And the sea-suits. He had struggled for them and had saved them, but what use could he put them to? Go out leading a desperate final sally for the hole in the ice above? Death in minutes!
No hope. Nothing. Not even a fighting chance. These seal-creatures, strange seed of the Arctic ice, had trapped the Peary all too well. On the roll of mysteriously missing ships would her name go down; and he, Ken Torrance, would be considered a lunatic who had sought suicide, and found it....
Of the twenty-one survivors of the Peary's officers and crew, only a dozen had the will to watch the inexorable advance of the sealmen. The rest lay in various attitudes on the deck of the rear compartment, showing no sign of life save torturous, shallow pantings for air and, occasionally, spasmodic clutchings at their throats and chests, as they tried to fight off the deadly, invisible foe that was slowly strangling them.
Ken Torrance, Sallorsen, the scientist, Lawson, and a few others were pressed together at the last watertight door, peering through the quarsteel at the sea-creatures' systematic assault on the door leading into the third compartment. A straight, hard smash at it; another final splintering smash—and again the torpoon pushed through in the van of a cascade of icy, greenish water, which quickly claimed the control compartment for the attackers behind. The creatures were growing bolder. More and more of them had entered the submarine, and soon each open compartment was filled from deck to ceiling with the slowly turning, graceful brown bodies, inspecting minutely the countless wheels and levers and gauges, and inspecting also, in turns, the pale, worn faces that stared with dull eyes at them through the sole remaining door.
There was no further retreat, now. Behind was only water and the swarm that passed to and fro through it. Water and sealmen—ahead, above, to the sides, behind—everywhere. Cooped in their transparent cell, the crew of the submarine Peary waited the end.
Once more, as well as he could with his throbbing head and heavy, choking body, Kenneth Torrance tracked over the old road that had brought him nowhere, but was the only road open. Carefully he took stock of everything he had that he might possibly fight with.
There were sea-suits for the men, and in each suit an hour's supply of artificial but invigorating air. Two port-locks, one on each side of the stern compartment. A torpoon, with a gun and nineteen shells. Nothing else? There seemed to be, in his mind, a vague memory of something else ... something that might possibly be of use ... something.... But he could not remember. Again and again the agony of slow strangulation he was going through drove everything but the consciousness of pain from his shirking mind. But there was something else—and perhaps it was the key. Perhaps if he could only remember it—whatever it was—whether a tangible thing or merely a passing idea of hours ago—the way out would be suddenly revealed.
But he could not remember. He had the sea-suits, the port-locks and the torpoon: what possible pattern could he weave them into to bring deliverance?