is teeth together. "Well, go on!" he exploded
in impotent rage. "What are you waiting for? Kill me! Eat me if you're
going to!" And he cursed the silent forms around him till his ears hurt
from the reverberation.

After the _Narwhal_ had vanished in the gloom, the torpooner's captors
lifted him from the bottom and propelled him leisurely forward again,
the slight, graceful roll of their flippers slipping them along
smoothly.

A dull hopelessness came over him. No longer could he hope that his
submarine would find him. Only one thing was certain, and that was that
death would soon come. For even if his captors did not kill him at once,
he had but thirty-six hours before his air-units would be exhausted.
Certainly, having captured him, the seal-creatures would not release
him. And it was too much to expect them to realize that his sea-unit was
only an artificial covering which enabled him to live underwater, and
not his own flesh and blood.

And as for the chance of breaking loose--the idea was laughable. His
speed was snail-like in comparison with theirs. Even if he did manage
somehow to get away, what good would it do? How could he, a puny,
helpless mite, ever hope to locate the _Narwhal_ in this vast sweep of
Arctic sea? His torpoon was wrecked, and he had no means of
communication.

His situation was quite hopeless.

* * * * *

Far ahead, a dark shape grew in the foggy murk, and as they neared,
spread upwards and outwards. They angled up and up; the sea-floor was
higher there. Ken, peering as best he could, made out that the
mountainous, looming bulk was the face of a giant underwater mound,
whose uneven formation indicated that it was the result of some
long-past upheaval. It was the first of a rolling series of such
hillocks, six or seven in all, stretching back into the gloom. Their
rounded peaks reached to within a few feet of the water's ice-sheathed
surface. Surely the creatures' home was among these mounds.

He was skirted round the base of the first hillock and caught a glimpse
of something in its face which was apparently of his captors'
construction. It was a hole, dark, mysterious, perhaps fifteen feet in
diameter, and barring it were three great gray stakes, reaching from top
to bottom. Behind the stakes, Ken got a jumbled impression of a body,
large and sleek, of black streaked with white, that moved restlessly
back and forth in the hole and occasionally seemed to lash o