“I will get you open! I will! I will!” he cried again and again.
But even his frame gave way at last, and suddenly his eyes grew dim and he felt as if a sword had been plunged through and through him.
As everything grew black, Nat, with a last effort of consciousness, clutched at something to save himself from being plunged backward into space.
He caught it, or thought he did, and then his senses went out from him with a vivid flash and a terrible roaring in his ears like the sound of a hundred waterfalls.
Half an hour later, or at ten o’clock, Joe Hartley opened his eyes. At first he hardly knew what had befallen him; but in a few seconds his recollection came back with a rush. He remembered that the Discoverer had seemed doomed, recalled Nat’s plunge through the door and how he had tried to follow his chum, but had fallen, overcome by exhaustion, at the door.
But now all the chill was out of the air, bright sunlight streamed through the pilot-house ports, and the professor and Mr. Tubbs, both of whom had collapsed on the floor, were sitting up looking about them rather bewilderedly. The professor was the first to speak.
“A miracle has happened,” he declared. “The Discoverer is out of danger.”
“The barograph shows twenty-five hundred feet,” announced Joe, who had been studying that instrument.
“Where are the others?” asked Mr. Tubbs, rising rather weakly to his feet.