Clutching at his arm when the bandage was made fast, she pointed to the sleeping man. Zenas Wright replied to the concern and the question in her face by placing his finger first over the heart of Minos and then on the wound, and smiling and nodding.
Wild joy shone in the eyes of Memene. She made as if to kneel at Zenas Wright's feet, then remembered that she was a princess. She raised her arm in the Sardanian salute. Then the strange girl threw herself into a chair, covered her face with her hands, and gave way to her woman's need for tears.
On the hill slope Polaris busied himself making a camp for his huskies, for, said he, "There would be a rare uproar, without end, did I take them in there where the gray brood of my Pallas are."
He stamped a circle in the snow, and made a fire of hymanan wood from Minos's store of firewood. He found Minos's sledge and set it against the cliff, with wooden blocks for braces. He rolled a big log into place in front of it, screwed a number of rings which he carried for the purpose into its side, and tethered the huskies, where they might not come at the stores on the other sledge. Some loose robes cast into the hollow behind the log sufficed, and the tired brutes crawled onto them thankfully and curled up for a well-earned rest.
So tired were they that they bolted without fighting for the food he threw to them—and it is a tired husky, indeed, that will not try to rob his neighbors of his rations.
Presently the step of the son of the snows sounded in the passage to the cave room. The Princess Memene sprang up and faced him.
One searching look she gave him, poignant with inquiry. With hands extended as though to ward back a danger, she stepped in front of Minos's couch.
"Ah, well I know thee!" she exclaimed. "Thou are that stranger from the North come again to Sardanes. Thou wert his enemy. Thou wouldst not harm him now? Thou canst not have the heart! See, he hath suffered much and lieth low—"
"Nay, nay, save thy fears, lady," Polaris answered in the ancient tongue. "Polaris fighteth not with sick men, and would be friend to Minos and to thee. From many a hundred leagues to the north hath he come hither to save whom he might from the doom which this man's knowledge told would fall on thy land." He pointed to Zenas Wright.
"My mind recalleth thee not, lady," he continued. "Of what house art thou, and how named?"
"Memene, daughter of the Lord Karnaon, am I," replied the girl proudly; and still more proudly, "I am the bride of Minos, King of Sardanes."
"And, lady, art thou and the king the last to live in all the valley?" asked the son of the snows eagerly. "I can see sign of none others."
"We be the only Sardanians who have not passed the Gateway," the girl replied, "save Kalin the priest, alone, who fared north with thee and the Rose maid."
"Then art thou indeed the last," Polaris said, "for Kalin died out yonder in the snows, and these hands did bury him.
"Now, lady, take the rest thine eyes do tell me thou needest so much. All shall be well with thee, and thy husband lieth safe in the care of a skilled man. An thou gainsayest me not, I will feed thy gray beasts yonder, and clear thy doors of the carcass of the snow-wanderer there. When thou are refreshed again, we fain would hear from thee how it went with you, how Sardanes fell, and how it is that we found thee so."
With the ax of Minos, Polaris hacked apart the carcass of the huge bear and hung it in sections along the outer corridor, reserving it for food for the beasts. Indeed, the six dogs of Minos were almost friendly with him after they had taken a meal at his hands, receiving the fresh meat ravenously after a long diet of smoked flesh.
Memene slept, but with much tossing and crying out, as in her dreams she reviewed the troubled hours that preceded slumber. Minos lay quiet for many hours, while old Zenas Wright watched and Polaris busied himself about the fires and explored the recesses of the cavern. When at length the king awoke, the first thing he saw with conscious eyes was the face of the son of the snows bent over him. Polaris saw the leaping question in the sick man's eyes, and answered it. "I come in peace, and as a friend to thee, O Minos, an thou wilt have it so," he said. "See, thy princess slumbers yonder, safe and well. Thou shalt soon be strong, and then will be time for the telling of strange tales between us. Then shall we fare hence out of the wilderness on the northern road."
Minos's glance strayed from him to where Memene lay asleep, her dark hair fallen across her cheek. The face of the king grew very wistful.
"I understand it not," he said, his voice hardly above a breath. "The end of all had come, and now I find thee here—and fire and light. Almost too weak am I to think. Thou and I did fight—"
"Vex not thy mind at present with thinking, O Minos," Polaris interrupted. "All is well, and shall be. Here now is my friend, Zenas Wright, with that for thee that shall put new life into thee. Eat and rest."
With curious interest the king studied the kindly face of the scientist as he came to the couch with a flagon of steaming broth, brewed of grains and flesh, laced well with wine. So weak was Minos that the old man must raise his head from the pillow while he drank. When he had finished, the sick man lay looking at the beloved face across from him, and so passed again into sleep.
Great vitality and a constitution kept hardy by years of vigorous living responded quickly to the care he received, and within less than a week Minos was on his feet again, still pale, but mending rapidly.
When he was strong enough to talk, he learned the purpose of the visit of Polaris and Wright, and he struck hands of friendship with both of them. His great heart bore no enmity toward Polaris, who told him all of the story of Kard the Smith, and other events which preceded his troublous departure from Sardanes, somewhat of which had been hidden from Minos.
