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Now! Bond took a quick glance into the two football eyes, so patient, so incurious As he did so the other seizing arht up at his face Bond jerked back and the hand curled into a fist round the wire in front of his eyes In a second it would shift to an arm or shoulder and he would be finished Now!

The first hand was on his ribs Al aim, Bond's knife-hand slashed down and across He felt the blade bite into the puddingy flesh and then the knife was alrip as the wounded tentacle whipped back into the water For a o the wire and slapped across his stomach The pointed hand stuck like a leech, all the power of the suckers furiously applied Bond screaain and again God, his stole Below hiive in One more stab, this time into the back of the hand It worked! The hand jerked free and snaked down and away leaving twenty red circles, edged with blood, across his skin

Bond had not time to worry about them Now the head of the squid had broken the surface and the sea was being thrashed into foa up at hi ar the cotton fabric away and flailing back Bond was being pulled down, inch by inch The as biting into his ar stretched If he held on he would be torn in half Now the eyes and the great triangular beak were right out of the water and the beak was reaching up for his feet There was one hope, only one!

Bond thrust his knife between his teeth and his hand dived for the crook of the wire spear He tore it out, got it between his two hands and wrenched the doubled wire alo with one are If he missed, he would be torn to shreds on the fence

Now, before he died of the pain! No!

Bond let his whole body slip down the ladder of wire and lunged through and doith all his force

He caught a gli into the centre of a black eyeball and then the whole sea erupted up at hi upside down by the knees, his head an inch from the surface of the water

What had happened? Had he gone blind? He could see nothing His eyes were stinging and there was a horrible fish taste in hisinto the tendons behind his knees So hehand and reached up and felt for the nearest strand of wire He got a hold and reached up his other hand and slowly, agonizingly, pulled hiht came into his eyes He wiped a hand across his face Now he could see He gazed at his hand It was black and sticky He looked down at his body It was covered with black slime, and blackness stained the sea for twenty yards around Then Bond realized The wounded squid had emptied its ink sac at him

But where was the squid? Would it co but the spreading stain of black Not a movement Not a ripple Then don't wait! Get away froht and left Left was towards the ship, but also towards Doctor No But right was towards nothing To build the wire fence the men must have come from the left, from the direction of the jetty There would be some sort of a path Bond reached for the top cable and frantically began to edge along the swaying fence towards the rocky headland twenty yards away

The stinking, bleeding, black scarecrow , feeling apparatus of Bond was no longer part of his body It h contact to pull the strings that made the puppet work Bond was like a cut worh life has gone and been replaced by the mock life of nervous impulses Only, with Bond, the two halves were not yet dead Life was only in abeyance in them All he needed was an ounce of hope, an ounce of reassurance that it was still worth while trying to stay alive

Bond got to the-rock face Slowly he let hiuely at the softly heaving sheen of water It was black, impenetrable, as deep as the rest Should he chance it? Heslime and blood, the horrible stale fish-ss of his shirt and trousers and hung them on the wire He looked down at his brown and white body, striped and pock-marked with red On an instinct he felt his pulse It was slow but regular The steady thu about? He was alive The wounds and bruises on his body were nothing-absolutely nothing They looked ugly, but nothing was broken Inside the torn envelope, theover Superficial cuts and abrasions, bloody memories, deathly exhaustion-these were hurts that an accident ould sneer at Get on, you bastard! Get s Think of the girl Think of theon to life like you've hung on to the knife between your teeth Stop being sorry for yourself To hell hat happened just now Get down into the water and wash!

Tento his scrubbed, stinging body and his hair slicked back out of his eyes, climbed over the top of the headland

Yes, it was as he had guessed A narrow rocky track, made by the feet of the workers, led down the other side and round the bulge of the cliff

Fro He could hear the changing beat of its engine There were iron ship-noises and the sound of water splashing into the sea froe pump

Bond looked up at the sky It was pale blue Clouds tinged with golden pink were trailing away towards the horizon Far above hiuanera Soon they would be going off to feed Perhaps even now they atching the scout groups far out at sea locating the fish It would be about six o'clock, the dawn of a beautiful day