“We’re doing our best, sir,” came the voice of Frazier, now in charge.

“If you can possibly strain a point, in some way, and wring a little more power out of the remaining engines—­”

“We’re straining them beyond the limit now, sir.”

The Master fell silent, pondering.  His eyes sought the dropping needle.  Then the light of decision filled his eyes.  A smile came to his face, where the deep gash made by the splinter of glass had been patched up with collodion and cotton.  He plugged in on another line, by the touch of a button.

“Simonds!  Is that you?”

“Yes, sir,” answered the quartermaster, in charge of all the stores.

“Have you jettisoned everything?”

“All we can spare, sir.  All but the absolute minimum of food and water.”

“Overboard with them all!”

“But, sir—­”

“And drop the body of Auchincloss, too.  This is no time for sentiment!”

“But—­”

“My order, sir!”

Five minutes later, cases, boxes, bales, water-tanks, began spinning from open ports and down through the trap-door in the lower gallery.  Then followed the seared corpse of Auchincloss, a good man who had died in harness, fighting to the end.  Those to whom the duty was assigned of giving his metal-weighted body sea burial turned away their eyes, so that they might not see that final plunge.  But the sound of the body striking the waves rocketed up to them with sickening distinctness.

Lightened a little, Nissr seemed to rally for a few minutes.  The altimeter needle ceased its drop, trembled and even rose _.275_ degrees.

“God!  If we only had an ounce more power!” burst out the major, his mouth mumbling the loose ends of that flamboyant mustache.  The Master remained quite impassive, and made no answer.  Bohannan reddened, feeling that the chief’s silence had been another rebuff.  And on, on drifted Nissr, askew, up-canted, with the pitiless sunlight of approaching evening in every detail revealing—­as it slanted in, almost level, over the far-heaving infinitudes of the Atlantic—­the ravages wrought by flame.

Bohannan could not long be silent.  The exuberance of his nature burst forth with a half-defiant: 

“If I were in charge, which I’m not, I’d stop those damned helicopters, let her down, turn what power we’ve got into the remaining propellers, and taxi ashore!”

“And probably sink, or break up in the surf, on the beach, there!” curtly rejoined the Master.  “Ah! What?”

His binoculars checked their sweep along the coast, which in its absolute barrenness looked a place of death for whatever might have life there.

“You see something, mon capitaine?” asked Leclair, blowing smoke from his cigarette.  “Allow me also to look!  Where is it?”

“Just to north of that gash—­that wady, or gully, making down to the beach.  You see it, eh?”