CHAPTER III.
_The Fate of the Peary_
Quiet, and utter, liquid darkness.
Liquid! Around him, Ken heard a gurgling, at first loud and close,then subsiding to a low whispering of currents. The amphibian had hitwater.
Gone in an instant was the shriek and fury of the storm and in itsplace the calm, slow-heaving silence of underwater. The plane wasshattered in a dozen places, but the torpoon had easily stood it.
Ken turned to action. He switched on the torpoon's dashboard lightsand twin bow-beams, and saw that the shell was wedged in the fuselage.The plane was apparently entirely under the surface, and her interiorfilled with water.
Holding the propeller in neutral, he revved up the powerful electricmotor. Then he bit the propeller in, slowly. The torpoon nudged backfor inches. Then, throwing the gear into forward, Ken gave her fullspeed. The torpoon leaped ahead, crunched through the weakened cornerahead and was free.
It was a world of drab tones that she came into. Down below wasimpenetrable blackness, shading softly overhead into blue-gray whichwas mottled by lighter areas from breaks in the floes above. All wascalm. There was no sign of life save for an occasional vague shadowthat, melting swiftly away, might have been a fish or seaweed. Placidalways, would be this shrouded sea of mystery, no matter what furioustempest raged above over the flat leagues of ice and water.
But the seeming peacefulness was but a mask for danger. KennethTorrance's face was set in sober lines as he sped the slim torpoonnorthward, her bow lights shafting long white fingers before her. Fornow there was only one path--and that lay ahead. He could not turnback. Storm and water had destroyed the plane that could take him backto land. He could not possibly reach any outpost of civilization inthe torpoon, for her cruising radius was only twenty hours. He hadplanned to land the amphibian on the ice above the spot where the_Peary_ had disappeared, then find a break in the ice and slide downbelow in the torpoon on his quest--to return to the plane if it provedfruitless. But now there was no retreat. It was succeed, or die.
And with that realization a more dreadful thought flashed into hismind. All those men, of the whaling company and the sanitarium,thought him a little crazy. And, since lunatics are always convincedof the reality of their visions, what if the sealmen--his adventureamidst them--had been but a dream, a nightmare, an hallucination? Whatif he were in truth crazy? The fear grew rapidly. What if he were?God! He, hunting for the _Peary_, when all those planes and men hadfailed! He, expecting to achieve what those searchers, with fargreater resources, had not been able to! Did not that give evidencethat his mind was twisted? Creatures, half-seal, half-men, livingunder the ice--it certainly seemed a lunatic's obsession.
Then something within him rose and fought back.
"No!" he cried aloud. "I'll go bugs if I think like that! Thosesealmen were real--and I know where they are. I'm going on!"
And, an hour later, the dashboard's shaded dials told him he was onthe exact spot where the _Peary_ had last reported....
* * * * *
Here was the real Arctic, the real polar sea. No sun, no breath of theworld above could reach it through its eternal mask of solid ice. Asone of the few unfamiliar aspects of the earth, it was as far removedfrom the imagination of man as if it were part of a far planet hungspinning millions of miles out in space. Men could reach it in shellsof metal, but it was not meant for him, and was always hostile. Adozen times a daring one could cross safely its cold lonely reaches,but the thirteenth time it would snare and destroy him for theunwanted trespasser he was.
It was here that the _Peary_ had stepped off into mystery. At thispoint her hull had throbbed with air, movement, life; at this pointall had been well. And then, minutes or hours later, close to here,the sea devil had sprung.
What had happened? What had trapped her? What, even more baffling, hadkept her men with their manifold safety devices from even reaching andclimbing up on the ice above to signal the searching planes?
