ields under which she cruised might have
shifted suddenly, crushing her ribs--of these perils the world knew as
well as he. But the submarine's crew was prepared for them; the
_Peary_ was equipped with a circular saw for cutting up through the
ice from beneath, and she carried sea-suits which would allow her men,
if she were wrecked on the bottom, to leave her and get up on the ice
and wait for the first searching plane.

Why, then, had not the planes which scoured the region found the
survivors?

That was the mystery--but not to Ken Torrance. There was another
peril, of which he alone knew. Not far from where the _Peary's_ last
radio report had come, a group of hollowed-out mounds lay on the
sea-floor, swarming with brown-skinned, quick-swimming creatures.
Sealmen, they were--men who, like the seals, had gone back to the sea.
Months ago, Second Torpooner Chanley Beddoes had killed one of them.
They were intelligent; they could remember; they were capable of hate
and fear; they would be desirous of leveling the debt!

There, Ken felt sure, lay the reason for the _Peary's_ baffling
silence, for the non-appearance of her men.

There might still be time. No one of course would listen to him and
believe, so he would have to go in search of the _Peary_ and her crew
himself.

Standing by the window, Kenneth Torrance quickly planned the several
steps which would take him to the Arctic and its silent ice-coated
sea.

And when, some two hours later, after a short warning rap on the door,
the individual who served as Mr. Torrance's attendant entered his
room, he was confronted, not by the gentleman whose dinner he carried,
but by an empty room, a stripped bed, an open window, and a rope of
sheets dangling from it toward the ground two stories beneath.

That was at seven o'clock in the evening.

CHAPTER II

_The Crash_

At a few minutes before eight o'clock, Air Mail Pilot Steve Chapman
was enjoying a quiet cigarette while waiting for the mechanics to warm
up the five hundred horses of his mail plane satisfactorily. Halfway
through, he heard, from behind, a quick patter of feet, and, turning,
he observed a figure clad in flannel trousers and sweater. The
cigarette dropped right out of his mouth as he cried:

"Ken! Ken Torrance!"

"Thank God you're here!" said Kenneth Torrance. "I gambled on it.
Steve, I've got to borrow your own personal plane."

"What?" gasped Steve Chapman. "What--what--?"

"Listen, S