f panic despair. And he had been in the ocean and seen his ship
go down with a torpedo's jagged rent in her side. But he had never been
lost in the water in the sense of losing all his bearings in the
darkness. For a minute it quite unnerved him and his stout heart sank
within him.

Then out of the tumult came a thin, spent voice, barely audible and
seeming a part of the troubled voices of the night.

"----lost----," it said; "----going down----"

Tom listened eagerly, his heart still, his blood cold within him.

"Keep calling," he answered, "so I'll know where you are. I'll get to
you all right--keep your nerve."

He listened keenly, ready to challenge the force of the storm with all
his young skill and strength, and thinking of naught else now. But no
guiding voice answered.

Could he have heard aright? Surely, there was no mistaking. It was a
human voice that had spoken and whatever else it had said that one,
tragic word had been clearly audible:

"----down----"

Archer had gone down.

CHAPTER XIX

TOM LOSES HIS FIRST CONFLICT WITH THE ENEMY

"Down!"

For the first time in Tom Slade's life a sensation of utter despair
gripped him and it was not until several seconds had elapsed, while he
was tossed at the mercy of the storm, that he was able to get a grip on
himself. He struck out frantically and for just a brief minute was
guilty of a failing which he had never yielded to--the perilous weakness
of being rattled and hitting hard at nothing. In swimming, above all
things, this is futile and dangerous, and presently Tom regained his
mental poise and struck out calmly, swimming in the direction in which
the wind bore him, for there was nothing else to do. Not that his effort
helped him much, but he knew the good rule that one should never be
passive in a crisis, for inaction is as depressing to the spirit as
frantic exertion is to the body. And he knew that by swimming he could
keep his "morale"--a word which he had heard a good deal lately.

His heart was sick within him and a kind of cold desperation seized him.
Archer, whom he had known away back home in America, whom he had found
by chance in the German prison camp, who had trudged over the hills and
through the woods with him, was lost. He would never see him again.
Archer, who was always after souvenirs....

These were not thoughts exactly, but they flitted through Tom's
consciousness as he struggled to keep his head clear of the tempestu