Under Arctic Ice, Harry Bates [books for 8th graders txt] 📗

with steel, and her stern, propellers, diving rudders; her port-locks, for the releasing of torpoons, were also of steel, as were the struts that braced her throughout—but the rest was quarsteel, glowing and golden as the heart of amber.

Beautiful with a wild yet scientific beauty was the Peary, but she was not free. She was trapped. She was fastened to the mud of the gloomy sea-floor.

Ropes held her down; and Ken Torrance knew those ropes of old. They were tough and strong, woven of many strands of seaweed, and twenty or thirty of them striped the Peary's two hundred feet of hull. Unevenly spaced, stretched clear over the ship from one side to the other, they were caught around her up-jutting conning tower, fastened through her rudders, and holding tight in a score of places. They held the submarine down despite all the buoyancy of her emptied tanks and the power of her twin propellers.

And the sealmen swam around her.

Restless dark shadows against the golden hull, they wavered and darted and poised, totally unafraid. Another in Kenneth Torrance's place would have put them down as some strange school of large seals, inordinately curious but nothing more; but the torpooner knew them as men—men remodeled into the shape of seals; men who, ages ago, had forsaken the land for the old home of all life, the sea; who, through the years, had gradually changed in appearance as their flesh had become coated with layers of cold-resisting blubber; whose movements had become adapted to the water; whose legs and arms had evolved into flippers; but whose heads still harbored the now faint spark of intelligence that marked them definitely as men.

Emotions similar to man's they had, though dulled; friendliness, curiosity, anger, hate, and—Ken knew and feared—even a capacity for vengeance. Vengeance! An eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth—the old law peculiar to man! Chanley Beddoes had slain one of them; if only the Peary's crew had not killed more! If only that, there might be hope!

First he must get inside the submarine. Warily, like a stalking cat, Ken Torrance inched the torpoon toward the great shining ship. At least he was in time. Within her he could see figures, most of them stretched out on the decks of her different compartments, but one of whom occasionally moved—slowly. He understood that. For weeks now the Peary had lain captive, and her air had passed beyond the aid of rectifiers. Tortured, those survivors inside were, constantly struggling for life, with vitality ever sinking lower. Some might already be dead. But at least he could try to save the rest.

He approached her from one side of the rear, for in the rear compartment were her two torpoon port-locks. The one on his side was empty, its outer door open. The torpoon it had held had been sent out, probably for help, and had not returned. It provided a means of entrance for him.

At perhaps a hundred feet from the port-lock, Ken halted again. His slim craft was almost indistinguishable in the murk: he felt reasonably safe from discovery. For minutes he watched the swimming sealmen, waiting for the best chance to dart in.

It was then, while studying the full length of the submarine more closely, that he saw that one compartment of her four was filled with water. Her steel-caped bow had been stove in. That, he conjectured, had been the original accident which had brought her down. It was not a fatal accident in itself, for there were three other compartments, all separated by watertight bulkheads, and the flooded one could be repaired by men in sea-suits—but then the sealmen had come and roped her down where she lay. Some of the creatures, he saw, were actually at that time inside the bow compartment, swimming around curiously amidst the clustered pipes, wheels and levers. It was a weird sight, and one that held his eyes fascinated.

But suddenly, through his absorption, danger prickled the short hairs of his neck. A lithe, sinuous shadow close ahead was wavering, and large, placid brown eyes were staring at him. A sealman! He was discovered! And instinctively, immediately, Ken Torrence brought the torpoon's accelerator down flat.

The shell jumped ahead with whirling propeller. The creature that had seen him doubled around and sped in retreat. In brief snatches, as the torpoon streaked across the hundred-foot gap to the empty port-lock, Ken glimpsed his discoverer gathering a group of its fellows, and saw brown-skinned bodies swarm after him with nooses of seaweed-rope—and then the great transparent side wall of the Peary was before him, and the port-locks dark opening. Ken threw his motor into reverse, slid the torpoon slightly to one side, and there was a jerk, a jar, and a sensation of something moving behind.

He turned to see the port-lock's outer door closing, activated by controls inside the submarine—and just in time to shut out the first of his pursuers. Then the port-lock's pumps were draining the water from the chamber, and the inner door clicked and opened.

Kenneth Torrance climbed stiffly from the torpoon to enter the interior of the long-lost and besieged exploring submarine Peary.

CHAPTER IV "No Chance Left"

His entrance was an unpleasant experience. He had forgotten the condition of the air inside the submarine, and what its effect on him, coming straight from comparatively good and fresh air, would be, until he was seized by a sudden choking grip around his throat. He reeled and gasped, and was for a minute nauseated. Lights flashed around him, and teetering backward he leaned weakly, against some metal object until gradually his head cleared; but his lungs remained tortured, and his breathing a thing of quick, agonised gulps.

Then came sounds. Figures appeared before him.

"From where—" "Who are you?"

"What—what—what—" "How did you?"

The half-coherent questions were couched in whispers. The men around him were blear-eyed and haggard-faced, their skins dry and bluish, and not a one was clad in more than undershirt and trousers. Alive and breathing, they were—but breathing grotesquely, horribly. They made awful noises at it; they panted, in quick, shallow sucks. Some lay on the deck at his feet, outstretched without energy enough to attempt to rise.

