on
the crumpled remnant of a submarine, or the murky, rounded hillocks
which gave habitation to the creatures he suspected of capturing that
submarine's crew.

* * * * *

He began the search systematically. He angled the torpoon down to a
position halfway between sea-floor and ice-ceiling, then swung her in
an 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-beams
like restless antennae, now stabbing to the right to dissolve a
formless shadow, now to the left to throw into blinding white relief a
school of half-transparent fish which scurried with frantic wrigglings
of tails from the glare, now slanting up to bathe the cold glassy face
of an inverted ice-hill, now down to dig two white holes in the deeper
gloom.

Ken continued this routine for hours. Steadily and low the electric
motor droned in the ears of the watchful pilot, and the stubby
propeller's blades flashed round in a blur of speed between the
slightly slanted rudders. Somewhere, miles away, a splintered
amphibian plane was slipping down to her last landing, and above,
perhaps, the white hell of storm which had brought her low still
bowled over the trackless wastes; but here were only shadows and
shifting gloom, straining the alert eyes to soreness and tensing the
watcher'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. Far
in the distance, and below, wavered a faint yellow glow. It was no
fish; it could mean only one thing--the lights of a submarine.

And lights meant life! There would be none burning in a deserted
submarine. His heart beat fast and his tight, sober lips widened in a
quick grin. He had found the _Peary_! And found her with some life
still aboard her! He was in time!

So Ken rejoiced while he slid the torpoon down to a level just a few
feet above the silty sea bottom, reducing her to quarter-speed. There
was an urge inside him to switch on his bow-beams, reach them out
toward the submarine's hull to tell all within that help was at last
at hand; he wanted to send the torpoon ahead at full speed. But
caution restrained him to a more deliberate course. He was in the
realm of the sealmen, and he did not wish to attract the attention of
any. So he advanced like a furtive shadow slinking along t