Tombstone epitaph., 1915-03-21

| With the aWesome deliberation Of a
 seer from the depths of his trance.
 We can make air" And at the words
 he crumpled Imply to the floor
 Barton was by his side instantly,
 shaking him roughly. savagely. while
 he fought back a hope that he dared
 not trust.
 What do you mean, Dick? Come
 speak, Make air? Man, are you
 mad?" he cried as he tugged at the
 prostrate form with all his failing
 strength.
 Yes, Air oxygen - life." the
 ensign muttered. He sat up un-
 steadily. At the academy-remem- Der? The acid and the batteries, We i decomposed water. There's enough in
 the tank till we raise the pressure | then we'll get oceans of it." He swung his arms above his head
 -dramatically-a bit wildly, while Barton himself almost collapsed as his
 mind flew back to his training school
 chemistry and the experiment of long | before.
 ctrolysis-thrusting the ends of | two current-charged wires into water, salt or fresh. tinctured weakly with
 suiphuric acid, beyond question, would
 separate the liquid into the oxygen | and hydrogen of which it is composed. One part of the first to two of the latter would be the proportion; and
 a single cubic foot of the water would produce 2,00o feet of the gas. For an instant thought of the fatal
 effect of pure oxygen struck the lieu tenant cold.
 To make it respirable in the air 1t is diluted with three times its volume of
 nitrogen. Then he reflected that hy- drogen is also inert and harmless to | breathe and its ratio would be suffi- ciently large. Corrigan's act in sub stituting lead-oxid battery plates for the iron weights of the balance-trough now appealed to him as nothing short of proyidential.
 "Cnbeiievable." he cried as he be
 gan to gather together all the glass
 Leyden-jars they had; "yet-thank God-so true-so true!" Their reprieve was barely in time;
 and the lieutenant and Rolf went at the preparations feverishly, while
 Marsh and Corrigan watched dumbly scarcely comprehending the vital
 sweep of events.
 And when at last the first tiny bub-
 bles began to rise through the water
 like the effervescence of some Jovian d. at i, quested Fountain of Youth could have
 matched the wild cry which sprang from the lips of Barton and Rolf. For
 to them it was life, spelled in 65-foot letters that reached to the top of the sea.
 4 box of caustic soda used for cor
 roding parts, was found; and its con- tents scattered about the room served
 to absorb much of the carbonic gas. As the pressure rose further means of disposal was recalled by Rolf. The balance-trough was filed with water, and it gradually became charged with
 the gas. At the end of a week the
 safe to open a port to get in touch ! with the world aDONe.
 When no bottles were found in the
 medicine chest of a size to be reason
 ably seen on the waves, and when the
 other men failed 10 make any of the
 empty food-cans floating tight. it was Corrigan who hit upon the expedient of using the oiled-silk cases in which the torpedoes were wrapped.
 They spread out the folds of these with their breath and securely tied the ends. Barton put down their po- sition as he had figured it. noting the
 possibility of error in longitude, and
 making mention of the hulk-the To-
 cation of which he thought would probably be known
 The several slips of paper were placed in the bags. of which there were four; and three of them were released at brief intervals. The men were now in total dark
 ness. The single light inside had really been extinguished to conserve the battery-power.
 Their fourteenth day of imprison=
 ment came; and still the men had re- ceived no intimation of any effort to | rescue them. They could not know that the frail silk bags had burst at the surface and had sunk again, carry ing their messages with them. But such a possibility occurred to Rolf when the last of the castings was about to | be released.
 It was then that Corrigan yolun- teered to go up in it's place. But he encountered another shock
 when Barton explained that for all practical purposes they were shut in a caisson-and told him of the dan ! gerous bends" which must attend a too rapid return to the air. Only
 when the batteries would fail, and as
 a final resort, was it his purpose to
 have them all risk the trip together. Had he known that the Victory swung at anchor barely thousand
 yards away he might have altered his instructions.
 Hope for B-23 had long been aban- doned, and already the nation had for