TRAPPED!
SWIFT as an arrow the submarine swept forward towards the volcano, the
foam leaping from her steel nose in two mighty, diverging lines.
Without a doubt she was the first vessel to furrow the waters of
the lake; yet the explorers would gladly have dispensed with the empty
honour of being the discoverers of this barren and desolate region,
if, in exchange, they might have retraced their course.
But the magnetic power held them too tightly!
With a shock which flung the occupants of her turret to the
floor, the _Seal_ struck the beach immediately below the crater,
burying her prow deep in the yielding sand.
As her quivering hull came to a standstill, another booming
explosion burst from the volcano, and once more a lurid flash of flame
leapt from its glowing mouth, far into the sulphur-laden air
above.
“Great Heaven!” cried Seymour, “we’re done now for sure!”
As the words left his lips Garth entered the turret.
“The engines are absolutely useless,” he said gloomily. “Heaven
alone knows what’s come to them----”
Glancing outside, he paused in the middle of his sentence,
stricken dumb by the perilous position of the _Seal._
“Let me introduce you to the North Pole,” Silas said
sarcastically; “nice cheerful location, ain’t it?”
“And this is the lodestar of the explorers!” Garth exclaimed in
disgust, “to reach which so many lives have been sacrificed on the
ice-fields of the Arctic Seas.”
“It is a terrible disappointment,” muttered Mervyn. “I thought to
find here a habitable island, with perhaps men and beasts; but even
the sense of disappointment wanes before the peril of the position
into which we have been dragged by this magnetic attraction.”
“Magnetic attraction!” cried the inventor; “whatever do you
mean?”
“This,” returned the scientist: “the mysterious force which is
holding your engines, which prevents us opening the door, and has also
jammed the steering gear, is the same power that causes the needle of
the compass to point to the north!”
The inventor stared in amazement.
“Then what hope have we of ever getting away?” he asked at
length.
“None whatever,” was the reply, and at that Garth relapsed into
silence. Each man was busy with his own thoughts, each was striving to
find some way of escape from the perilous situation in which they
found themselves; but, try as they might, no gleam of hope presented
itself.
The vessel on which their very existence depended was helpless as
a log in the grip of the giant natural forces of the magnetic
mountain; and, added to this, was the ever-increasing peril from the
crater, which was now flinging out a veritable cataract of glowing
stones, to the accompaniment of numerous awe-inspiring explosions.
“I’m afraid it’s a case,” Seymour said at length. “Twenty-four
hours will see the last of this expedition, unless the sulphur cloud
lifts so that we can get some air. How long do you reckon the air will
last, Garth?”
The inventor’s answer was drowned in a thunderous detonation,
which shook every plate in the _Seal’s_ hull.
The side of the cone above her burst open, and a torrent of
glowing lava, leaping forth, plunged downward towards the lake.
For an instant it seemed as though the ill-fated submarine would
be overwhelmed; but, changing its course at the last moment, with a
deafening roar the lava river emptied itself into the lake.
The uproar which followed baffles description.
A series of fearful reports rang out as the two elements met, and
the maddened waters, driven backwards for a moment by the fury of the
molten torrent, rolled shoreward once more in one tremendous wave,
beneath which, for a short time, the _Seal_ was completely
submerged.
The water hissed and boiled as it poured over the cooling lava,
and a cloud of sulphurous vapour rolled upward from the surface of the
lake, to lose itself amid the whirling wreaths of the brooding cloud
above.
The heat became terrible as the time went on.
The atmosphere of the boat was like that of an oven, and great
beads of sweat poured off the watchers, as they stood, with straining
eyes and haggard faces, gazing on all the awful grandeur of the
eruption.
Their furs they had long since laid aside, and, ere long, their
jackets followed; but the feeling of oppression seemed to lessen not a
whit.
Their tongues were dry as parchment, despite the copious draughts
of water with which they attempted to slake their thirst.
The food which Garth had prepared lay untasted on the saloon
table; for their terrible situation had, for the time, at any rate,
driven all thoughts of eating from the explorers’ minds.
The engineer was still below, striving even yet to discover the
cause of the--to him--inexplicable behaviour of his
engines.
“I am sorry for this, my friends,” Mervyn said at length, with a
strange, unnatural quiver in his voice. “Would God I had never led you
on this fatal voyage! As for me, I have almost reached the allotted
span; my work is done, and I may as well face death here as elsewhere.
But you had many years of life before you yet, had it not been for
this ill-fated journey, and my own death will be embittered by the
thought that I have led you into yours.”
The American fixed his piercing eyes upon the scientist’s face as
he finished speaking.
“See here, Mervyn,” he said, “don’t you go blamin’ yourself for
what ain’t your fault. I guess not one of us reckoned on strikin’ this
yer magnetic volcano, else we’d ha’ come in a wooden boat, ’stead of
this old steel tank. What we’ve got to do as I figure it out is to
keep a stiff lip to the last. I calculate me an’ Seymour’s been in
tighter corners than this before now, an’ come out right side up after
all, eh, William?”
