“Help! Scotty! Killer whales!” screamed Lee, plunging forward, striving to pull pallet, sick man and all back from the edge of the ice.

At Lee’s shout, the sea monster slid back into the depths. But not for long! There came a swish, a puff. Out of the water was thrust again the huge black snout, in which were set two wicked little eyes.

Other black snouts were thrust above water. Ten, maybe twenty killers rolled surfacewards and spouted.

Scotty was beside young Renaud now, helping him drag the sick man back and back from the water’s edge. Their hearts throbbed painfully. It had been a close call. Another instant and the sea killer would have snatched off the helpless victim and sunk to the chill, dark depths to gorge itself on a meal of human meat.

“Hi, ya! Sea wolves! Tigers of the sea!” Such were the epithets Scotty hurled forth as he shook his fist at the sinister black crew that kept rising at the ice edge, sinking, rising again to glare with ravenous, evil eyes at meat that had moved out of reach.

Many times before this, Scotty had seen service in the Arctic waters, and knew well enough about the killer whales. Like the wolf-pack of the snow barrens, these ferocious sea creatures hunted in bands. The man shuddered now when he remembered what he had seen of the killers on the trail. Sometimes these carnivori swallowed dolphins alive without even taking trouble to kill them. Sometimes the killer-pack attacked a huge bowhead whale, beat him into submission with leapings and poundings of their lithe, cruel black bodies, devoured him ferociously, first the lips, then the tongue, then the rest of the monstrous, helpless body.

Anxiously the marooned men watched the horizon for thunderhead and storm cloud. Suppose a tempest rolled up, drove their ice field hither and yon on the sea, smashed and ground it to pieces? It would mean a terrible end, with the killer-pack of the sea nosing in, ready to devour.

It was hard to set the thoughts on anything else save the sinister sea shapes that slunk away mysteriously for long stretches, then rolled back into view, to glide and blow and watch with evil, hungry eyes.

Somehow, though, Lee forced his mind and his hands to concentrate on the scattered debris of his broken radio. For hours he labored, repairing the condenser, straightening springs, connecting wires. “F-O-Y-N”—that one call had gone out on the air from his machine. Had anyone heard it? Would he ever be able to send another?

An hour, eight hours, for days, the struggle went on. A black-haired boy out on the bleak white of drift ice striving to rehabilitate a dead radio! No tools, no resources, no anything save some broken wires and metal pieces—and the eternal ice!

A wire bent here, a patient bit of soldering there—then all of a sudden he was in touch! He had done it, made the connection, fired again the spark of electricity that was the life of radio!

Something was coming in! A chitter-chatter of faint telegraphic code!

“Latitude 78—on the ice—drifting—”

That was all.

No matter how Renaud sent out an answering call, begged, pleaded, tapped out the code, nothing more came in.

By the buzz from the wire circuit of his direction-finder, the call had come from the north. From the dirigible—it could be from no other!

For a brief second these two widely separated sections of the ill-fated expedition had been in touch. Then something had broken the connection. Atmospheric condition—disaster—storm, who could tell what? Never another sound came from the north.

Renaud and his companions comforted themselves with the belief that their shipmates aboard the dirigible had survived thus far.

Except for the briefest periods off for rest and food, and to race up and down the ice sheet to stir circulation against the treacherous creep of the bitter cold, Lee Renaud hung feverishly over his radio. It was their one hope, their one connecting link to anything beyond this frozen hell.

Two more days dragged by their torturous lengths, and except for its own little lonely click, the drift-ice radio brought no other sound. It seemed insane to continue to place hope on this pile of junk. It had reached a little way into some near region—once—and that was all.

Scotty began to plan how they could strike out over the ice on foot, move on somewhere, anywhere, in hope of getting nearer to land. This inaction was terrible. But there was Van Granger to be thought of, sick and nearly helpless.

Sensing a discussion that he could not hear, Van Granger began begging his companions to kill him, to put him out of his misery. He wanted to be no drag, holding other men from their chance to make a dash for life. Without the burden of him, they could carry food—for a greater distance. After that, Lee and Scotty always kept their weapons with them, or hidden out on the ice. Words of comfort and assurance seemed to make no impression on the sick mind of their injured companion. They feared that he would do himself some bodily injury.

In the midst of black hopelessness, Lee aimlessly tinkered at the radio outfit. He shunted wires here and there, set a tube connection higher—and with a sudden crackle of spark, code began sliding in!

“V-I-A-T-K-A,” Lee, counting code with one hand, scratched the mysterious letters on the snow beside him. Exhilaration shot through him. He was in touch with something—but what, where?

“Viatka—Viatka!”

There it came again and other letters in a strange jumble that he could not seem to unravel. The direction-finder indicated south, east.

Frantically Lee poured his own code on the air. He got nothing more, made no other connection, could only content himself with the fact that his radio was reaching somewhere beside the floes of Arctic.

What Lee did not know was that, days ago, his first brief call, “F-O-Y-N,” had been picked up by a young Russian amateur wireless operator by the name of Arloff, living in a village in the Government of Viatka. Just the faint, far signal of four mysterious letters! This call out of the ether intrigued Arloff. He wired it on to Moscow, from whence it was spread throughout the world.

Men began putting two and two together.

Foyn—an island at the gateway to the North Pole!

The dirigible Nardak lost above northern America after a great storm which had rolled down thence—for days all radio communication cut off from the Nardak, and no more word from her. And now this mysterious call, “F-O-Y-N.” Did that call hold the answer to the dark riddle of the lost ship?

The mental eye of the world focused upon that bit of frozen land in the polar ocean.

Though he knew nothing of this, though some atmospheric disturbance of the air ceiling interfered with his receiving, Lee Renaud continued to doggedly tap out his radio call of location—needs—a cry for help. In Siberia, Alaska, Canada, stations keyed by that mysterious “F-O-Y-N” checked in his message, tried to check their answering call across the frozen wastes—but some Arctic interference barred the sound.

Then came some sudden change in atmospheric conditions, storm-charged stratum of interference lifted, sound went through.

It was from the lofty wireless towers at Fort Churchill, an outpost of civilization on Hudson Bay, that an operator got the “touch” through to Renaud.

“Putting through to F-O-Y-N—clear the air, all else—courage to the marooned—help coming—the planes and ice-breakers of five nations to the rescue!”

“Rescue! Rescue!” shouted Lee Renaud, then his fingers fell to tapping again.

“Stand by—the Arctic on the air—F-O-Y-N heard the message—we live—” Lee Renaud slid to his knees, a prayer of thankfulness in his heart, then fainted dead away in the snow.