“The Limits of Human Endurance”
“This was in the early hours of Wednesday morning, and by that time the unhappy men imprisoned within the submarine were approaching the limits of human endurance. Though no chlorine gas actually had been given off by the electric batteries, the air in the control room was so foul as to be almost unbreathable. Fresh air from the bottles, without means to expel the poisonous atmosphere of the ship, would only have increased a density which was already unbearable. Many in drugged sleep forgot their troubles, and even those few upon whose alertness hung the lives of all, had become drowsy and sluggish. Vitality was ebbing; the love of life, and with it the expectation of rescue, had passed from all. The company of K-13 may be divided during this period of imprisonment into sleepers and somnambulists, and it was only because trained minds retained some small part of their habitual control over exhausted bodies that the somnambulists were able to understand and to coöperate sufficiently with the salvors to bring this story to its happy conclusion.
“The long flexible tube, seven inches in diameter, which was to open up a clear passage between K-13 and the upper air, arrived at 4. a.m. on Wednesday morning, but it was not until four hours later that it was in place and in effective operation. To the eager salvers the delays were exasperating; there were many more delays, even more exasperating, to be suffered, before their job was finished. They had to explain to the enfeebled folk within precisely where the tube was to be fixed up and how they were themselves to complete the open passage. The tube was designed to screw, by means of an adaptor, into an ammunition hoist, and, when this was done, it needed but the removal of the retaining plate inside to put the device to immediate use.