he hole--pilot to climb on ice and stay
there to signal a plane."

"Did he get there?"

"Hell no!" Sallorsen cackled again. "It was roped like the other.
Pilot tried to get back, but they got him like first. There's the
torpoon--out ahead."

Ken could just make it out. It lay ahead, slightly to port, lashed
down like its fellow by seaweed-ropes. His eyes were held by it, even
when Sallorsen continued, in an almost hysterical voice:

"Since then--since then--you know. Week after week. Air getting worse.
Rectifiers running down. No night, no day. Just the lights, and those
damned devils outside. Wore sea-suits for a while; used twenty-nine of
their thirty hours air-units. Old Professor Halloway died, and another
man. Couldn't do anything for 'em. Just sit and watch. Head aching,
throat choking--God!...

"Some of the men went mad. Tried to break out. Had to show gun. Quick
death outside. Here, slow death, but always the chance that--Chance,
hell! There's no chance left! Just this poison that used to be air,
and those things outside, watching, watching, waiting--waiting for us
to leave--waiting to get us all! Waiting...."

"Something's up!" said Ken Torrance suddenly. "They've got tired of
waiting!"

CHAPTER V

_The Last Assault_

Sallorsen turned his head and followed the torpooner's intent, amazed
gaze.

Ken said:

"There's proof of their intelligence! I've been watching--didn't
realize at first. Look, here it comes!"

Several sealmen, while Sallorsen had been talking, had come dropping
down from the main mass of the horde, and had grouped around the
abandoned torpoon which lay some feet ahead of the submarine's bow.
Expertly they had loosened the seaweed-ropes which bound it to the
sea-floor, then slid back, watching alertly, as if expecting the
torpoon to speed away of its own accord. Its batteries, of course, had
worn out weeks before, so the steel shell did net budge. The sealmen
came down close to it again, and lifted it.

They lifted it easily with their prehensile flipper-arms, and with
maneuvering of delicate sureness guided it through the gash in the
_Peary's_ bow. Inside, they hesitated with it, midway between deck and
ceiling of the flooded compartment. They poised for perhaps a full
minute, judging the distance, while the two men stared; and then
quickly their powerful tail flippers lashed out and the torpoon jumped
ahead. It sped straight through the water, to crash its tough nose o