Ken Torrance glanced with dull, hopeless eyes over the compartment he stood in. Figures stretched out all over the deck, gasping, panting, strangling—men waiting in agony for death. His head sank down, and he wiped wet hands across his aching forehead. Nothing to do but wait—wait for the end—wait as the patient horde outside had been waiting in the sea-gloom for their moment of triumph, when the soft bodies inside the Peary would be theirs to rip and mangle....
A dragging sound brought Ken's eyes wearily up and to the side. One of the crew who had been lying on the deck was dragging his body painfully toward a row of lockers at one side of the compartment. The man's eyes were feverishly intent on the lockers.
Ken watched his progress dully, without thinking, as inch by inch he forced himself through the other bodies sprawled in his way. He saw him reach the lockers, and for a minute, gasping, lie there. He saw a clawing arm stretch almost up to the catch on one locker, while the man whimpered like a child at his lack of quick success.
Crash! The grinding blow of the torpoon hitting the quarsteel clanged out from behind. But Ken's mind was all on the reaching man's strange actions. He saw the fingers at last succeed in touching the catch. The door of the locker opened outward, and eagerly the man reached inside and pulled. With a thump, a row of heavy objects strung together rolled out onto the deck—and Ken Torrance sprang suddenly to the man's side:
"What are you doing?" he cried.
The man looked up sullenly. He mumbled:
"Damn fish—won't get me. I'll blow us all to hell, first!"
At that the connection struck Ken.
"Then that's nitromite!" he shouted. "That's the idea—the nitromite!"
And stooping down, he wrenched the rope of small black boxes which contained the explosive from the man who had worked so painfully to get them.