"I couldn't whistle anything now," Pete Jackson sighed as he bent his wizened face to the visiplate. For a few moments, it looked as if the Captain's optimistic prediction might be justified. The _Lucifer_ was covering almost a thousand yards every tenth of a second. It was after about five seconds that the wailing and shrieking noises first came through the hull into the bridge. "Stars and saints above!" Pete Jackson stiffened slowly in his seat, his little blue eyes engulfed in whiteness. Captain Douglas, too, jerked nervously at the eerie sounds. But the dials before him continued to reveal nothing amiss. He shot a quick, hard command to keep the course. The mate obeyed trembling as from ague. A split-second later they were in the Pass. * * * * * There wasn't any doubt they were in something! A wave of superheated steam seemed to strike the _Lucifer_ simultaneously from all sides. The needle on the tempogauge jerked sharply upward. The pressure oxygen in the bridge grew suddenly warm. Captain Douglas and mate sweat in a trice. "What's this?" Pete Jackson started from his seat. "Can't tell what it is," Captain Douglas frowned before the dials. "The tempogauge is going up, but I don't know why." "Hah!" Pete Jackson's laugh broke queerly. "It couldn't be the hot breath o' Tug Skelly's witches now, could it, Capt'n?" "Witches be blowed!" Douglas snarled. "Still," Jackson protested weakly, "it might be a good idea to turn back, even now. That tempo-needle's going up awful fast." "Hold the course, Mr. Jackson," Douglas said angrily. To execute a slow turning maneuver at this point would be tantamount to suicide! Jackson knew that too, only the mate wasn't using his head any longer. Whatever danger they were in, their best chance was to hold speed and try to slip through the Pass before the blistering heat outside melted down their hull plates. The mate steadied in his seat. "Give her everything she'll take," Captain Douglas ordered the engine-room via his speaking-tube. "Everything!" "_Aye, aye, sir._" The choked reply from below was followed by a long, muttered oath that almost made young Douglas grin. He called down a word of encouragement, and stepped swiftly back to the instrument panel. The tempo-needle was mounting in the dangerous red ever closer and closer to the hull melting-point. The heat inside the bridge was insufferable by now; the two men, stripped to the waist, their bodies shining oilily, could hardly breathe. The shrieking outside had risen to a horrendous, deafening clamor. The end, one way or another, could scarcely be more than a few seconds off. "We can't take much more," Pete Jackson gulped miserably. "She'll open a seam sure!"