"Though thou hast slain two of my blood and more of my people, I hold thee to no wrong for it," he said, and added simply, "Truly, had I been so circumstanced, I should have done no less." He glanced tenderly at Memene, who sat at his knee, and touched her dark hair with his hand. "I, too, have fought and slain for my lady."
Then the adventurers heard from the lips of the king of the passing of the fires from Sardanes, the madness of Analos, the battles and the death march of the nation through the Gateway. Polaris translated the telling of the tale to Zenas Wright, who hung upon each word with breathless interest.
Some days later, when the king had become strong enough to be about the cave and to keep the fire aglow, Polaris and Zenas Wright took torches and journeyed across the white valley to the Gateway hill, and paid a visit to the ancient temple of death on the ledge of the mighty crater. There was a spot from which the old scientist scarce could tear himself, even after he had spent hours in examination, and the torches were nearly exhausted.
On the wall in one of the temple chambers they found hanging a small cross, with its ends curiously turned. It was not of the ilium of Sardanes, but of gold.
"Priceless!" said Zenas Wright in an awed whisper. "That ornament came here from the Aegean Sea long before Christ was born in Judea."
Although it seemed almost an act of sacrilege to disturb it, the old man plucked it from its place and carried it away with him.
Three more weeks passed, and Minos the king apparently was as whole and well as on that day when he fell over the guardian rock. Each day saw added preparations for their journey back to theMinnetonka. From the stores in the cavern Polaris replenished his sledge supplies, and packed the load for the sled of Minos. From boughs of the tough hymanan wood the son of the snows fashioned the frames of snowshoes and wove their nets of sinew of the bear. For both Minos and Memene he made them, and there was much sport when they both fared forth in the snow to try them. After much floundering and not a little lameness, both of the Sardanians mastered this new method of locomotion.
Many questions Minos and his princess asked about the land to which they were going, and its people and customs. To them, who had known only the mountain-ringed valley and the impenetrable wilderness, it was well-nigh incomprehensible that a land could be where the sun shone alternately with the blackness of night, day by day, the whole year around. The immensity of the world, as pictured to them by Polaris and the geologist, staggered them.
"And the ladies in thy great, far world, are they most fair," Memene asked—"fairer than those of poor Sardanes?"
Polaris gazed on the regal beauty of the girl, and answered dryly, "Few, indeed," and bethought himself that her question boded ill for the king, should he ever look too long on other charms.
"But in this land of thine, how will it fare with me," questioned Minos, "where possessions are valued thus and so, as thou tellest me, and where men barter of their labor and their wit for thy medium of exchange thou namest 'money'? Say, what shall be open to one like Minos, who hath naught, and who is but little skilled in aught?"
They were seated about the fireplace in the cavern room. Polaris met the perplexed look of the king with a smile.
"If I guess aright, that problem shall not afflict thee, O Minos," he answered. "Thou has that, I believe, which will find an eager market, and having which, thou shalt want for nothing all thy days."
"How mean you?" asked Minos.
Polaris pointed to an ilium bangle on the arm of Memene. It was set with dull red stones, similar to those in a necklace that once had been the gift of Kalin to the son of the snows.
"He that wast true friend to me aforetime," he replied, "did tell me that in Sardanes were many more stones such as those. On an occasion when I was sore in need of aid three small gems, not half the size of those in that bracelet, did get me friends and servants, and carry me whither I would go. Rubies, they call them in the world. Greatly are they prized. I judge the price in money of that one ornament thy princess weareth would maintain her and thee in comfort all your years. Add a few more, and thou shouldst be rich, indeed."
Minos rose quickly from his seat. "An that be truth, then we shall all be rich," he answered, "for here in the storehouse of my fathers are many such."
He dragged out from its place against the rock wall a stout chest and threw back the lid. Stretching a rug before it, he strewed it with every variety of ornament known to the ladies of Sardanes. Rings, armlets, necklaces, slender crowns to be worn on the hair, girdles, brooches, and even anklets, he added to the profusion of the glittering heap.
Zenas Wright gasped, his wonder and pleasure as a savant fully aroused by that pouring forth from the treasure-chest of antiquity. The toys were of exquisite workmanship. What would not a museum give for even one of them to grace its showcases?
"Many a Sardanian princess hath found delight in these," said Minos, as he emptied the last of the contents of the chest onto the rug. "Scarcely a child in all the valley that did not possess some ornament set with the red stones that were dug from the hillsides. These things, you say, may be exchanged for wealth?"
"That they may," Polaris said. "Thou hast there enough to buy for thee a space of land as large as this valley of Sardanes and place in it almost what thou wilt." In English, he asked of Zenas Wright, "What say you, old man, of the worth of the gems?"
The explorer was on his knees, examining these new wonders. He ran his eyes appraisingly over the heap. "I am not an expert lapidary," he replied; "but if these are anywhere near the quality of those you brought to America—and they seem to be even better—their value will run into millions of dollars."
