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As Ross moved and endeavored to rise, she dropped the club, and sank down, crying his name and kissing him. Then she incontinently fainted.

Ross struggled to his feet, and, though still weak and nerveless, found some spun yarn in a locker, with which he tied the unconscious victim’s hands behind his back, and lashed his ankles together. Thus secured, he was harmless when he came to his senses, which happened before Ross had revived the girl. But there were no growling threats coming from him now; conquered and bound, his courage changed to fear again, and he complained and prayed for release.

“Not much,” said Ross, busy with the girl. “When I get my wind, I’m going to jam you into that tube, like a dead man. I’ll release you inside.”

When Miss Fleming was again seated on the tank, breathing fresh air from the jet, Ross went to work with the practical methods of a sailor. He first, by a mighty exercise of all his strength, loaded the frightened Foster on to one of the torpedo trucks, face downward; then he wheeled him to the tube, so that his uplifted face could look squarely into it; then he passed a strap of rope around under his shoulders, to which he applied the big end of a ship’s handspike, that happened to be aboard; and to the other end of this, as it lay along the back of Foster, he secured the single block of a small tackle–one of the purchases he had used in handling the torpedoes–and when he had secured the double block to an eyebolt in the bow, he steadied the handspike between his knees, hauled on the fall, with no word to the screaming wretch, and launched him, head and shoulders, into the tube.

As his hands, tied behind him, went in, Ross carefully cut one turn of the spun yarn, hauled away, and as his feet disappeared, he cut the bonds on his ankles; then he advised him to shake his hands and feet clear, pulled out the handspike, slammed the breech-door to, and waited.

The protest from within had never ceased; but at last Ross got from the information, interlarded with pleadings for life, that his hands and feet were free.

“All right. Take a good breath, and I’ll flood you,” called Ross. “When you’re outside, swim up.” The voice from within ceased.

Ross threw over the lever that admitted water to the tube, opened the forward door, and applied the compressed air. There was a slight jump to the boat’s nose, but with the inrush of water as Foster went out, it sank.

However, when Ross closed the forward door, and had expelled this water, it rose again, and he anxiously inspected the depth indicator.

At first, he hardly dared believe it, but in a few moments he was sure. The indicator was moving, hardly faster than the minute hand of a clock. The boat, released of the last few pounds necessary, was seeking the surface.

“Irene,” he shouted, joyously, “we’re rising. We’ll be afloat before long, and they’ll rescue us. Even though we can’t pump, they’ll see our periscope, and tow us somewhere where they can lift the hatch out of water. It’s all over, girl–all over but the shouting. Stand up, and look at the indicator. Only fifty-five feet now.”

She stood beside him, supported by his arm, and together they watched the slowly moving indicator. Then Ross casually glanced at the deadlight, and violently forced the girl to her seat.

“Sit still,” he commanded, almost harshly. “Sit still, and rest.”

For, looking in through the deadlight, was the white face of Foster, washed clean of blood, but filled with the terror and agony of the dying. His hands clutched weakly at the glass, his eyes closed, his mouth opened, and he drifted out of sight.