Ken Torrance, oppressively alone in the hovering torpoon, gazedthrough its vision-plate of fused quartz around him. Gray sea,filtering to black beneath; distant eerie shadows, probably meaningnothing, but possibly all important; ceiling of thick ice above, roughand in places broken by a sharp down-thrusting spur--these were hissurroundings. These were what he must hunt through, until he came uponthe crumpled remnant of a submarine, or the murky, rounded hillockswhich gave habitation to the creatures he suspected of capturing thatsubmarine's crew.
* * * * *
He began the search systematically. He angled the torpoon down to aposition halfway between sea-floor and ice-ceiling, then swung her inan ever-widening circle. Soon his orbit had a diameter of a half-mile;then a mile; then two.
The torpoon slipped through the water at full speed, her light-beamslike restless antennae, now stabbing to the right to dissolve aformless shadow, now to the left to throw into blinding white relief aschool of half-transparent fish which scurried with frantic wrigglingsof tails from the glare, now slanting up to bathe the cold glassy faceof an inverted ice-hill, now down to dig two white holes in the deepergloom.
Ken continued this routine for hours. Steadily and low the electricmotor droned in the ears of the watchful pilot, and the stubbypropeller's blades flashed round in a blur of speed between theslightly slanted rudders. Somewhere, miles away, a splinteredamphibian plane was slipping down to her last landing, and above,perhaps, the white hell of storm which had brought her low stillbowled over the trackless wastes; but here were only shadows andshifting gloom, straining the alert eyes to soreness and tensing thewatcher's brain with alarms that, one after another, were only false.
Until at last he found her.
Immediately he shut off all his lights. He no longer needed them. Farin the distance, and below, wavered a faint yellow glow. It was nofish; it could mean only one thing--the lights of a submarine.
And lights meant life! There would be none burning in a desertedsubmarine. His heart beat fast and his tight, sober lips widened in aquick grin. He had found the _Peary_! And found her with some lifestill aboard her! He was in time!
So Ken rejoiced while he slid the torpoon down to a level just a fewfeet above the silty sea bottom, reducing her to quarter-speed. Therewas an urge inside him to switch on his bow-beams, reach them outtoward the submarine's hull to tell all within that help was at lastat hand; he wanted to send the torpoon ahead at full speed. Butcaution restrained him to a more deliberate course. He was in therealm of the sealmen, and he did not wish to attract the attention ofany. So he advanced like a furtive shadow slinking along the darksea-bottom, deep in the covering gloom.
Nearer and nearer, while the distant blur of yellow light grew. Nearerand nearer to the long-trapped men, while the consciousness that hehad succeeded intoxicated him. He alone had found them! Sealmen or nosealmen, he had found the _Peary_! And found her with lights lit andlife inside! Nearer and nearer....
And then suddenly Ken halted the torpoon and stared with wide, alarmedeyes. For the submarine was now plainly visible in detail--and he sawher real plight and with it knew the answer to the mystery of her longsilence and the non-appearance of her men on the ice field above.
* * * * *
The _Peary_ was a spectacle of fantastic beauty. It was as if a huge,rounded piece of amber, mellow, golden, lay in the murk of thesea-floor. Not steel, hard and grim, but of transparent, shimmeringstuff she was built, all coated a soft yellow by her lights, clearlyvisible inside. Ken had known something of her radical construction;knew that a substance called quarsteel, similar to glass and yet fullyas tough as steel, had been used for her hull, making her a perfectvehicle for undersea exploration. Her bow was capped with steel, andher stern, propellers, diving rudders; her port-locks, for thereleasing of torpoons, were also of steel, as were the struts thatbraced her throughout--but the rest was quarsteel, glowing and goldenas the heart of amber.
&n
bsp; Beautiful with a wild yet scientific beauty was the _Peary_, but shewas not free. She was trapped. She was fastened to the mud of thegloomy sea-floor.
Ropes held her down; and Ken Torrance knew those ropes of old. Theywere tough and strong, woven of many strands of seaweed, and twenty orthirty of them striped the _Peary's_ two hundred feet of hull.Unevenly spaced, stretched clear over the ship from one side to theother, they were caught around her up-jutting conning tower, fastenedthrough her rudders, and holding tight in a score of places. They heldthe submarine down despite all the buoyancy of her emptied tanks andthe power of her twin propellers.
