Bob sent the Neptune down five fathoms and they slipped under the ice pack.
Hour after hour passed as the Neptune crept under the great mass of ice. At times it was necessary to go down to 10 and 12 fathoms but for the most part they were only five or six fathoms under the ice. The Neptune was a good underwater boat, steady and smooth-riding and the crew experienced little discomfort. There was plenty of air for 40 hours under the ice and they felt no alarm, when, at the end of twenty hours, they had failed to find an opening.
They stopped and made a test with the ice drill which had been especially designed and installed for just such an emergency but the device jammed tight before they could get it working and that avenue of escape was cut off.
When another ten hours had elapsed and they were still groping blindly under the ice. Bob expressed his private opinion that they were in a tight situation. Harry agreed as he stood beside the first officer in the control room. Another three hours slipped away and the air was heavy. Harry’s head felt light and the blood raced through his veins. Unless they found an opening soon it would be curtains for the Neptune and its crew. Gilbert Mathews relieved Bob at the main controls and the first officer walked back to the radio cubby with Harry.
“If we don’t get out of this,” he said, “no one will ever know what happened to us. They’ll have plenty of guesses and some of them will be right, but they’ll never really know. I wish you could get a message through.”
“So do I,” said Harry, “but that won’t be possible until we emerge.”
“I’m all in,” confessed Bob, “and I don’t suppose worrying will help us any. Wake me up in half an hour,” he added as he slumped down in the one comfortable canvas chair in the room.
Harry returned to the control room where a white-faced, worried crew stuck grimly to their stations.
The air was bad; lights dim. They were barely creeping forward. Several of the men dropped at their posts and were carried away by more fortunate companions. Others took their places. The chief engineer, a quiet Yankee, came in to tell the explorer that the power was going. The batteries wouldn’t last more than another hour.
There was nothing Harry could do in the control room and he returned to his own quarters. Bob was sound asleep in the chair. One dim light glowed over the now useless radio set. Harry sat down and picked up a message blank. He’d write a note to Andy and Bert. Someone might find the hulk of the submarine some day; a freak of the Arctic might cast it where it would again be viewed by man.