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 downward through the water from the hole. Ken counted twelve figures making their way to it. As he wondered about the rest of the crew, he saw three bulging, swaying shapes suddenly emerge from the split in the top of the _Peary_, and begin an easy rise toward the ice ceiling ninety feet above. There was no apparent danger, and they went up quite slowly, with occasional brief pauses to avoid the risk of the bends. Clasped together, the group of three were, and when they were halfway to the gla.s.sy ceiling of the ice, three more left the rent in the submarine and followed likewise. Twelve men were at the top; six others were swimming up; three more were yet to leave the submarine--and after they had abandoned her, he, Ken, would follow with the torpoon and the food it contained.

So he thought, watching from where he lay, down below, and there was in him a great weariness after the triumph so bitterly fought for had been achieved. He rested through minutes of quiet and relaxation, watching what he had brought about; but only minutes--for suddenly without warning all security was gone.

From out the murky shadows to the left a sleek shape came flashing with great speed, to jerk Ken Torrance's eyes around and to widen them with quick alarm.

A sealman! A sealman alive, and moving--and vengeful! A sealman which the explosion of nitromite had not reached!

Doubtless the lone creature was surprised upon seeing all its fellows motionless, drifting like corpses upward, and the men of the _Peary_ escaping. With graceful, beautiful speed, a liquid streak, it flashed into the scene, eeling up and around and down, trying to understand what extraordinary thing had happened. But finally it slowed down and hovered some thirty feet directly above the dark hull of the _Peary_.

The men rising toward the ice had seen the sealman at the same time Ken Torrance had, and at once increased their efforts, fearing immediate attack. Quickly the two groups shot to the top where the other twelve were, and began a desperate fumbling progress over toward the hole that alone gave exit. But the sealman paid no attention to them. It was looking at something below.

Ken saw what it was.

The last three men were leaving the _Peary_. Awkward, swaying objects, they rose up directly in front of the hovering creature.

With an enraged thrust of flippers, it drove at them. The three humans--Sallorsen, Lawson and one other, Ken knew they must be--were clasped together, and the long, lithe, muscular body smote them squarely, sent them whirling and helpless in different directions in the sea-gloom. One of them was driven down by the force of the blow, and that one the sealman chose to finish first. It lashed at him, its strong teeth bared to rip the sea-suit, concentrating on him all the rage and all the thirst for vengeance it had.

But by then, down below, the torpoon's motors were throbbing at full power; the thin directional rudders were slanting; the torpoon was turning and pointing its nose upward; and Ken Torrance, his face bleak as the Arctic ice, was grasping the trigger of the nitro-sh.e.l.l gun.

He might perhaps have saved the doomed man had he swept straight up then and fired, but a quick mounting of the odds distracted him for a fatal second. Out of the deeper gloom at the left came a swiftly growing shadow, and Ken, with a sinking in his stomach, knew it for a second sealman.

Then another similar shadow brought his eyes to the right.

Two more sealmen! Three now--and how many more might come?

At once Ken knew what he must do before ever he fired a sh.e.l.l at one of the brown-skinned shapes. The man just attacked had to be sacrificed in the interests of the rest. The torpoon swerved, thrust up toward the ice ceiling under the full force of her motors; and when halfway to it, and her gun-containing bow was pointed at a spot in the ice only twenty feet in front of the foremost of the men stroking desperately towards the distant exit-hole, Ken pressed the trigger; and again, and again and again....

Twelve sh.e.l.ls, quick, on the same path, bit into the ice. Almost immediately came the first explosion. It was swelled by the others.

The ice shivered and crumbled in jagged splinters--and then there was a new column of light reaching down from the world of air and life into the darkness of the undersea. A roughly circular hole gaped in the ice sixty or seventy feet nearer the swimming men than the old one.

"That'll give 'em a chance," muttered Kenneth Torrance. He plunged the torpoon around and down. "And now for a fight!"

