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our
sponges!”
    Semm Voiderveg
emitted a high-pitched croak. “Are you insane? Someone, pour
water on this maniac hoodwink,who has too long focused his eyes on
flashing lights!”
    In the lagoon the
kragen tore voraciously at the choicest Belrod sponges, and the
Belrods emitted a series of anguished hoots.
    “I say, kill
the beast!” cried Sklar Hast. “The king despoils us; must
we likewise feed all the kragen of the ocean?”
    “Kill the
beast!” echoed the younger Belrods.
    Semm Voiderveg
gesticulated in vast excitement, but Poe Belrod shoved him roughly
aside. “Quiet, let us listen to the hoodwink. How could we the
kragen? Is it possible?”
    “No!”
cried Semm Voiderveg. “Of course it is not possible! Nor is it
wise or proper! What of our covenant with King Kragen?”
    “King Kragen
be damned!” cried Poe Belrod roughly. “Let us hear the
hoodwink. Come then: do you have any method in mind by which the
kragen can be destroyed?”
    Sklar Hast looked
dubiously through the dark toward the great black hulk. “I think
yes. A method that requires the strength of many men.”
    Poe Belrod waved
his hand toward those who had come to watch the kragen. “Here
they stand.”
    “Come,”
said Sklar Hast. He walked back toward the center of the float.
Thirty or forty men followed him, mostly Swindlers, Advertisermen,
Blackguards, Extorters and Larceners. The remainder hung dubiously
back.
    Sklar Hast led the
way to a pile of poles stacked for the construction of a new
storehouse. Each pole, fabricated from withes laid lengthwise and
bound in glue, was twenty feet long by eight inches in diameter and
combined great strength with lightness. Sklar Hast selected a pole
even flicker—the ridge beam. “Pull this pole forth, lay
it on trestle!”
    While this was
being accomplished, he looked about and signaled Rudolf Snyder, a
Ninth, though a man no older than himself of the long-lived
Incendiary Caste, which now monopolized the preparation of fiber, the
laying of rope and plaits. “I need two hundred feet of hawser,
stout enough to lift the kragen. If there is none of this, then we
must double or redouble smaller rope to the same effect.”
    Rudolf Snyder took
four men to help him and brought rope from the warehouse.
    Sklar Hast worked
with great energy, rigging the pole in accordance with his plans.
“Now lift! Carry all to the edge of the pad!”
    Excited by his
urgency, the men shouldered the pole, carried it close to the lagoon,
and at Sklar Hast’s direction set it down with one end resting on the
hard fiber of a rib. The other end, to which two lengths of hawser
were tied, rested on a trestle and almost overhung the water. “Now,”
said Sklar Hast, “now we kill the kragen.” He made a noose
at the end of a hawser, advanced toward the kragen, which watched him
through the rear-pointing eyes of its turret. Sklar Hast moved
slowly, so as not to alarm the creature, which continued to pluck
sponges with a contemptuous disregard.
    Sklar Hast
approached the edge of the pad. “Come, beast!” he called.
“Ocean brute! Come closer. Come.” He bent, splashed water
at the kragen. Provoked, it surged toward him. Sklar Hast waited, and
just before it swung its vane, he tossed the noose over its turret.
He signaled his men. “Now!” They heaved on the line,
dragged the thrashing kragen through the water. Sklar Hast guided the
line to the end of the pole. The kragen surged suddenly forward; in
the confusion and the dark the men heaving on the rope fell backward.
Sklar Hast seized the slack and, dodging a murderous slash of the
kragen’s fore-vane, flung a hitch around the end of the pole, he
danced back. “Now!” he called. “Pull, pull! Both
lines! The beast is as good as dead!”
    On each of the pair
of hawsers tied to the head of the pole twenty men heaved. The pole
raised on its base; the line tautened around the kragen’s turret; the
men dug in their heels; the base of the pole bit into the hard rib.
The