another something, small
but terrible, fastened itself upon his shoulder.