a lashed-down captive, under the Arctic ice; for in these seconds was
to be given fate's final answer to the prayer and courage of them all.

Time for Ken expanded. Surely the charge should have gone off long
before this! The pulse beat so loudly in his brain that he could hear
nothing else. He counted: "... nine, ten, eleven--" Had the fuse
failed? Surely by now--"... twelve, thirteen, fourteen--"

On that the submarine _Peary_ leaped. Ken Torrance, himself inside the
torpoon, felt a sharp roll of thunder made tangible, and then complete
darkness took him....

CHAPTER VII

_The Awakening_

He had no idea of how long he had been unconscious when, his full
senses returning, he eagerly peered ahead through the torpoon's
vision-plate. For some seconds he could see nothing; but he knew, at
least, that the torpoon had survived the shock, for he was dry and
snug in his harness. And then his eyes became accustomed to the
darkness, and he saw that he was outside the submarine. Sallorsen had
followed his orders; had opened the port-lock! The undersea reaches
lay ahead of him, and the way was clear.

Ken stared into a gray, silent sea, no longer shadowed with moving
brown-skinned bodies. He tried his motors. Their friendly, rhythmic
hum answered him, and carefully he slipped into gear and crept up off
the sea-floor. He did not dare use his lights.

The _Peary_ was a great, blurred shadow, a dead thing without glow or
movement, with no figures of sealmen around her. As Ken's eyes gained
greater vision, he was able to make out a wide, long rent running
clear across the top of the fourth compartment of the submarine. The
explosion had done that to her, but what had it done to her crew? What
had it done to the sealmen?

He saw the sealmen first. Some were quite close, but in the murk he
had missed them. Silent specters, they were apparently lifeless,
strewn all around at different levels, and most of them floating
slowly up toward the dim ice ceiling.

But up under the ice was movement! Living figures were there! And at
the sight Kenneth Torrance's lips spread in their first real grin for
days. The plan had worked! The sealmen had been destroyed, and already
some of the _Peary's_ men were up there and fumbling clumsily across
the hundred feet which separated them from the hole in the ice that
was the last step to the world above.

* * * * *

A ghostly gray haze of light filtered