Fifty—sixty—eighty fathoms she sank, and still the ice glittered before her. A hundred—and still no opening, and Mervyn’s face grew strained and white as the moments sped by.
What if the base of the great ice barrier rested upon the ocean bed? What if it were not a floating chain of ice mountains, as he believed, but an immovable line of cliffs, their icy feet gripping the sandy bed of the Polar Sea?
Such might easily be the case; and if so, what then?
Ay! what then?
The scientist answered the question for himself.
A humiliating retreat from the barrier which had battled them; a still more humiliating return to their native shore, there to endure the scoffs and sneers of every dabbler in science who could put pen to paper.
He had staked so much on the outcome of this expedition. His very reputation trembled in the balance. Never again would he be able to lift his head among his rivals, should this, his pet theory, prove a delusion.
Still lower the submarine sank, and no sign was there of an ending of the ice; lower, every plate in her hull creaking beneath the enormous pressure.
Mervyn glanced uneasily at Garth.
“Will she stand it?” he asked, in a hoarse whisper. The inventor consulted a small dial set in the turret wall.