"We shall share them," said Minos the king, nor would he listen to protests from either of the men. "Ye did come hither at the risk of your lives, and brought life to us," he said. "It is but a little thing that Minos can do in return. These baubles, these red rubies from the hills that Sardanians callthalmi, if they will add to your comfort in your world, are all too little. It is the will of Minos that the division of them shall be equal—if, indeed, there are not too many of them to carry hence."
He stood stubbornly to that decision, and the end was that they took the greater part of the stones from their settings and packed them in small sacks. Even then, so many there were of them that they threw out any that did not give promise of being first-class gems. They were packed securely away then on the sledge of Minos.
By their reckoning, little more than four weeks from the day on which they entered Sardanes, Polaris and Zenas Wright bade farewell to the cave on the Latmos hill, and with them went the two so strangely saved from the still white death that had settled on the ancient valley.
They stood on the lip of the north pass to take their last look. The Antarctic sun shone strongly on the snow reaches. Only in their minds' eyes could the travelers recall the wonders of the lost kingdom. Except for their own tracks in the snow on the hillside, there was naught to tell that man had ever set foot in the valley.
Minos raised his hand in the Sardanian salute.
"Farewell, land of my fathers," he said aloud. "Minos leaveth thee without regret for a larger life than thou couldst hold. All the bitterness of parting was his when his people passed from him. He feeleth none now."
They pressed on into the notch of the pass, Polaris keeping well ahead with his team of huskies lest there should be fighting of dogs, for there was no love and much hatred between the brood of Pallas and the Alaskan brutes.
Halfway down the north side of the pass, while they were proceeding slowly, one of the huskies balked for an instant to burrow in the snow. He dug up a brown object, which Polaris snatched from him. Immediately he turned to Zenas Wright.
"How can this be, old man?" he said. "This is none of ours, and who else can have passed this way?" He held out the thing which the dog had found. It was a man's shoe, a stout hunting shoe, well spiked at the sole for snow traveling. It was torn as though by sharp teeth, and its thongs were gone.
While Polaris and Wright examined the shoe in wonder, the three leading huskies, sniffing eagerly, suddenly plunged into the drift to the right of the pass, turning the rest of the team with them.
"There is worse than a shoe there!" cried Zenas Wright. "Stop them!"
By main strength, Polaris tore the snarling brutes out of the bank and whipped them into the path. They dragged with them a heavy coat, the torn fragments of other garments, and a number of human bones, clean of flesh.
Zenas Wright viewed the relics with a shudder. "Some one has perished here in the snow, and the bears have eaten him," he said.
Polaris, exploring farther in the hole the dogs had dug, straightened up suddenly. "Some one has been done to death here," he said sternly. He held in his hand a ghastly skull. In it there were two holes, one at the base, the other in the forehead—the smooth, round holes that only a bullet leaves!
Further examination of the snow disclosed other bones and fragments of clothing. There was nothing in the pockets of the coat or about the scene of the tragedy to indicate who it was that had met his death there, or whence he had come. He had died, the bears had devoured his remains, leaving naught but his bones and a mystery, which the snows had shrouded from all but the keen-nosed dogs.
From the path above them Minos drove his team down and halted it close behind. He could not leave his dogs, and so Memene came on to find out the cause of the delay. Polaris hastily threw snow over his grim find so that the princess might not see it, and went back with her to tell the Sardanian. The king could make no more of the affair than could he.
Polaris scraped away the snow and ice from the base of the pass-cliff, where a fissure ran up the rock, and there he laid the bones of the stranger, placing them well within the crevice, and covering them with the coat. He rolled a boulder to the mouth of the fissure and jammed it fast with all his strength.
"It is all that we can do," he said. "Whoever he was, or where from, he sleeps, and cannot answer the least of our questions."
"Who can have been here since we came?" Zenas Wright asked, as they once more went on down the pass.
"Not sure am I that he was not already here before we passed this way," said Polaris.
"But wouldn't the dogs have found him on the way in, in that case?" persisted Wright.
"It was hereabouts that we did meet the bear when we entered Sardanes," replied Polaris. "At that time the dogs had noses only for the scent of their enemy, and might have passed a hundred corpses and given no sign. That poor fellow back yonder might have lain in his snow bed all unsuspected. He might have been there for months. The snow and the cold would have kept the bones as we found them. How it came about that a man from the outer world did penetrate the wilderness to Sardanes, and then was slain in her very portals, passes my comprehension."
As the two teams passed swiftly along the reaches of the Hunters' Road, Zenas Wright noticed that his younger companion, running with the sledge, hesitated often, and cast many a keen glance along the path they followed. Once or twice, Polaris halted the animals entirely, while he knelt in the snow to scrutinize intently manifestations which he seemed to find there, but which were beyond the ken of the scientist. His face grew thoughtful, and there was a shadow in his amber eyes.
"What is it, son?" queried Wright at length, when the actions of Polaris had aroused a curiosity which the younger man did not volunteer to satisfy.
"I know not yet," Polaris answered; "and would not say the thing I think until I am wholly sure."
