Gone in an instant was the shriek and fury of the storm and in its place the calm, slow-heaving silence of underwater. The plane was shattered in a dozen places, but the torpoon had easily stood it.
Ken turned to action. He switched on the torpoon's dashboard lights and twin bow-beams, and saw that the shell was wedged in the fuselage. The plane was apparently entirely under the surface, and her interior filled with water.
Holding the propeller in neutral, he revved up the powerful electric motor. Then he bit the propeller in, slowly. The torpoon nudged back for inches. Then, throwing the gear into forward, Ken gave her full speed. The torpoon leaped ahead, crunched through the weakened corner ahead and was free.
It was a world of drab tones that she came into. Down below was impenetrable blackness, shading softly overhead into blue-gray which was mottled by lighter areas from breaks in the floes above. All was calm. There was no sign of life save for an occasional vague shadow that, melting swiftly away, might have been a fish or seaweed. Placid always, would be this shrouded sea of mystery, no matter what furious tempest raged above over the flat leagues of ice and water.
But the seeming peacefulness was but a mask for danger. Kenneth Torrance's face was set in sober lines as he sped the slim torpoon northward, her bow lights shafting long white fingers before her. For now there was only one path—and that lay ahead. He could not turn back. Storm and water had destroyed the plane that could take him back to land. He could not possibly reach any outpost of civilization in the torpoon, for her cruising radius was only twenty hours. He had planned to land the amphibian on the ice above the spot where the Peary had disappeared, then find a break in the ice and slide down below in the torpoon on his quest—to return to the plane if it proved fruitless. But now there was no retreat. It was succeed, or die.
And with that realization a more dreadful thought flashed into his mind. All those men, of the whaling company and the sanitarium, thought him a little crazy. And, since lunatics are always convinced of the reality of their visions, what if the sealmen—his adventure amidst them—had been but a dream, a nightmare, an hallucination? What if he were in truth crazy? The fear grew rapidly. What if he were? God! He, hunting for the Peary, when all those planes and men had failed! He, expecting to achieve what those searchers, with far greater resources, had not been able to! Did not that give evidence that his mind was twisted? Creatures, half-seal, half-men, living under the ice—it certainly seemed a lunatic's obsession.
Then something within him rose and fought back.
"No!" he cried aloud. "I'll go bugs if I think like that! Those sealmen were real—and I know where they are. I'm going on!"
And, an hour later, the dashboard's shaded dials told him he was on the exact spot where the Peary had last reported....