CHAPTER II
_The Crash_
At a few minutes before eight o'clock, Air Mail Pilot Steve Chapmanwas enjoying a quiet cigarette while waiting for the mechanics to warmup the five hundred horses of his mail plane satisfactorily. Halfwaythrough, he heard, from behind, a quick patter of feet, and, turning,he observed a figure clad in flannel trousers and sweater. Thecigarette dropped right out of his mouth as he cried:
"Ken! Ken Torrance!"
"Thank God you're here!" said Kenneth Torrance. "I gambled on it.Steve, I've got to borrow your own personal plane."
"What?" gasped Steve Chapman. "What--what--?"
"Listen, Steve. I haven't been with the whaling company lately; beenresting, down here--secluded. Didn't know that submarine, the _Peary_,was missing. I just learned. And I know damned well what's happened toit. I've got to get to it, quick is I can, and I've got to have aplane."
Steve Chapman said rather faintly:
"But--where was the _Peary_ when they last heard from her?"
"Some twelve hundred miles from the Pole."
"And you want to get there in a plane? From here?"
"Must!"
"Boy, you stand about one chance in twenty!"
"Have to take it. Time's precious, Steve. I've got to stop in at theAlaska Whaling Company's outpost at Point Christensen, then right onup. I can't even begin unless I have a plane. You've got to help me onmy one chance of bringing the _Peary's_ men out alive! You'll probablynever see the plane again, Steve, but--"
"To hell with the plane, if you come through with yourself and thosemen," said the pilot. "All right, kid, I don't get it all, but I'mplaying with you. You're taking my own ship."
He led Ken to a hangar wherein stood a trim five-passenger amphibian;and very soon that amphibian was roaring out her deep-throated song ofpower on the line, itching for the air, and Steve Chapman was shoutinga few last words up to the muffled figure in the enclosed controlcockpit.
"Fuel'll last around forty hours," he finished. "You'll find twohundred per, easy, and twenty-five hours should take you clear toPoint Christensen. I put gun and maps in the right pocket; food inthat flap behind you. Go to it, Ken!"
Ken Torrance gripped the hand outstretched to his and held it tight.He could say nothing, could only nod--this was a real friend. He gavethe ship the gun.
Her mighty Diesel bellowed, lashed the air down and under; theamphibian spun her retractable wheels over the straight hard grounduntil they lifted lightly and tilted upward in a slow climb foraltitude. With fiery streams from the exhaust lashing her flanks, shefaded into the darkness to the north.
"Well," murmured Steve Chapman, "I've got her instalments left,anyway!" And he grinned and turned to the mail.
* * * * *
That night passed slowly by; and the next day; and all through nightand day the steady roar of beating cylinders hung in KennethTorrance's ears. At last came Point Christensen and a descent; sleepand then quick, decisive action; and again the amphibian rose, heavilyloaded now, and droned on toward the ice and the cold bleak skies ofthe far north. On, ever on, until Point Barrow, Alaska's northernmostspur, was left behind to the east, and the world was one of driftingice on gray water. Muscles cramped, mind dulled by the everlastingroar, head aching and weary, Ken held the amphibian to her steadycourse, until a sudden wind shook her momentarily from it.
A rising wind. The skies were ugly. And then he remembered that themen at Point Christensen had warned him of a storm that was brewing.They'd told him that he was heading into disaster; and theirsurprised, rather fearful faces appeared before him again, as he hadseen them just before taking off, after he had told them where he wasgoing.
Of course they'd thought him crazy. He had brought the amphibian downin the little harbor off the whaling company's base, gone ashore andgreeted his old friends. There was only a handful of men stationedthere; the _Narwhal_ was being overhauled in a shipyard at SanFrancisco, and it wasn't the season for surface whalers. They knewthat he, Ken, had been put in a sanitarium; all of them had heard hiswild story about sealmen. But he concocted a plausible yarn to accountfor his arrival, and they had fed him and given him a berth in thebunkhouse for the night.
For the night! Ken Torrance grinned as he recalled the scene. In themiddle of the night he had risen, quickly awakened four of thesleeping men, and with his gun forced them to take a torpoon from theoutpost's storehouse and put it inside the amphibian's passengercompartment.
It was robbery, and of course they'd thought him insane, but theydidn't dare cross him. He had told them cheerfully he was going afterthe _Peary_, and that if they wanted the torpoon back they were todirect the searching planes to keep their eyes on the place where thesubmarine was last heard from....
* * * * *
Ken came back to the present abruptly as the plane lurched. The windwas getting nasty. At least he did not have much farther to go; anhour's flying time would take him to his goal, where he must descendinto the water to continue his search. His search! Had it been, hewondered, a useless one from the start? Had the submarine's crew beenkilled before he'd even read of her disappearance? If the sealmen gotthem, would they destroy them immediately?
"I doubt it," Ken muttered to himself. "They'd be kept prisoners inone of those mounds, like I was. That is, if they haven't killed anyof the creatures. It hangs on that!"
An hour's time, he had reckoned; but it was more than an hour. Forsoon the world was blotted out by a howling dervish of wind and drivensnow that time and time again snatched the amphibian from Ken'scontrol and hurled it high, or threw it down like a toy toward theinferno of sea and ice he knew lay beneath. He fought for altitude,for direction, pitched from side to side, tumbled forward and back,gaining a few hundred feet only to feel them plucked breathtakinglyout from under him as the screaming wind played with him.
Now and again he snatched a glance at the torpoon behind. Thegleaming, twelve-foot, cigar-shaped craft, with its directionalrudders, propeller, vision-plate and nitro-shell gun lay safelysecured in the passenger compartment, a familiar and reassuring sightto Ken, who, as first torpooner of the _Narwhal_, had worked one foryears in the chase for killer whales. Soon, it seemed, he would haveto depend on it for his life.
For all the Diesel's power, it was not enough to cope with the deadweight of ice which was forming over the plane's wings and fuselage.He could not keep the altimeter up. However he fought, Ken saw thatfinger drop down, down--up a trifle, quivering as the racked planequivered--and then down and down some more.
He saw that the plane was doomed. He would have to abandon it--in thetorpoon--if he could.
He was some thirty miles from his objective. The sea beneath would behalf hidden under ragged, drifting floes. In fair weather he couldhave chosen a landing space of clear water, but now he could notchoose. The altitude dial said that the water was three hundred feetbeneath, and rapidly rising nearer.
A margin of seconds in which to prepare! Ken locked the controls andscrambled back into the passenger compartment. Steadying himself onthe bucking floor, he opened the torpoon's entrance port and slid in;quickly he locked the port and strapped the inner body harness aroundhim; and then he waited.
Now it was all chance. If the plane crashed into clear water, he wassafe; but if she hit ice.... He put that thought from him.
The locked controls held the amphibian for perhaps thirty seconds.Then with a scream the storm-giant took her. A mad up-current of windhurled her high, whirled her dizzily, toyed with her--and then shespun and dove. Down, down, down; down with a speed so wild Ken grewfaint; down through the core of a maelstrom of snow till she crashed.
Kenneth Torrance knew a sudden shaking impact; for an instant therewas uncertainty; and then came all-pervading quiet....