"Has it something to do with the corpse we found back there?"
"Aye, much perhaps," and the son of the snows relapsed into a moody silence that was strange to him.
At their first camping spot, well out near the end of the Hunters' Road, Polaris left Minos standing his turn as sentinel, and, while the old man and the girl slept, he went forward along the way alone. He was absent for more than two hours. He returned with overcast countenance, and without a word as to his explorations, crawled into his sleeping bag. For a long time he lay staring out across the surrounding snows before he closed his eyes for a few hours of slumber. When he awoke, Zenas Wright was on watch beside him.
"Well, did you find anything to give you a clue?" asked the geologist.
"I found the trail of a sledge and dogs on ahead of us," Polaris replied; "and know not what they may mean."
The old man regarded him sharply. "I hardly need to ask you if they were the tracks we made coming in?" he said.
"It was to be sure that they were not that I went on to see," said Polaris. "If it had not snowed since we came through, some parts of the road are so sheltered that our tracks might not have been filled in by the drift. But what I have seen sets aside all doubt.The tracks lead both ways!"
"Then some one has been on our trail, or, at least, over the same path, and has gone north again."
Polaris nodded.
"From the ship? That seems incomprehensible."
"That is to be told only when we reach the ship," answered Polaris; "that, and why a dead man lies in the north pass to Sardanes with a bullet hole through his head."
More enigmas waited along the road to the coast, but none as gruesome as the white bones of the unknown.
Turning to the west from the Hunters' Road, they skirted the great barrier range, and had made nearly half the distance to the end of their snow journeying when they came upon the spot where a camp had been made, and not many days before. The snow at the side of one of the hummocks was packed down where a man, or men, and dogs had slept. Search as they might, the adventurers could not find a trace to indicate who it was that traveled ahead of them.
Polaris hid from his companions as best he might a growing uneasiness, a suspicion that he resolved should go unsaid. He was only partially successful. The king and Memene noticed nothing, and were only passing curious; but Zenas Wright was oppressed by forebodings as dark as those of Janess, if not as definite.
When they were not more than four hours' journey from the coast, a biting blizzard of gale-driven sleet sprang up in their faces. The sun was storm-darkened, and the tempest blew with such violence that they could make but little headway against it. Finding a snug shelter in a hollow between two beetling crags, they decided to make camp and wait for the first fury of the storm to wear itself out.
Tossing and unable to sleep, Polaris formed a sudden resolve to rid himself of all uncertainty. He aroused Zenas Wright.
"It is in my mind to take the five freshest of the dogs and make a quick dash on to the ship," he said. "There I can get new beasts and come back. I will lighten the sledge to make the going quick. In this storm there will be no bears abroad to attack the camp, if there be any of the animals in this neighborhood. I shall not rest until I have seen the ship. Because of the illness of Minos, we have been over-long away, and my coming will set many minds at rest."
Zenas Wright nodded understandingly. He reached in his pocket for his long-since emptied flask and handed it over.
"You might fill this for me, if you will," he said with a smile. "This cold chills me to the very marrow of my bones. I'd give almost the weight of the flask in these red rubies of ours for one good nip of cognac."
Polaris removed a part of the load on the sledge, and routed the dogs from their sleeping-nest. He found it no light task to whip the beasts into the teeth of the storm, but they feared the cracking lash more than they did the biting of the wind, and, once under way, they made good time.
Driving snow had wiped away all trace of the double track which the unknown traveler had left; but he had left another trail—the trail of blood.
He was an hour upon his way when Polaris felt the pace of his dogs slacken. The man swung the long lash in the air, but held his hand. Boris, the leading husky, balked, slid on his haunches, and threw up his nose, to emit a long and doleful howl that sung against the shrilling of the tempest like the wail of a violin in a stormy overture.
They were passing one of the towering rock hummocks, and the dog plunged from the trail at its base, throwing his mates into confusion. With a chorus of howls, the entire pack struggled into the drift at the side of the hummock.
Knowing from their actions that something lay there that was worthy of investigation, Polaris waded into the drift ahead of the frantic animals. Under the snow he found an overturned sledge and, within a radius of a few yards, the carcasses of eight dogs, stiff and cold. A glance told the man that each of the animals had been shot through the head. The sledge was of the same pattern as the one he drove! The dogs were of the same breed!
High on a jutting prominence of ice-sheathed rock, overlooking the storm-driven, tossing waters of the furious Antarctic Ocean, stood a man clothed in skins of the white bear, with a circle of whining dogs at his feet. A terrific gale lashed the crests of the waves into spray that froze as it flew, and which fretted the face of the rock as with driven hail. So keen and bitter the blast that the hardy brutes cringed and whimpered under its sting, yet it tore by the man unheeded.
Towering among the shivering beasts, he stood like a man of marble. Every line of his handsome, high-featured face seemed graven. Only his tawny eyes smoldered. They were fixed on a small cairn, reared of rocks at the cliff brink. The tattered remnant of a small American flag whipped from a bit of ice-coated stick at the top of the cairn.
