"O. K., I guess. An awful headache."
"Can you stand up?"
"Yes."
Ward's face appeared in the ray of light, pale and blood-streaked.
"I wonder what happened."
"It sounded like a collision."
They stared at one another with fearful eyes. A collision while underseas in a submarine is a serious matter.
"Where's Solino?"
Justus Miles ran the beam of his torch this way and that, and saw that the room was in a fearful confusion. The gyroscopic mechanism had broken from its fastenings and rolled forward. Somewhere beneath its crushing weight lay the control board and the swarthy operator. Then they saw Solino, still in his overturned wheelchair, the cloak drawn tightly about himself and it; but the top of his head was crushed in like an eggshell. Justus Miles had touched that head when he stretched out his hand in the darkness.
He and Ward had been saved from death as by a miracle. Over their heads the great piston had hurtled, killing Solino and tearing through the steel partition into the chamber beyond, visiting it with death and destruction. One hasty examination of that place was enough. The men in there were dead.