Without pause, now, there was, straight ahead, a hard, desperate duel, a fitting last fight for any torpoon or any man riding one. Each of the seven sh.e.l.ls left in the nitro-gun's magazine had to count; and the first of them gave a good example.

Ken turned down in time to see the death of the man first attacked.

His suit was ripped clean across, his air of life went up in bubbles, and the water came in. The seal-creature lunged at its falling victim a last time, and as it did so its smooth brown body crossed Ken's sights. The torpooner fired, and saw his sh.e.l.l strike home, for the body shuddered, convulsed, and the sealman, internally torn, went sinking in a dark cloud after the human it had slain.

That sight gave pause to the other two creatures that had arrived, and gave Ken Torrance a good second chance. Motor throbbing, the torpoon turned like a thing alive. Its snout and gun-sights swerving straight toward the next target. But, when just on the point of pressing the trigger, Ken's torpoon was struck a terrific blow and tumbled over and over. The whole external scene blurred to him, and only after a moment was he able to bring the torpoon back to an even keel.

He saw what had happened. While he had been sighting on the second seal-creature, the third had attacked the torpoon from the rear by striking it with all the strength of its heavy, muscular body. But it did not follow up its attack. For it had crashed in to the whirling propeller, and now it was hanging well back, its head horribly gashed by the steel blades.

For a moment the three combatants hung still, both sealmen staring at the torpoon as if in wonder that it could strike both with its bow and stern, and Ken Torrance rapidly glancing over the situation. The remaining two of the last group of three men, he saw, had reached the top, and the foremost of the _Peary's_ crew were within several feet of the new hole in the ice. In a very short time all would be out and safe. Until then he had to hold off the two sealmen.

Two? There were no longer only two, but five--ten--a dozen--and more.

The dead were coming to life!

Here and there in the various levels of drifting, motionless brown bodies that he thought the explosion had killed, one was stirring, awakening! The explosion had but stunned many or most of them, _and now they were returning to consciousness_!

CHAPTER VIII

_The Duel_

Upon seeing this, all hope for life left Ken. He had only six sh.e.l.ls left, and at best he could kill only six sealmen. Already, there were more than twenty about him, completely encircling the torpoon. They seemed afraid of it, and yet desirous of finishing it--they hung back, watching warily the thing that could strike and hurt from either end; but Ken knew, of course, that he could not count on their inaction long. One concerted charge would mean his quick end, and the death of most of the men above.

Well, there was only one thing to do--try to hold them off until those men above had climbed out, every one.

With this plan in mind, he maneuvered for a commanding position.

Quietly he slid his motor into gear, and slowly the torpoon rose. At this first movement, the wall of hesitating brown bodies broke back a little. It quickly pressed in again, however, as the torpoon came to a halt where Ken wanted it--a position thirty feet beneath, and slightly to one side, of the escaping men above, with an angle of fire commanding the area the sealmen would have to cross to attack them.

Almost at once came action. One of the surrounding creatures swerved suddenly up toward the men. Instinctively angling the torp, Ken sent a nitro-sh.e.l.l at it; and the chance aim was good. The projectile caught the sealman squarely, and, after the convulsion, it began to drift downward, its body torn apart.

"That'll teach you, d.a.m.n you!" Ken muttered savagely, and, to heighten the effect he had created, he brought his sights to bear on another sealman in the circle around him--and fired and killed.

This sight of sudden death told on the others. They grew obviously more fearful and gave back, though still forming a solid circle around the torpoon. The circle was ever thickening and deepening downward as more of those that the explosion had rendered unconscious returned to life.

And then, above, the first man reached the hole, clawed at its rough edges and levered himself through.

That was a signal. From somewhere beneath, two brown bodies flashed upward in attack. Fearing a general rush at any second, Ken fired twice swiftly. One sh.e.l.l missed, but the other slid to its mark.

Almost alongside its fellow, one of the creatures was shattered and torn, and that evidently altered the other's intentions, for it abandoned the attack and sought safety in the ma.s.s of its fellows on the farther side.

Another respite. Another man through the hole. And but two nitro-sh.e.l.ls left!