Beneath it a slab of wood had been made fast in the rock, and on its face a careful hand had carved a simple, fateful legend:
IN MEMORIAM
ZENAS WRIGHT, A.G.S.POLARIS JANESS, AdventurerJAMES PARKERSON, seaman
Of the Sardanian Relief Expedition, WhoPerished in the Snows in November, 1923.
Erected by orders, Captain James Scoland,Commanding Cruiser Minnetonka
Moment succeeded moment. Still the man stood in the biting tempest, his eyes fixed steadfastly on the text of the simple memorial. He turned and faced the north, whence the gale was driven. Twice he raised his clenched fists above his head, as if presaging some fierce outburst of spirit, but no words came. His features relaxed into a stony smile.
"Of all puzzles, surely this is the strangest," he muttered. "Yet will I have its answer on that day when I find Captain Scoland again, so sure—so sure as my name is Polaris Janess!"
He glanced again at the swirling waters in the bay below him, where a stout cruiser should have ridden at anchor, but where no ship was; and then, with his dogs at his back, he strode away into the shrieking wilderness.
On the tenth day after the departure of Polaris Janess and Zenas Wright from the camp, the crashing and grinding of bergs beyond the mouth of the little harbor where theMinnetonkalay, warned Scoland and his men that the mighty southern drive of ice was on. The jam through which they had smashed their perilous way was broken. Soon the bay was filled with swirling drift that churned its surface water into a caldron of foam.
Close watch was kept lest one of the glittering monsters from the outer sea enter the bay and crowd the good ship against the rocks ashore. Once that danger was imminent, and the berg which thrust its menacing bulk into the neck of the bay was shattered by theMinnetonka'sguns.
When the passing of three weeks had brought no sign of the two men who had penetrated into the white Antarctic fastnesses to carry the message of salvation from the outer world to Sardanes, speculation grew into anxiety among the members of the expedition left behind with the ship. Several of the hardier members of the expedition, who were inured to life in the cold places of the earth, broke their forced inactivity by short trips inland with the sledges and dogs, in the hopes of meeting the returning adventurers. Not even a trail was left to follow. The drifting snows had obliterated every trace of travel.
Most restless of all the company was the lean, dark captain, and day by day that restlessness grew. Spurred on by his unquiet spirit, he at length turned the command of the ship over to Lieutenant Everson, and announced that he was determined to make a dash inland and ascertain the fate of the two men who had gone before. He took a well-stocked sledge, and prepared to penetrate all the way to Sardanes, providing he could find it. With him went one sailor, that same James Parkerson whom Polaris had snatched from the icy waters of Ross Sea when theMinnetonkamade her first drive into the blasted channel of the great jam.
Cool, confident, and daring, Scoland had no fears in making his sortie into the wilderness. He was equipped with a map drawn from memory by Polaris, and had little doubt but that he could find the Sardanian valley. He had a premonition that was more than half a conviction that, having found the valley, he should find no living man in it.
When he had seen the fury of the fires that had burst forth on the shores of Ross Sea, and had considered the distance which those fires must have traveled, he had lost faith in the ultimate success of the relief expedition. The more he had thought of it, the more was he convinced that the nation they sought to save had been engulfed in the snows of the Antarctic and had perished utterly.
Reason further told him that some serious misadventure must have befallen Wright and Janess; else why had they not returned to the ship long before?
Scoland and the sailor pushed inland as nearly on a straight course from the harbor as the conformation of the ground over which they traveled would allow. The captain kept a keen eye on the peaks of the barrier range, comparing them often with the map of Polaris. When he came at length to the appearance of a trail extending to the south at a right angle to the path he followed, Scoland had the aid of the bright sun to determine that it was the Hunters' Road. With his glasses he could see dimly in the southern distance the shimmering heights of the hills that ringed Sardanes.
Coming to the foothills, and finding in the snowdrifts the storehouse of the Sardanian hunters, where Minos and his men were accustomed to leave their sledges, Scoland and Parkerson knew that they had found the place they sought.
"No fire. Not a sign of smoke or fire," said Scoland, surveying the towering rim of the mountain range above them. "I'm afraid our men found nothing living here, if they found their way here at all."
"If they got here, where can they be?" Parkerson said. "There'd be nothing to keep them here this long, unless they met a mishap of some sort."
"Well, we shall soon see," Scoland replied. "Here appears to be a cut through the hills."
They guided the dogs up through the north pass. In another half an hour they stood in the notch, and had their first view of Sardanes—green Sardanes no longer, but aglitter down all its length with cold, cruel silver and glass.
As he gazed down that long and silent vista, the heart of Scoland leaped furiously, and his brain was overwhelmed with a flood of thoughts that shook even his iron control. Polaris was gone! The outlander who had thwarted so the ambitions of the captain had perished! The son of the wilderness who had turned Scoland's mighty discovery into a second place achievement, who had won from him the one woman in the world, who had broken through his fine web of painstaking precaution, and had triumphed at every turn of the wheel, no longer stood in his path!
Scoland's breast swelled. His eyes glittered. He, Captain James Scoland, should be the victor yet, in spite of all!
