The torpoon slipped through the water at full speed, her light-beams like restless antennae, now stabbing to the right to dissolve a formless shadow, now to the left to throw into blinding white relief a school of half-transparent fish which scurried with frantic wrigglings of tails from the glare, now slanting up to bathe the cold glassy face of an inverted ice-hill, now down to dig two white holes in the deeper gloom. Ken continued this routine for hours. Steadily and low the electric motor droned in the ears of the watchful pilot, and the stubby propeller's blades flashed round in a blur of speed between the slightly slanted rudders. Somewhere, miles away, a splintered amphibian plane was slipping down to her last landing, and above, perhaps, the white hell of storm which had brought her low still bowled over the trackless wastes; but here were only shadows and shifting gloom, straining the alert eyes to soreness and tensing the watcher's brain with alarms that, one after another, were only false. Until at last he found her. Immediately he shut off all his lights. He no longer needed them. Far in the distance, and below, wavered a faint yellow glow. It was no fish; it could mean only one thing--the lights of a submarine. And lights meant life! There would be none burning in a deserted submarine. His heart beat fast and his tight, sober lips widened in a quick grin. He had found the _Peary_! And found her with some life still aboard her! He was in time! So Ken rejoiced while he slid the torpoon down to a level just a few feet above the silty sea bottom, reducing her to quarter-speed. There was an urge inside him to switch on his bow-beams, reach them out toward the submarine's hull to tell all within that help was at last at hand; he wanted to send the torpoon ahead at full speed. But caution restrained him to a more deliberate course. He was in the realm of the sealmen, and he did not wish to attract the attention of any. So he advanced like a furtive shadow slinking along the dark sea-bottom, deep in the covering gloom. Nearer and nearer, while the distant blur of yellow light grew. Nearer and nearer to the long-trapped men, while the consciousness that he had succeeded intoxicated him. He alone had found them! Sealmen or no sealmen, he had found the _Peary_! And found her with lights lit and life inside! Nearer and nearer.... And then suddenly Ken halted the torpoon and stared with wide, alarmed eyes. For the submarine was now plainly visible in detail--and he saw her real plight and with it knew the answer to the mystery of her long silence and the non-appearance of her men on the ice field above. * * * * *