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“You next.”

“I next? What do you mean?”

“You want to get to the surface, don’t you?” said Ross, grimly. “You expressed yourself as willing to do anything I might say, in order to get to the surface. Well, strip off your coat, vest, and shoes, and crawl into that tube.”

“What? To drown? No, I will not.”

“Yes, you will. Can you swim?”

“I can swim, but not when I am shot out of a gun.”

“Then you’ll drown. Peel off.”

“I cannot. I cannot. Would you kill me?”

“Don’t care much,” answered Ross, quietly, “if I do. Only I don’t want your dead body in the boat. Come, now,” he added, his voice rising. “I’m giving you a chance for your life. I can swim, too, and would not hesitate at going out that tube, if I were sure that the boat, deprived of my weight, would rise. But I am not sure, so I send you, not only because you are heavier than I, but because, as Miss Fleming must remain, I prefer to remain, too, to live or die with her. Understand?”

“But, Miss Fleming,” cackled Foster. “She can swim. I’ve heard her say so.”

“You cowardly scoundrel,” said Ross, his eyes ablaze with scorn and rage. He had already shed his coat and vest. Now he rolled up his shirt-sleeves. “Will you go into that tube of your own volition, conscious, so that you may take a long breath before I flood the tube, or unconscious, and pushed in like a bag of meal, to drown before you know what ails you–which?”

“No,” shrieked Foster, as the menacing face and fists of Ross drew close to him. “I will not. Do something else. You are a sailor. You know what to do. Do something else.”

Ross’ reply was a crashing blow in the face, that sent Foster reeling toward the tube. But he arose, and returned, the animal fear in him changed to courage. He was a powerfully built man, taller, broader, and heavier than Ross, and what he lacked in skill with his fists, he possessed in the momentum of his lunges, and his utter indifference to pain.

Ross was a trained boxer, strong, and agile, and where he struck the larger man he left his mark; but in the contracted floor space of the submarine he was at a disadvantage. But he fought on, striking, ducking, and dodging–striving not only for his own life, but that of the girl whom he loved, who, seated on the ‘midship trimming tank, was watching the fight with pale face and wide-open, frightened eyes.

Once, Ross managed to trip him as he lunged, and Foster fell headlong; but before Ross could secure a weapon or implement to aid him in the unequal combat, he was up and coming back, with nose bleeding and swollen, eyes blackened and half closed, and contusions plentifully sprinkled over his whole face.

He growled incoherently; he was reduced by fear and pain to the level of a beast, and, beast-like, he fought for his life–with hands and feet, only the possession of the prehensile thumb, perhaps, preventing him from using his teeth; for Ross, unable to avoid his next blind lunge, went down, with the whole two hundred pounds of Foster on top of him, and felt the stricture of his clutch on his throat.

A man being choked quickly loses power of volition, entirely distinct from the inhibition coming of suppressed breathing; after a few moments, his movements are involuntary.

Ross, with flashes of light before his eyes, soon took his hands from the iron fingers at his throat, and, with the darkening of his faculties, his arms and legs went through flail-like motions, rising and falling, thumping the deck with rhythmic regularity.

Something in this exhibition must have affected the girl at the air jet; for Ross soon began to breathe convulsively, then to see more or less distinctly–while his limbs ceased their flapping–and the first thing he saw was the girl standing over him, her face white as the whites of her distended eyes, her lips pressed tightly together, and poised aloft in her hands one of the pump-brakes, ready for another descent upon the head of Foster, who, still and inert, lay by the side of Ross.