He would go back to America and wrest from the heart of the girl the phantom that now was his only rival. With that thought came the quick resolve that, did the man of the snows still live, he must look to himself.
Now Scoland knew the meaning of his uneasiness. Clearly into his mind trooped, naked and unashamed, the horde of black thoughts that for weeks had kept him company, but that had not dared to push themselves into the light of his brain where he might know them for what they were. He welcomed them now. This was why he had left the ship and come this journey through the snows. This was why he had brought one man only with him. All in an instant his mind was fixed, his course laid. That Polaris Janess had given him life, once, mattered not at all.
From right to left across the valley, and up and down its length, through the powerful lenses of his field glasses, the eyes of the captain swept. He returned them to their case with a snap.
"There's nothing to do but go back to the ship," he said, and it was by an effort that he curbed his voice to an ordinary tone. "Wright and Janess never reached here. They must have perished in the snows. Perhaps they fell into a crevasse. And here the great calamity that the geologist prophesied has come. All is dead."
But, kneeling in the snow with shaded eyes, Parkerson the sailor discovered what Scoland with his glasses had failed to find. He sprang up with a glad cry.
"They're here! See! See the smoke! There, on the side of the third hill!"
He was on his feet and dancing in his excitement.
Scoland whipped the glasses out once more. He directed them against the snowy slopes of Mount Latmos. Under his thick, black mustache his lips writhed as he gazed. Yes, there was no doubt of it. From a dark patch against the whiteness of the drifts, a slender curling spiral of smoke was ascending.
Already Parkerson, his honest face aglow with delight, had started on down the slope, leading the team. His heart was filled with thanks that he should be able, in some measure, to repay the man who had saved his life.
With his eye Scoland measured the distance down the valley to that spiral of smoke. No, the sound would not carry. And if it did? Well, he was ready, and a desperate man. He unwound from his neck its thick woolen muffler and sprang down the slope behind the sailor. Drawing his heavy automatic from its holster and wrapping it in the scarf, he shot Parkerson through the head.
Scoland caught the man as he fell and threw the body on the sledge. To turn the dogs back was the work of an instant, and in the next he was speeding down through the north pass as though devil-driven. Halfway down, he halted and hid the corpse in the drift at the side of the way, kicking loose snow above it. Then he leaped on the sledge and urged the dogs on recklessly.
On down the pass they flew. Far out on the Hunters' Road their master was still driving them in frenzied haste, nor stopped to camp and rest until he had put a full score of miles between himself and the still figure that lay beneath the snows.
He followed his own trail back, finding it unobliterated for long stretches in many places. When he was two hours from the ship, he drove the team off the trail at the side of a cliff, overturned the sledge, and shot the eight huskies, one by one, as they cowered and whimpered in their harness.
Taking to the road on foot, Scoland exerted his wiry strength to the utmost, and his exhaustion of body was not all simulated when he staggered into the winter camp of the expedition on the bay shore. A storm had arisen, and none of the men was abroad when the captain reached the camp. He reeled to the door of the first shack and knocked. When the door was opened, he fell on his face within. His face was frost-nipped, and he had purposely exposed his hands and arms to the blasts as much as he dared, not wishing to disable himself permanently.
Consternation thrilled through the shack on his appearance, and there was a rush of questioning men. Brandy was poured down his throat, and his limbs were chafed with snow as he lay in well-feigned unconsciousness.
When he opened his eyes again, Scoland waved the eager men aside weakly.
"Take me to the ship," he commanded.
Tender hands bore him to a boat. Once in his cabin on theMinnetonka, he ordered Lieutenant Everson to strike the shore camp at once, and make preparations for an immediate departure.
"Tell the men that the Sardanian relief expedition is a complete failure," he said wearily. "Three of our men—God rest them—have lost their lives—"
"What!" Everson exclaimed. "Wright and Janess! Are they gone?"
Scoland nodded. "Yes, and Parkerson, too, poor fellow. The valley of Sardanes—I have been there—lies buried under many feet of snow. Its people must have perished months ago. Not one trace of humanity did I find there, except one old stone building in the shadow of the cliffs at the north end of the valley."
"But the other party, and their dog team—are you sure?" Everson gasped.
"Sure—too sure," replied Scoland. "I found their bones in the snow beside their sledge, not five miles from the valley. They never reached it. How they died was impossible to tell. Their bones were picked clean by the bears. Their dogs may have gone mad with the snow distemper and turned on them when one of them slept on his watch; the bears may have attacked them in force; a sudden tempest may have overwhelmed them—I could not tell. They are gone. We buried them in the snow.
"I think probably it was the dogs. Mine turned on me. We were on the way back, Parkerson and I. The brutes went mad. They pulled him down before I could get them. He was on watch, and I was asleep. I—I shot them all—but it was too late. I buried him in the snow, also, and came on alone and on foot. My God, what a journey!
"Tell Lennon to put up a tablet on the headland above the bay. Get up steam and let us get away from this accursed land before some mishaps engulfs us all."
Groaning, he turned his swollen face to the wall.