“Yes,” Seymour replied, “we’ve pulled some big things off
together, you and I, Silas, but I am afraid this is the end. We only
realise our own weakness when we are pitted against the forces of
Nature. Great Heaven!”
His sentence ended in a startled exclamation, as a monster
boulder, white-hot from the crater-mouth, hurtled close over the
turret roof and splashed into the lake, hissing and spluttering scarce
three yards from the stern of the _Seal._
But of all the showers of glowing missiles which followed, not
one came near the boat.
Her very nearness to the base of the cone proved her salvation
from this frightful peril; for the flying boulders, any one of which
could have crushed the _Seal_ to scrap-iron, whizzed high
overhead, illuminating the waters of the lake with a fiery glare, as
they plunged, hissing, beneath the surface.
The beach beneath the vessel heaved and fell, and tongues of
flame leapt from the lake, to meet the glowing hail of stones.
The outer line of cliffs bent and swayed as though shaken by a
giant hand, and, amid all this fearful confusion, rang the thunderous
reports from the crater, deafening and terrible.
Crash succeeded crash, explosion followed explosion, and the
waters of the lake, lashed to fury, once more roared over the helpless
_Seal._
For the second time since her arrival in this gloomy lake the
vessel was submerged.
When the waters again receded the din of the eruption had ceased,
but the brooding silence--pregnant with sinister
meaning--which had followed, was almost worse than the volcanic
outbreak.
The character of the surrounding cliffs was altogether
changed.
Where the canyon had been a steaming wall of rock towered, its
summit lost to sight in the overhanging veil of smoke, so that there
was now no possible means of escape to the sea!
The watchers gazed with despairing eyes upon this fresh
misfortune.
It was the last straw.
“Wal, I guess that fixes us,” the Yankee snapped; “unless there
happens to be a miracle knockin’ around, this yer outfit’s on its last
legs.”
His words sent a shiver through his comrades. Knowing Haverly as
they did, knowing the indomitable spirit of the man, the words sounded
as their death-warrant.
Bad indeed was the case when Silas gave up hope.
“Say, Mervyn,” he continued, after a pause of a few moments, “you
call this location the North Pole? I reckon if I had the naming of it,
it ’uld be the ‘Gate of Hell,’ spelt large. Of all the God-forsaken
parts I ever struck, this romps in an easy first. The Yellowstone
Badlands are a paradise to this yer settlement!”
Hereafter a gloomy silence settled upon the party, broken at
length by the appearance of Wilson.
“The thing’s beyond me!” he exclaimed; “not a rod is out of
place, not a screw is missing, yet never a stroke can I get out of
them for all my trying.”
In a few terse sentences Garth explained to the engineer the
cause of the breaking down of the machinery.
“Great Scott!” cried Wilson, “you don’t mean----?”
He broke off short, as a rumbling explosion burst from the
crater.
The eruption had recommenced!
Moving to the window, Wilson peered out through the steam-covered
glass. As he did so a great shaft of flame shot upward from the water
alongside, scorching the paint on the vessel’s hull.
With a startled exclamation the engineer shrank back from the
window.
“Can nothing be done?” he asked, turning to Garth.
“Nothing,” returned the inventor, “for, see, even could we get
the engines to work, the passage to the sea is blocked.”
“But you cannot mean that there is no hope?” Wilson persisted.
“Surely there is some way out of this accursed lake?”
“Then I guess it’s got to be found,” the Yankee broke in sharply.
“This is how the thing pans out: if we stop here it means suffocatin’;
if we bust the glass and clear outside, the sulphur’ll do the trick
for us in a little less than no time.”
“It resolves itself into a choice of deaths,” remarked Seymour,
“one slow and terrible, the other terrible enough, but mercifully
swift.”
“Precisely,” agreed the millionaire; “but I reckon there’s no
manner of sense in rushin’ on your fate. I’m stayin’ right here.”
Even as the words left his lips, a series of deafening explosions
rang out, each one louder than the preceding: the whole culminating in
one stupendous crash, which shook the island to its very
foundations.
While yet the last echoes of this fearful cannonade reverberated
amid the cliffs, a giant wave roared furiously up from the bed of the
lake, and tearing the _Seal_ from her sandy bed, bore her fifty
feet into the air.
For one brief instant it swayed there, then its crest curled
over, and with a thunderous roar, it plunged downward.
Downward--the water seething and boiling around the vessel,
threatening each moment to beat in the glass of the turret; still
downward--the _Seal_ whirling like a straw in the grip of
the maddened waters, and the occupants of her turret clinging for dear
life to the walls. The deck of the vessel sloped like the roof of a
house as she surged downward in the glissade of waters.
Behind her an inky wall curled and foamed, urging her into the
depths. Then suddenly she righted for a moment, and Haverly, gazing
out anxiously over the waste of waters from his post at the wheel,
caught a glimpse of a fearful black chasm, which yawned where once the
bed of the lake had been, and into this the waters were plunging in a
mighty cataract.
“My God!” cried the American hoarsely, and even as the prayer
left his lips, the vessel lurched, heeled over, and was borne swiftly
downward into the depths of the abyss.