"There don't appear to be anything doing up above," ventured Mike
Mowrey as he glided up alongside the two boys.
"Guess not," faltered Ted. "We seem to be right up against it."
All hope of rescue was abandoned. For nearly thirty-six hours now the Dewey had remained under water. Her crew of men, breathing over and over again the same supply of air, were rapidly exhausting the life-sustaining reserves of oxygen. Little by little the precious stores had been liberated until now very little remained. Many of the men were coughing asthmatically; several were languishing in a dumb stupor from the fetid air.
Ted could not help turning his attention to the huge ventilator shaft that fed fresh air into the Dewey when she was cruising on the surface. He remembered well that first undersea dive back home in an American port when he and Jack had discussed the possibilities of ever being lost on the bottom of the sea with the ship's air supply cut off. Now he was face to face with that very situation. The thought chilled his blood and he found it very hard to be brave under the circumstances.
Jean Cartier, his face blanched and his hair ruffled, appeared in the torpedo compartment, the picture of dismay.
"It ees ze veery hard thing to breathe back there," he gasped, pointing over his shoulder toward the engine room aft.
Almost immediately the boys forward could hear Commander Mcclure giving orders to open the reserve oxygen tanks. Under the emergency measures adopted living conditions were for the time greatly relieved; but every man aboard knew this relief was but temporary and realized that in twenty-four hours more at the most the supply of oxygen would be entirely exhausted.
The morning wore on to noon and mess was served to a crew of men who cared little to eat. Grim disaster stared them in the face.
The meal over, Commander McClure called a council of his aides in the control chamber. It lasted ten minutes, at the end of which time "Little Mack" sent word to Chief Engineer Blaine to assemble all his men with the remainder of the crew in the torpedo compartment. One by one they came forward in response to the call until the entire crew was assembled. Then the submarine skipper stepped forward.
"Men of the Dewey," he began, in slow even tones, "I want first of all to thank every man here for the splendid work he has done since we left God's country. We have established a record that, whether we live or die, will become an essential part of the history of the United States. The crew that we started with is intact, save for one brave man—-Jack Hammond—-who, on his own petition, was the first to be shot out of our stranded submersible in hopes that he might bring us succor. What has happened to him it is impossible to say, but what he has done, you can do, and it is the only thing you can do." He spoke hopelessly. "I have tried every means I can think of to float the Dewey, and we have been unable to move so much as an inch. We are helpless—-foundered. We are breathing the last of our reserve stores of fresh air. By to-morrow morning they will probably be exhausted, and you know what that means."