Everson went on deck and imparted the news to the members of the crew. The men gathered aft, while the young lieutenant read the burial service. Within six hours the bay shore was deserted and theMinnetonkawas churning northward, a long wake of black smoke trailing over the waters behind her.
Polaris drove his weary and dispirited dogs back along the trail to the little camp. In the breast of the man burned an anger that made him tireless, and that was proof against both the cold and the storm.
When he arrived at the camp he found the tall form of the Sardanian king standing on guard. The Princess Memene, who had adapted herself to their necessities with the bravery and fortitude of the true woman, was busy about the portable oil cook stove in the shelter tent. Zenas Wright slumbered peacefully in his sleeping bag.
Minos strode through the snow to meet the white-clad figure that urged on the drooping brutes. Polaris greeted him with a strange smile.
"What hath happened to thee, my brother?" questioned the king; "misfortune, it seemeth, from thy mien. Hath aught befallen thy ship?"
"This hath happened, O Minos," Polaris replied, leaning on his spear; "the ship hath hailed into the north, and we four be left to travel as seemeth us best for many a long hundred miles of perils, an the tempests claim us not."
"Sailed—the ship! What mean—" and Minos paused. Here was a matter that defied question.
He looked wonderingly at the son of the snows.
"Dost find it a riddle, Minos?" said Polaris with a hard laugh. "Well, so do I also—a riddle that much I hope I shall one day have the reading of." His anger came upon him again, and he clenched his strong hands on the spear shaft so that the tough wood crackled in his grip.
"Many things might have happened, Minos. Some one thinghathhappened. The ship that should have been our rescue and our refuge is surely gone, and on a rock yonder by the sea did I find writing on a wooden slab that told of mine own death, and that of the old man, Zenas Wright, and that of still another man of the ship's company."
"Another man of thy ship's company?" Minos said. His face grew stern. "A man lay dead in the north pass of Sardanes, and who did not die of age or sickness." The king glanced sharply at Polaris. "Couple that with the double trail in the snow, my brother, and it is my mind that thou art not far from reading of the riddle. Is it not so?"
"Mayhap," answered Polaris. "Yet would I do no man injustice by giving word to that which is not proved."
"That, too, is well," said the king. "And now, for us, what is thy counsel?"
"Let us wake the old man and the three of us make a plan," Polaris replied. He tethered and fed the dogs, and the two men entered the tent.
Zenas Wright opened his eyes and blinked when Polaris shook him by the shoulder. He straightway thrust out his hand.
"The flask, my son," he said with a droll smile; "I trust you filled it. Not that I am what you'd call a toper, but I surely dreamed of that cognac."
"With all the heart of me, old man, do I hope for the fulfillment of that dream," said Polaris, and handed back the empty flask. "That it will be soon, the chances are most slender. Every passing hour is adding leagues to the distance between this empty bottle and the cask with which it is acquainted."
Zenas Wright heard the tale of the shipless harbor, and met it like a philosopher.
"So Scoland's gone," he said slowly. His old blue eyes narrowed a bit as he thought, but he, too, held his tongue from his suspicions.
They held a council, three men and a woman, one old and wise in the ways of the world, one to whom civilization was but a foster mother, and two true children of a prehistoric past. The other three looked by common consent to Polaris as the guiding spirit in this extremity.
"We are in your hands, now, my son," said the old scientist. "I guess you are the leader of the Sardanian relief expedition. What shall it be?"
"Two courses be open," Polaris said. "We can go back to the cave in Sardanes and there live our lives and die our appointed deaths, for, truly, I think no living man will ever come and seek us there. We can strike out for the north over that path of many dangers, which I followed once aforetime, with the Rose. And then, when we are come up to the great seas that lie above this frozen land, if we take that course, we must chance a rescue by some wandering ship—a small chance, but I speak for that risk. Death lies at the ends of all paths, and I think it better to meet it in the midst of our strong endeavor than to have it find us out while we lie meekly to wait for it. What say you, friends?"
Zenas Wright reached him a gnarled hand. "I'm with you, my lad," said he. "I had hoped to lay a report of some moment before my colleagues of the Geographical Society. I still have that hope. If there is a man in the world who can guide us safely through the dangers which face us, you are that man. And, if we fail, and leave our bones on the road—well—I'm for the North."
Polaris translated to the two Sardanians. "Not two courses, my brother, but one, let us say," said Minos gravely, and he, too, put his hand in the hand of Polaris. "Let us fare along the northern road, and win through or die. Myself and my princess, with only our poor knowledge, would have tried that path had we lived until the light came, if you had not come seeking us."
After a day's rest they turned their faces to the east and followed the chain of the barrier range until they reached once more the Hunters' Road. There they made a camp in the trail, while Polaris took the gray dogs of Minos, which were stronger, and which had learned to obey him, and drove through to Sardanes. From the cave on Mount Latmos he took of the stores of meats and grain all that he dared to load onto the sledge. They would need all the supplies that they might carry with them.
