Polaris and the Goddess Glorian
By Charles B. Stilson
_Copyright 1917 by Popular Publications, Inc._
Introduction
In the antarctic wilds far below Ross Sea, Polaris Janess (Polaris--of
the Snows), was born, of a mother he never knew, and grew to manhood's
years knowing one human face only, that of his father. When that father
died, the young man set his face to the north, to find the world of
men, of which his father and his books had told him; and to deliver
to the National Geographic Society in Washington a packet containing
scientific data compiled by his explorer sire.
Journeying through the silent wastes with his dog team, the son of the
snows found Rose Emer, an American heiress, who had strayed from an
exploring party, and who waited death in the icy wilderness.
Hurled southward again in a breakup of the ice floes where they had
camped, Polaris and the girl came upon the kingdom of Sardanes--a
valley girded by volcanic hills which warmed it, and peopled by a lost
fragment, some two thousand strong, of the ancient Greeks.
The adventures of the man of the snows and the American maid in
Sardanes; how they escaped thence; how their love bloomed amid
the eternal snows; and how they won at last to America, where the
Geographic Society hailed the dead Stephen Janess as the first man to
set foot on the Southern Pole--all these things have been related.
Zenas Wright, friend of Polaris's father, and a celebrated student
of volcanic phenomena, told Polaris that the fires which had warmed
Sardanes for centuries were passing away from the valley, and that all
life in the ancient kingdom must perish.
Chartering the United States second-class cruiser _Minnetonka_,
Polaris, Wright, and Captain James Scoland set sail to rescue the
Sardanians. Scoland, who loved Rose Emer, deserted Janess and Wright in
the wilderness and went back to America to woo the Rose-maid. But Rose
Emer refused him, and gray Marcus, Polaris's dog, protected her from
Scoland's profaning lips and tore the recreant captain so horribly that
the man went mad, and in his madness revealed his inhuman treachery.
Again the _Minnetonka_ turned her nose to the mysterious South, and
Rose Emer went down the bitter seas to find her sweetheart.
Meanwhile Polaris and old Zenas Wright found Sardanes a waste of snows,
its volcanic girdle cold and dead, its people, led by the mad priest
of Analos, gone to their doom through the fiery "Gateway" of their
god Hephaistos. Only Minos, the kind, and his bride, the Lady Memene,
remained alive, hidden in a cave in the hills. Those four, Polaris,
Wright, and the two Sardanians, were picked up by the _Minnetonka_ near
the Antarctic Circle as they were making their perilous way northward
in a small launch which they had found in the wreck of Captain
Scoland's supply ship.
In the story which follows will be related the tale which was brought
back to America by old Zenas Wright--what befell Polaris and his
companions after the _Minnetonka_ turned northward--homeward.
CHAPTER I
THE GOLDEN STRANGER
On the bridge of the cruiser _Minnetonka_ stood Minos, the Sardanian
king, staring southward in the wake of the ship, southward where his
lost, dead kingdom lay buried under the soft, cruel snows beyond the
unchartered antarctic seas. Ahead of the ship, full of promise, full
of hope, was America. For the _Minnetonka_ had rounded the Horn that
morning and was on her long straight course for the port of home.
Below him, in her cabin, was the girl bride of Minos, the Lady Memene,
so strangely won and saved from the crowning horror of his kingdom's
fall. It was mid-forenoon of a cloudless day. Gay voices echoed along
the decks of the cruiser. Gladness was in the very air the voyagers
breathed--the gladness of the homeward-bound.
But the mien of the king was somber. There was a shadow on his brow
and deeper shadows in his dark eyes gazing so steadily into the south.
Bright as were his prospects, memory still whispered sadly to him of
the only spot on earth which had been home to him. He could not forget.
Far away on the dancing, sparkling waters something caught the eye of
the king, a something which flashed and disappeared and flashed again,
as the wave on which it rode dipped and arose among its fellows. Minos
watched it curiously.
Leaning against the rail beside the king, so close that their elbows
almost touched, was Lieutenant Irwin Everson, commander of the
_Minnetonka_, trim in his naval blue. Minos touched his shoulder and
said:
"Yonder--something shines on the water."
Everson followed with his eyes the course indicated by the pointing
finger of the king. Again the distant object flashed in the sunlight,
far away on the starboard quarter. "Might be ice; but I've seen enough
of that lately to know that it isn't," muttered Everson as he, too,
caught the flash, "and no wave ever shone like that."
Stepping into the pilothouse, the lieutenant returned with his glasses.
Their lenses revealed to his eyes a glittering patch from which the
rays of the sun were reflected as it rose and fell with the waves. But
even the powerful binoculars were inadequate to distinguish the form
and substance of the thing.
"I can't make it out," Everson said as he lowered the glasses. "But
here comes the keenest pair of eyes on the ship." He leaned from the
bridge and called down to a tall man who was crossing the deck below.
"Oh, Mr. Janess! Can you spare us a moment? We need your eyesight."
Polaris turned a smiling face in response to the call. He, too, was
glad of the home-going; no man on the ship more so. In a moment he
joined the king and the lieutenant on the bridge.
Though he was not so tall by the breadth of a hand as the Sardanian,
who was indeed a giant, the tawny head of the son of the snows was
inches above that of the young naval man. As they stood one on either
side of him, Everson involuntarily stepped back a pace. He felt puny
and absurd, and he was by no means a small man.