Beautiful and slumber-like the submarine had appeared from outside, but inside that effect was lost. There were the usual appurtenances: a maze of pipes, wheels, machinery, all silent now, and cold; here were the two port-locks for torpoons; the emergency steering controls; the small staterooms of the Peary's officers. Looking forward, still striving for complete clear-headedness and normality, Ken could see the two intact forward compartments, silent and apparently lifeless, with dim lamps burning. They ended with the watertight bulkhead which stood between them and the flooded bow compartment.

Ken at last found words, but even his short query cost a sickening effort.

"Where's—the commander?" he asked.

A man turned from where he had been leaning against a nearby wheel control. He was stripped to the waist. His tall body was stooped, and the skin of his ruggedly cut face drawn and parchment-like. His face had once been dignified and authoritative, but now it was that of a man who nears death after a long, bitter fight for life. The smile which he gave to Ken was painful—a mockery.

"I am," he said faintly. "Sallorsen. Just wait, please. A minute. I worked port-lock. Breath's gone...."

He sucked shallowly for air and let his smile go. And standing there, beside him, gazing at the worn frame, Ken felt strength come back. He had just entered; this man and the others had been here for weeks!

"I'm Sallorsen," the captain went on at last. All his words were clipped off, to cost minimum effort. "Glad you got through. Afraid you're come to prison, though."

"No!" Ken said emphatically. He spoke to the captain, but what he said was also for all the others grouped around him. "No, Captain! I'm Kenneth Torrance. Once torpooner with Alaska Whaling Company. They thought me crazy—crazy—'cause I told about sealmen. Put me in sanitarium. I knew they had you—when—heard you were missing." He pointed at the brown-skinned creatures that clustered close around the submarine outside her transparent walls. "I got free and came. Just in time."

"In time? For what?"

Another voice gasped out the question. Ken turned to a broad-shouldered man with a ragged growth of beard that had been a trim Van Dyke; and before the torpooner could answer, Sallorsen said:

"Dr. Lawson. One of our scientists. In time for what?"

"To get you and the submarine free," said Ken.

"How?"

Ken paused before replying. He gazed around—out the side walls of glistening quarsteel into the sea gloom, into the thick of the smooth, lithe, brown-skinned shapes that now and again poised pressing against the submarine, peering in with their liquid seal's eyes. Dimly he could see the taut seaweed ropes stretching down from the top of the Peary to the sea-bottom. It looked hopeless, and to these men inside it was hopeless. He knew he must speak in confident, assured tones to drive away the uncaring lethargy holding them all, and he framed definite, concise words with which to do it.

"These creatures have caught you," he began, "and you think they want to kill you. But look at them. They seem to be seals. They're not. They're men! Not men like us—half-men—sealmen, rather—changed into present form by ages of living in the water. I know. I was captured by them once. They're not senseless brutes; they have a streak of man's intelligence. We must communicate with that intelligence. Must reason with them. I did once. I can do it again.

"They're not really hostile. They're naturally peaceful; friendly. But my friend—dead now—killed one of them. Naturally they now think all creatures like us enemies. That's why they trapped your sub.

"They think you're enemies; think you want to kill them. But I'll tell them—through pictures, as I did once before—that you mean them no harm. I'll tell them you're dying and must have air—just as they must. I'll tell them to release submarine and we'll go away and not disturb them again. Above all I must get across that you wish them no harm. They'll listen to what my pictures will say—and let us go—'cause at heart they're friendly!"

He paused—and with a ghastly, twisted smile, Captain Sallorsen whispered:

"The hell you say!"

His sardonic comment brought a sudden chill to Kenneth Torrance. He feared one thing that would render his whole value useless. He asked quickly:

"What have you done?"

"Those seals," Sallorsen's labored voice continued "—they've killed eight of us. Now they're killing all."

"But have you killed any of them?" Breathless, Ken waited for the answer be feared.

"Yes. Two."

The men were all staring at Ken, so he had to hide the awful dejection which clamped his heart. He only said:

"That's what I feared. It changes everything. No use trying to reason with them now." He fell silent. "Well," he said at last, trying to appear more cheerful, "tell me what happened. Maybe there's something you've overlooked."

"Yes," Sallorsen whispered. He started to come forward to the torpooner, but stumbled and would have fallen had not Ken caught him in time. He put one of the captain's arms around his shoulder, and one of his own around the man's waist.

"Thanks," Sallorsen said wryly. "Walk forward. Show you what happened."

There were men in the second compartment, and they still fought to live. From the narrow seamen's berths that lined the walls came the sound of breathing even more torturous than that of the men in the rear. In the single bulb's dim light Ken could see their shapes stretched motionlessly out, panting and panting. Occasionally hands reached up to claw at straining necks, as if to try and rid throats of strangling grasps. Two figures had won free from the long struggle. They lay silent and still, the outline of their dead bodies showing through the sheets pulled over them.

Slowly Sallorsen led Ken through this compartment and into the next, which was bare of men. Here were the ship's main controls—her helm, her central multitude of dials, levers and wheels, her televisiscreen and old-fashioned emergency periscope. A metal labyrinth it was, all long silent and inactive. Again the weird contrast struck Ken, for outside he could still see the scene of vigorous, curious life that the sealmen constituted. Close they came to the submarine's sheer walls of quarsteel, peering in stolidly, then flashing away with an effortless thrust of flippers, sometimes for air from some break in the surface ice.

Like men, the sealmen needed air to live, and got it fresh and clean from the world above. Inside, real men were gasping, fighting, hopelessly, yielding slowly to the invisible death that lay in the poisonous stuff they had to breathe....

Ken felt Sallorsen nudge him. They had come to the forward end of the control compartment, and could go no farther. Before them was the watertight door,