“We’ve got to do something—and do it quick,” Billy asserted anxiously. “I’m getting——”
He collapsed. Michael extended his hand to help him, and also stumbled.
Like lightning Epworth acted. Grasping Billy by the collar in one hand and Michael in the other he pulled them up to the point in the warehouse where the panel opened into the chamber Joan was occupying, and drawing a box up put them in a position where they could get a breath of air through the hole. It was only a breath but he had reasoned that Toplinsky would not put his sister where she would die for want of atmosphere, and now found that he had reasoned correctly. They could barely thrust a portion of their faces toward the hole. It was not large enough for all three to get air, and heroically he pushed his companions forward.
Joan, stretched on her couch sobbing, heard a tap on the panel that separated her compartment from the storeroom. Curiously she got up and pushed back the panel. In front of her was Billy’s face and the face of a guard. Both were chattering with cold.
“O-open the panel full out,” Billy choked. “We are dying for want of air.”
“Mercy!” Joan ejaculated with infinite relief. “I thought you had left the airship. Where is Julian?”
Billy shoved his head aside from the blessed air hole and caught Epworth. He was just in time to keep his companion from falling.
“Here he is,” he replied. “Get your face away from the panel so we can all get a breath of that air. This compartment is shut off from the air tanks and we will soon die if we get away from this hole.”
However all three men soon revived, and pulled boxes up to the air panel to stand on.