_In a Biscuit Can_
Ken Torrance glanced with dull, hopeless eyes over the compartment he
stood in. Figures stretched out all over the deck, gasping, panting,
strangling--men waiting in agony for death. His head sank down, and he
wiped wet hands across his aching forehead. Nothing to do but
wait--wait for the end--wait as the patient horde outside had been
waiting in the sea-gloom for their moment of triumph, when the soft
bodies inside the _Peary_ would be theirs to rip and mangle....
A dragging sound brought Ken's eyes wearily up and to the side. One of
the crew who had been lying on the deck was dragging his body
painfully toward a row of lockers at one side of the compartment. The
man's eyes were feverishly intent on the lockers.
Ken watched his progress dully, without thinking, as inch by inch he
forced himself through the other bodies sprawled in his way. He saw
him reach the lockers, and for a minute, gasping, lie there. He saw a
clawing arm stretch almost up to the catch on one locker, while the
man whimpered like a child at his lack of quick success.
_Crash!_ The grinding blow of the torpoon hitting the quarsteel
clanged out from behind. But Ken's mind was all on the reaching man's
strange actions. He saw the fingers at last succeed in touching the
catch. The door of the locker opened outward, and eagerly the man
reached inside and pulled. With a thump, a row of heavy objects strung
together rolled out onto the deck--and Ken Torrance sprang suddenly to
the man's side:
"What are you doing?" he cried.
The man looked up sullenly. He mumbled:
"Damn fish--won't get me. I'll blow us all to hell, first!"
At that the connection struck Ken.
"Then that's nitromite!" he shouted. "That's the idea--the nitromite!"
And stooping down, he wrenched the rope of small black boxes which
contained the explosive from the man who had worked so painfully to
get them.
"I'll do the blowing, boy!" he said. "Don't worry; I'll do it
complete!"
* * * * *
Ken, holding the rope of explosives, crossed the deck and pulled
Sallorsen and Lawson around. Their worn faces, with lifeless,
bloodshot eyes, met his own strong features, and he said forcefully:
"Now listen! I need your help. I've found our one last chance for
life. We three are the strongest, and we've got to work like hell.
Understand?"
His enthusiasm and the vigor of his words roused them.
"Yes," said Lawson. "What--we do?"
"You say there's an hour's air left in the sea-suits?" Torrance asked
the captain.
"Yes. An hour."
"Then get the men into the suits," the torpooner ordered. "Help the
weaker ones; slap them till they obey you!" There came the ugly,
deafening crash of the hurled torpoon into the compartment door. Ken
finished grimly: "And for God's sake, hurry! I'll explain later."
Sallorsen and Lawson unquestioningly obeyed. Ken had reached the
spirit in them, the strength not physical, that had all but been
driven out by the long, hopeless weeks and the poisonous stuff that
passed for air, and it had risen and was responding. Sallorsen's
voice, for the first time in days, had his old stern tone of command
in it as, calling on everything within him, he shouted:
"Men, there's still a chance! Everyone into sea-suits! Quick!"
A few of the blue-skinned figures lying panting on the deck looked up.
Fewer moved. They did not at once understand. Only four or five
dragged themselves with pathetic eagerness towards the pile of
sea-suits and the little store of fresh air that remained in them.
Sallorsen repeated his command.
"Hurry! Men--you, Hartley and Robson and Carroll--your suits on!
There's air in them! _Put 'em on!_"
* * * * *
And then Lawson was among them, shaking the hopeless, dying forms,
rousing them to the chance for life. Several more crawled to obey. By
the time the next crash of the torpoon came, eleven out of the
twenty-one survivors were working with clumsy, eager fingers at their
sea-suits, pushing feet and legs in, drawing the tough fabric up over
their bodies, sliding their arms in, and struggling with quick panting
breaths to raise the heavy helmets and fasten them into place.
Then--air!
Again the ear-shattering crash. The scientist and the captain drove at
the rest of the crew. They stumbled, those two fighting men, and twice
Lawson went down in a heap as his legs gave under him; but he got up
again, and they began dragging the suits to the men who had not even
the strength to rise, shoving inert limbs into place, switching on the
air-units inside the helmets and, gasping themselves, fastening the
helmets down. Theirs was a conflict as cruel, as hard and brutal as
men smashing at each other with fists, and they then proved their
right to the shining roll of honor, wherever and whatever that roll
may be. They fought on past pain, past sickness, past poisoning, that
man of action and men of the laboratory.
And outside that foul transparent pit the tempo quickened also. The
sledging blows at the last door came quicker. All around the captive
_Peary_ the sleek brown bodies stirred uneasily. For weeks there had
been but little activity inside the submarine; now, all at once, three
of the figures that were men whipped the others into action, rousing
those lying dying on the deck--working, working. Observing this, the
lithe seal bodies moved with new nervous, restless strokes, to and
fro, never pausing--passing up and down in a milling stream the length
of the craft, clustering closest outside the walls of the fourth
compartment, where they pressed as close as they could, their wide
brown eyes already on the haggard forms that worked inside, their
smooth bodies patterned by the constantly shifting shadows of their
fellows above and behind.
So they watched and waited, while in the third compartment the
battered torpoon was slung at the last door, and drawn back, and slung
again--waited for the final moment, the crisis of their month-long
siege beneath the floes of the silent Arctic sea!
* * * * *
Kenneth Torrance worked by himself.
He saw that Sallorsen and Lawson had answered his call; man after man
was clad in his suit and sucking in the incomparably fresher, though
artificial, air of the units. As he had hoped, that air was
revitalizing the worn-out bodies rapidly, giving them new strength and
clearing their brains. His plan required that--strength for the men to
move and act for themselves--sane heads!
The plan was basically simple. Bringing his best concentration to the
all-important details, Ken started to build the road to the world
above.
First he opened the inner door of the starboard port-lock, wherein lay
his torpoon. Opening the entrance panel of the steel shell, he quickly
transferred within the cans of compressed food retrieved from the
second compartment. When he had finished, there was left barely room
for the pilot's body.
And then the nitromite.
The explosive was carried by the _Peary_ for the blasting of such ice
floes as might trap her. It was contained for chemical stability in a
half dozen six-inch-square, water-proof boxes, strung one after
another on an interconnecting wired rope. Ken would need them all; he
wished he had five times as many. It would not matter if the whole of
the _Peary_ were shattered to slivers.
Ken tied the rope of boxes into a strong unit, as small as it could be
made. Firing and timing mechanisms were contained in each unit: he
would only have to set one of them. He wrapped the whole charge,
except for one small corner, in several pieces of the men's discarded
clothing--monkey jackets, thick sweaters, a dirty towel--and stuffed
it in an empty tin container for sea-biscuits.
* * * * *
All this had taken only minutes. But in those minutes the quarsteel of
the watertight door had been subjected to half a dozen smashing blows,
and already a flaw had appeared in the pane. Another grinding crunch,
and there would be the visible beginning of a crack. Three more,
perhaps, and the door would be down.
But the plan was laid, the counter move ready; and, as Sallorsen and
Lawson, last of them all, got into suits, Ken Torrance, in short,
gasping sentences, explained it.
"All the nitromite's in this," Ken said. "I hope it's enough. In a
moment I'll set the timing to explode it in one minute--then eject it
from the empty torpoon port-lock. It's a gamble, but I think the
explosion should kill every damned seal around the sub. Water carries
such shocks for miles, so it should stun, if not kill, all the others
within a long radius. See? We'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,
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....