Fearless in the face of their disasters, the members of the little party rested their hopes on the broad shoulders of the son of the wilderness, and they began their bitter drive. That leader set his tireless strength and will of iron to the task, with a silent tongue and a flame in his heart—a flame and a vision of a dear face a continent and a half away to the north, that he swore he would live to see again.
When men had failed them and fortune had seemed to turn her face away, a mighty friend aided them—no less a one than old Mother Nature. The path that might have been so beset with hardships, she elected to make smooth, and tempered even her wild winds, so that the going of the travelers was more swift than they had dared to hope.
Long before they came to the notch in the chain of ice mountains, through which Polaris had passed north on his previous journey, they reached the monstrous seam that the furious volcanic fires had left across the southern continent when they had poured from their ancient bed in Sardanes to rear their flaming bulwarks on the shores of Ross Sea.
Where the fiery torrents had burst through under the barrier range, the mountains must have been but empty shells of volcanoes active ages agone. One of them had collapsed. Where once it had reared its snow-capped peak, was now a jagged gash like a broken wall.
Through that gash the travelers went. It took them all of an arduous day's labor to reach a spot from where they could see on ahead—labor that was wasted, should they find that the lands beyond offered no hope of a pathway. Most of the way the dogs were useless. The brutes finally had been whipped into a semblance of amity, and flocked along without fighting; more, it is true, through fear of the ready lash than because of any love between the two breeds. With all their weights of food and trappings the sledges were lifted by the son of the snows and the Sardanian, and carried over many a torn and twisted scar in the half-healed breast of the mountain.
If the thews of Polaris were more mighty than those of the king, in endurance the men were equal. They performed feats that perhaps no other two men in the whole world could have accomplished.
At last they gained a height in the pass from where the miles lay spread out before them. As far as their eyes could see was a mark across the land, as though a mighty iron wheel, white hot, had turned its slow way northward, searing everything that it could not crush. Not all the snows that had fallen had been sufficient to obliterate that trail.
"There, my son, lies a road that we cannot lose," said Zenas Wright when he set eyes on it. "And we know where it leads to—straight to Ross Sea. There, above the volcanic area, is the most likely place of all in the Antarctic regions for a ship to come."
"Aye, Zenas Wright, it is a good, broad roadway," Polaris said. "It will be the play of children to follow it, set against the difficulties of that other path to the east, which I took."
On through the pass they struggled, and were on the plain beyond in three days. The pathway of the fires was not so smooth to follow as it had looked from afar, but still offered no great obstacles. Once more the long whiplashes sang over the galloping dogs, and Polaris, who had not sung in many weeks, lifted his voice as he ran in a lilt that quivered across the snows and woke strange echoes from the cliffs.
Most wonderful of all the journey was the wiry, dogged strength of Zenas Wright. Hour by hour the old man toiled on with the younger, seeming never to tire. When they insisted that he ride on one of the sledges, it was always under protest that he did so.
Often he tapped the pocket in which he still carried an empty flask. "I'm just chasing the fellow that went north with my cognac," he would say, or some other quip that exhibited his undaunted spirit and helped to hearten his companions.
Of a like spirit was the Princess Memene, and tender and gracious and true. No hardship of the many that were her lot wrung word of complaint from the lips of the bride of Minos. Only as they proceeded farther north, they noticed that she seemed to tire more easily, and rode more upon the sledge, and noticing, they were much concerned thereat. But Memene seemed not a whit concerned, meeting their solicitude with a brave show of strength, and smiling gently to herself ofttimes when no one saw.
Came a day when far on the northern horizon they saw low-hanging clouds of curling smoke, and when a north wind brought an acrid smart to their eyes, and a tempering of the atmosphere.
"Yonder flame the moons of thy Sardanes," Polaris said to Minos, and the king nodded and his eyes grew sad with memory.
Two days' travel brought them to the foothills of the coast range of mountains, into which the volcanic torrent had broken. Then they were forced to make a detour inland, to seek a gap through which they might approach Ross Sea. About them was little snow, on the mountains none at all, and the climate was such that the members of the party had to shed their heavy parkas.
"Never a need to freeze here," said Polaris, "or to starve either, while there be bears to kill." Not a single monarch of the wastes had they encountered in all their journey, but, as they approached the volcanoes, signs had not been lacking that bears were to be found in the neighborhood.
As there was lack of snow on which to sledge, Polaris deemed it best to find out where they could best make their way through to the sea before attempting the labor of dragging the vehicles on any needless path.
With Minos and the old man he rolled boulders in a ring around a hollow in the side of a cliff and set up a camp there—a welcome home for a time at least to Zenas Wright. Now that the goal of their journeying was near, the geologist was not ashamed to admit that he was weary.
Several times Polaris explored without success paths that seemed likely, and at length marked one that led, by devious turns and detours, to the open water. Following it through to the shore, he penetrated north along the coast a number of miles. He found that there which sent him back to camp on flying feet.
"Now are our troubles at an end!" he shouted. "I have found a ship!"
Scoland and his men had been a half day on their northern journey when theMinnetonka'swireless operator brought to Scoland's cabin the following message: