re inside sub, largely protected. When
the stuff explodes, you and men make for the hole you blew in the ice
above."

Another crash sent echoes resounding through the remaining
compartment. All around the three were suit-clad figures, grotesque
clumsy giants, all feeling new strength as they gulped with leathern
throats and lungs at the artificial air which was giving them a
respite, however brief, from the death they had been sinking into. In
the third compartment of the _Peary_, five seal-like creatures with
swift and beautiful movements picked up their torpoon battering ram
again; while all around the outside of the _Peary_ their hundreds of
watching fellows pressed in closely.

* * * * *

"Yes!" cried Lawson, the scientist. "But the explosion--it might
shatter the ship!"

"No matter; I expect it to!" answered Ken. "Then you can leave through
a crack instead of a port-lock."

"Yes--but you!" objected the captain. "Get on a suit!"

"No; I'm jumping into my torpoon in the other port-lock. I've got the
food in it. Now, Sallorsen, this is your job. I'll be in my torpoon,
but I won't be able to let myself out the port. You open it, right
after the explosion. Understand?"

"Yes," replied Sallorsen, and Lawson nodded.

"All right," gasped Ken Torrance. "Empty the chamber." As the captain
did so, Ken opened the lid of the biscuit can and adjusted the timing
device on the exposed unit in the clothing-wrapped bundle. Then he
replaced it, ticking, in the can and thrust the can bodily into the
emptied chamber of the port-lock. He closed the inner door of the
chamber, and said to the men by him:

"Close your face-plates!"

And Ken pushed the release button: and then he was running to the
other port-lock and to his torpoon, and harnessing himself in.

His brain teemed with the possibilities of the situation as he lay
stretched out in the torpoon, waiting. How much would the submarine be
smashed? Would the charge of nitromite, besides killing the sealmen,
kill everyone inside the _Peary_? For that matter, would it affect the
sealmen at all? How much could the creatures stand? And would the
firing mechanism work? And then would he himself be able to get out;
or would the lock in which the torpoon lay be damaged by the explosion
and trap him there?

Seconds, only seconds, to wait, small fractions of time--but they were
more important than the days and the weeks that the _Peary_ had lain,