Under Arctic Ice Part 6

At that the connection struck Ken.

"Then that's nitromite!" he shouted. "That's the idea--the nitromite!"

And stooping down, he wrenched the rope of small black boxes which contained the explosive from the man who had worked so painfully to get them.

"I'll do the blowing, boy!" he said. "Don't worry; I'll do it complete!"

Ken, holding the rope of explosives, crossed the deck and pulled Sallorsen and Lawson around. Their worn faces, with lifeless, bloodshot eyes, met his own strong features, and he said forcefully:

"Now listen! I need your help. I've found our one last chance for life. We three are the strongest, and we've got to work like h.e.l.l.

Understand?"

His enthusiasm and the vigor of his words roused them.

"Yes," said Lawson. "What--we do?"

"You say there's an hour's air left in the sea-suits?" Torrance asked the captain.

"Yes. An hour."

"Then get the men into the suits," the torpooner ordered. "Help the weaker ones; slap them till they obey you!" There came the ugly, deafening crash of the hurled torpoon into the compartment door. Ken finished grimly: "And for G.o.d's sake, hurry! I'll explain later."

Sallorsen and Lawson unquestioningly obeyed. Ken had reached the spirit in them, the strength not physical, that had all but been driven out by the long, hopeless weeks and the poisonous stuff that pa.s.sed for air, and it had risen and was responding. Sallorsen's voice, for the first time in days, had his old stern tone of command in it as, calling on everything within him, he shouted:

"Men, there's still a chance! Everyone into sea-suits! Quick!"

A few of the blue-skinned figures lying panting on the deck looked up.

Fewer moved. They did not at once understand. Only four or five dragged themselves with pathetic eagerness towards the pile of sea-suits and the little store of fresh air that remained in them.

Sallorsen repeated his command.

"Hurry! Men--you, Hartley and Robson and Carroll--your suits on!

There's air in them! _Put 'em on!_"

And then Lawson was among them, shaking the hopeless, dying forms, rousing them to the chance for life. Several more crawled to obey. By the time the next crash of the torpoon came, eleven out of the twenty-one survivors were working with clumsy, eager fingers at their sea-suits, pus.h.i.+ng feet and legs in, drawing the tough fabric up over their bodies, sliding their arms in, and struggling with quick panting breaths to raise the heavy helmets and fasten them into place.

Then--air!

Again the ear-shattering crash. The scientist and the captain drove at the rest of the crew. They stumbled, those two fighting men, and twice Lawson went down in a heap as his legs gave under him; but he got up again, and they began dragging the suits to the men who had not even the strength to rise, shoving inert limbs into place, switching on the air-units inside the helmets and, gasping themselves, fastening the helmets down. Theirs was a conflict as cruel, as hard and brutal as men smas.h.i.+ng at each other with fists, and they then proved their right to the s.h.i.+ning roll of honor, wherever and whatever that roll may be. They fought on past pain, past sickness, past poisoning, that man of action and men of the laboratory.

And outside that foul transparent pit the tempo quickened also. The sledging blows at the last door came quicker. All around the captive _Peary_ the sleek brown bodies stirred uneasily. For weeks there had been but little activity inside the submarine; now, all at once, three of the figures that were men whipped the others into action, rousing those lying dying on the deck--working, working. Observing this, the lithe seal bodies moved with new nervous, restless strokes, to and fro, never pausing--pa.s.sing up and down in a milling stream the length of the craft, cl.u.s.tering closest outside the walls of the fourth compartment, where they pressed as close as they could, their wide brown eyes already on the haggard forms that worked inside, their smooth bodies patterned by the constantly s.h.i.+fting shadows of their fellows above and behind.

So they watched and waited, while in the third compartment the battered torpoon was slung at the last door, and drawn back, and slung again--waited for the final moment, the crisis of their month-long siege beneath the floes of the silent Arctic sea!

Kenneth Torrance worked by himself.

He saw that Sallorsen and Lawson had answered his call; man after man was clad in his suit and sucking in the incomparably fresher, though artificial, air of the units. As he had hoped, that air was revitalizing the worn-out bodies rapidly, giving them new strength and clearing their brains. His plan required that--strength for the men to move and act for themselves--sane heads!

The plan was basically simple. Bringing his best concentration to the all-important details, Ken started to build the road to the world above.