And the sealmen swam around her.
* * * * *
Restless dark shadows against the golden hull, they wavered and dartedand poised, totally unafraid. Another in Kenneth Torrance's placewould have put them down as some strange school of large seals,inordinately curious but nothing more; but the torpooner knew them asmen--men remodeled into the shape of seals; men who, ages ago, hadforsaken the land for the old home of all life, the sea; who, throughthe years, had gradually changed in appearance as their flesh hadbecome coated with layers of cold-resisting blubber; whose movementshad become adapted to the water; whose legs and arms had evolved intoflippers; but whose heads still harbored the now faint spark ofintelligence that marked them definitely as men.
Emotions similar to man's they had, though dulled; friendliness,curiosity, anger, hate, and--Ken knew and feared--even a capacity forvengeance. Vengeance! An eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth--the oldlaw peculiar to man! Chanley Beddoes had slain one of them; if onlythe _Peary's_ crew had not killed more! If only that, there might behope!
First he must get inside the submarine. Warily, like a stalking cat,Ken Torrance inched the torpoon toward the great shining ship. Atleast he was in time. Within her he could see figures, most of themstretched out on the decks of her different compartments, but one ofwhom occasionally moved--slowly. He understood that. For weeks now the_Peary_ had lain captive, and her air had passed beyond the aid ofrectifiers. Tortured, those survivors inside were, constantlystruggling for life, with vitality ever sinking lower. Some mightalready be dead. But at least he could try to save the rest.
He approached her from one side of the rear, for in the rearcompartment were her two torpoon port-locks. The one on his side wasempty, its outer door open. The torpoon it had held had been sent out,probably for help, and had not returned. It provided a means ofentrance for him.
At perhaps a hundred feet from the port-lock, Ken halted again. Hisslim craft was almost indistinguishable in the murk: he feltreasonably safe from discovery. For minutes he watched the swimmingsealmen, waiting for the best chance to dart in.
* * * * *
It was then, while studying the full length of the submarine moreclosely, that he saw that one compartment of her four was filled withwater. Her steel-caped bow had been stove in. That, he conjectured,had been the original accident which had brought her down. It was nota fatal accident in itself, for there were three other compartments,all separated by watertight bulkheads, and the flooded one could berepaired by men in sea-suits--but then the sealmen had come and ropedher down where she lay. Some of the creatures, he saw, were actuallyat that time inside the bow compartment, swimming around curiouslyamidst the clustered pipes, wheels and levers. It was a weird sight,and one that held his eyes fascinated.
But suddenly, through his absorption, danger prickled the short hairsof his neck. A lithe, sinuous shadow close ahead was wavering, andlarge, placid brown eyes were staring at him. A sealman! He wasdiscovered! And instinctively, immediately, Ken Torrence brought thetorpoon's accelerator down flat.
The shell jumped ahead with whirling propeller. The creature that hadseen him doubled around and sped in retreat. In brief snatches, as thetorpoon streaked across the hundred-foot gap to the empty port-lock,Ken glimpsed his discoverer gathering a group of its fellows, and sawbrown-skinned bodies swarm after him with nooses of seaweed-rope--andthen the great transparent side wall of the _Peary_ was before him,and the port-locks dark opening. Ken threw his motor into reverse,slid the torpoon slightly to one side, and there was a jerk, a jar,and a sensation of something moving behind.
He turned to see the port-lock's outer door closing, activated bycontrols inside the submarine--and just in time to shut out the firstof his pursuers. Then the port-lock's pumps were draining the waterfrom the chamber, and the inner door clicked and opened.
Kenneth Torrance climbed stiffly from the torpoon to enter theinterior of the long-lost and besieged exploring submarine _Peary._