I looked round in wonder, but for a moment I could see nothing to cause it.
Then a huge black body rose from the water, like an enormous porpoise, and turned a somersault which sent a heavier swell across the level surface of the lake.
My stroke quickened without conscious effort as I beheld it. But at the first moment I was not greatly frightened. It was evident that it did not pursue me, and my course was not toward it. Fortunately, I called my companion, and the answer, “I am coming now,” was unperturbed in its promptness. I had an instant’s vision of her, as the loose fur contracted, and the slim swift body shot forward.
But the next minute was rapid in thought and action.
My mind called urgently, “There is another one that has risen nearer.”
“They may not see you while they are on the surface. Their eyes look upward only.”
“They may do so, as they roll in their gambols—I think they have done so now. They are both coming.”
“I am coming quickly.”
“It is useless. What can you do against them?”
The two huge brutes were racing over the surface in their competition to secure me, with a speed which would have left a motorboat behind very quickly. I could not doubt that in twenty seconds they would be quarrelling over my divided body.
My terror warned her only to avoid the danger which must destroy me.
“Refuse fear,” she called back, “it is that which gives them power to destroy you.”
But fear I must, and as she realised it, I think—though I am not sure—that there was a second during which her own mind faltered. But if so, it was for an instant only. Then she realised the full peril of the moment, and her courage rose to meet it.
Cool and swift, and very urgent, she thrust forward the full force of her mind to overcome the panic which had possessed me. “I shall be first. Swim on. Listen. You are safe if you hear me. You must stop thinking. Give your mind to mine, and I can save you. Do not think at all, but believe it. It is everything that you do this.”
The rest is a dream only.
I was dimly conscious that the first of the rushing beasts was upon me, and that it dived slightly as it came, so that it should snap at me from below. I saw the wide flat shovel-jaws opened to take me, and then two things happened. Almost into the mouth of the gaping jaws she came between us—she had swum at least three times the distance that our opponents had covered—and at the same instant the second monster charged sideways into its rival in its eagerness to get a share of the expected dainty.
They were afraid of her, clearly. They both recoiled for a moment.
But it was clear also that they regarded me as a prey of which she had no right to deprive them.
On they came again from different sides, and into their very teeth she swam to thwart them.
Even so, had they been capable of concerted action, I do not see how she could have saved me. But she was cooler, swifter, more agile, with a mind that mocked them and bewildered. Nor was she content with defensive movements only, but as either would draw back for a moment, she followed the retreated mouth as though she dared it to harm her, as no doubt she did.
How it would have ended I cannot say, but at that moment fate interposed to help us. We were still a hundred yards from the shore, when the ground beneath us shallowed, and they pursued us no further.
We climbed out into a place of shade and of mossy softness, but I was too exhausted to regard it. Where I sank I lay. Perhaps, she was exhausted also. Anyway she gave me no thought, but remained in silence beside me.
After a time I slept.
IV
The Silence in the Wood
When I waked, she was sitting looking into the water with brooding eyes in which amusement flickered more than once as I watched them, but which seemed, for the most part, to be puzzled by some thoughts for which she could find no solving.
She looked at me at last, and saw that I was awake, and offered me her mind in a moment.
“I am glad,” she thought, “that I saved you, and I think that the Leaders will approve it; but of this I cannot be as certain as I gladly would be.
“As we were made companions in this enterprise, it seemed that it was right to do so. But it is a law of our kind that, as no creatures in all the oceans will dare to harm us, so we do not interfere between them. Were we to withhold their prey from them, I cannot say that our immunity would continue. It is a thing so fundamental that from the beginning I have never known it attempted. We cannot be as one of themselves, and above them also. It comes to me again, as I have thought before, that you are like a seed of death to the world I know, and the end is beyond my dreaming.”
I answered, “I owe you the debt of my life, and I cannot tell at how great a risk you have saved it. But I do not wish you to do things for me of which the consequences may be beyond our understanding.
“I thought to show you that I could cross the lake unaided, and I have only made my weakness more evident. I think it may be right that I should go alone in future; for when you called upon me first not to fear, I am aware that I failed you, and I suppose it was from that that the danger became so imminent.”
She answered, “That is true; and by my code