First he opened the inner door of the starboard port-lock, wherein lay his torpoon. Opening the entrance panel of the steel sh.e.l.l, he quickly transferred within the cans of compressed food retrieved from the second compartment. When he had finished, there was left barely room for the pilot's body.

And then the nitromite.

The explosive was carried by the _Peary_ for the blasting of such ice floes as might trap her. It was contained for chemical stability in a half dozen six-inch-square, water-proof boxes, strung one after another on an interconnecting wired rope. Ken would need them all; he wished he had five times as many. It would not matter if the whole of the _Peary_ were shattered to slivers.

Ken tied the rope of boxes into a strong unit, as small as it could be made. Firing and timing mechanisms were contained in each unit: he would only have to set one of them. He wrapped the whole charge, except for one small corner, in several pieces of the men's discarded clothing--monkey jackets, thick sweaters, a dirty towel--and stuffed it in an empty tin container for sea-biscuits.

All this had taken only minutes. But in those minutes the quarsteel of the watertight door had been subjected to half a dozen smas.h.i.+ng blows, and already a flaw had appeared in the pane. Another grinding crunch, and there would be the visible beginning of a crack. Three more, perhaps, and the door would be down.

But the plan was laid, the counter move ready; and, as Sallorsen and Lawson, last of them all, got into suits, Ken Torrance, in short, gasping sentences, explained it.

"All the nitromite's in this," Ken said. "I hope it's enough. In a moment I'll set the timing to explode it in one minute--then eject it from the empty torpoon port-lock. It's a gamble, but I think the explosion should kill every d.a.m.ned seal around the sub. Water carries such shocks for miles, so it should stun, if not kill, all the others within a long radius. See? We're inside sub, largely protected. When the stuff explodes, you and men make for the hole you blew in the ice above."

Another crash sent echoes resounding through the remaining compartment. All around the three were suit-clad figures, grotesque clumsy giants, all feeling new strength as they gulped with leathern throats and lungs at the artificial air which was giving them a respite, however brief, from the death they had been sinking into. In the third compartment of the _Peary_, five seal-like creatures with swift and beautiful movements picked up their torpoon battering ram again; while all around the outside of the _Peary_ their hundreds of watching fellows pressed in closely.

"Yes!" cried Lawson, the scientist. "But the explosion--it might shatter the s.h.i.+p!"

"No matter; I expect it to!" answered Ken. "Then you can leave through a crack instead of a port-lock."

"Yes--but you!" objected the captain. "Get on a suit!"

"No; I'm jumping into my torpoon in the other port-lock. I've got the food in it. Now, Sallorsen, this is your job. I'll be in my torpoon, but I won't be able to let myself out the port. You open it, right after the explosion. Understand?"

"Yes," replied Sallorsen, and Lawson nodded.

"All right," gasped Ken Torrance. "Empty the chamber." As the captain did so, Ken opened the lid of the biscuit can and adjusted the timing device on the exposed unit in the clothing-wrapped bundle. Then he replaced it, ticking, in the can and thrust the can bodily into the emptied chamber of the port-lock. He closed the inner door of the chamber, and said to the men by him:

"Close your face-plates!"

And Ken pushed the release b.u.t.ton: and then he was running to the other port-lock and to his torpoon, and harnessing himself in.

His brain teemed with the possibilities of the situation as he lay stretched out in the torpoon, waiting. How much would the submarine be smashed? Would the charge of nitromite, besides killing the sealmen, kill everyone inside the _Peary_? For that matter, would it affect the sealmen at all? How much could the creatures stand? And would the firing mechanism work? And then would he himself be able to get out; or would the lock in which the torpoon lay be damaged by the explosion and trap him there?

Seconds, only seconds, to wait, small fractions of time--but they were more important than the days and the weeks that the _Peary_ had lain, a lashed-down captive, under the Arctic ice; for in these seconds was to be given fate's final answer to the prayer and courage of them all.

Time for Ken expanded. Surely the charge should have gone off long before this! The pulse beat so loudly in his brain that he could hear nothing else. He counted: "... nine, ten, eleven--" Had the fuse failed? Surely by now--"... twelve, thirteen, fourteen--"

On that the submarine _Peary_ leaped. Ken Torrance, himself inside the torpoon, felt a sharp roll of thunder made tangible, and then complete darkness took him....