For the half of a minute, Janess gazed through the glasses, altering
their focus slightly. He lowered them suddenly and swung on his heel to
face Everson.
"Put the ship--" He stopped and his face flushed. "I beg pardon," he
continued. "It is not mine to give orders, but yonder a man floats. He
lies face downward across a piece of wreckage."
Lieutenant Everson hurried into the pilot house, and down to old
MacKechnie among his boilers was flashed the signal which swung the
gray cruiser off her course in a long arc to the southward.
"A man, you say?" the commander queried as he rejoined Polaris and the
king. "But what is it that glitters so?"
Polaris, with the glasses at his eyes again, did not at once reply.
When he did, the answer was surprising.
"It is the man that glitters. If he be not of metal himself, then is he
clothed in it from head to toe, and it glimmers--" He turned to Minos
and lapsed into the Greek of Sardanes. "It glimmers, Minos, as did that
suit of armor which thou didst leave behind thee in the cave on the
Mount of Latmos," he said.
The king stirred to quick interest. The eyes of the naval lieutenant
widened with amazement as Polaris repeated his remark in English.
"A man clothed in metal! In armor!" he exclaimed. "And floating here
in the South Atlantic! What can that mean? Poor chap; whoever he is,
he will never tell us. He must have been dead for days. But it's well
worth the investigation."
Impatiently the three men stood at the rail of the bridge as the ship
swung on.
* * * * *
At an eighteen-knot clip, the _Minnetonka_ cut swiftly through the
waves, nearer and nearer to the flashing burden of the waves. Soon
other eyes not so keen as those of Polaris could descry the strange
objective of the ship. Forward along the rail, sailors clustered,
shouting their surprise, and staring at the unusual spectacle of the
glittering man afloat.
Presently, with a deep thrumming of her valves, the _Minnetonka_ slowed
down. With a word to Everson, Polaris left the bridge and hastened
across the deck. As a boat was swung over the side in the davits, he
sprang into it with the sailors. Less than two-score strokes of the
oars took the boat alongside the floating mystery.
Then, indeed, had the sailors cause to stare with open mouths.
On a crisscross tangle of slender beams, oddly twisted and broken, lay
the body of a man. So small was the raft of wreckage which supported
him that his head and feet projected at each side, and as the waves
tossed his unstable craft, first his face and then his heels were
dipped beneath the water. Very wide of shoulder was the stranger and
powerfully framed, if the outlines of the garb he wore did not belie
him.
From crown to sole he was dressed in jointed armor, cunningly fashioned
and decorated, and the whole of which gleamed in the sunlight as only
burnished copper or red gold can gleam. His hands only were bare;
smooth, strong hands, clenched fast about two of the broken beams
beneath him.
But it was none of those things, and they were strange enough, that
caused the coxswain to cry out hoarsely as the boat wore alongside, or
that caused Polaris Janess, bent over with outstretched hands, to draw
them back from the floating stranger, while his lips parted and his
breath came hard.
"He's alive! By the grace of God, he's alive!" cried the coxswain.
Face downward the stranger lay, as Polaris had said, loose-flung and
inert, and sprawled as though some force had pitched him there. But
though his head was more often under the water than above it, his broad
shoulders heaved and fell regularly. He was alive.
The supreme wonder of it, and that which awed Polaris and the sailors,
was that _the man breathed when his head was under water_!
When a wave tilted the raft so that his face was raised, his breath was
expelled with a wheezing, whistling sound. When he was submerged, a
stream of small bubbles arose about his neck and clung to the surface
of his metal helmet.
For a long moment Polaris stood and looked down at this amazing thing.
Then he reached out and very gently took the stranger by the shoulders
to turn his face to the sky. So tight was the clutch of those strong
bare hands about the two beams of the raft which they held that the
entire structure tipped when the son of the snows laid hold. In vain he
tried to loosen that grasp. It was not to be done without breaking the
man's fingers. To make an end of it, Janess took an axe from the hands
of the coxswain and cut through the beams.
Still gripping the wooden fragments, the man turned over on his back.
Then the mystery of the stranger's breathing was partially made clear.
Under the flare of the helmet he wore his brow was hidden. His eyes
were fast closed. Fitting tightly over the bridge of his nose and
extending down so that it covered his mouth and part of his chin, was
a projecting masklike contrivance of metal and leather. Its straps
covered the man's ears and were made fast somewhere at the back of his
head under the helmet. So tightly was the mask affixed that its straps
cut into the flesh of the man's cheeks. It much resembled the masks
worn by the soldiers in modern warfare to protect themselves from the
gas attacks of their enemy.
Through its mechanism the breath of its wearer hissed and whistled like
escaping steam.
Alive though the man was, and under circumstances which made his
discoverers marvel, he was near death. Above and below the confines of
the mask he wore, the bones of his face seemed almost thrusting through
the flesh. The flesh itself was wasted and puckered by the action of
the sea water, and the skin was cracked and raw. His hands, which clung
so tenaciously to the bits of broken wood, were bleeding about the
nails, and his wrists were gashed and water-eaten.
"Now, here is work for Dr. Marsey," Polaris said. He gathered the limp
form of the stranger into his arms and lifted him into the boat.
At the rail of the _Minnetonka_ as the boat was shipped, a curious
crowd met the advent of the man from the sea. Carrying him as lightly
as though he had been a child, Polaris laid the man on the deck. The
ship's doctor pushed through the wondering sailors and bent over him.
"Not dead?" he exclaimed when he saw the stranger's face. "A most
amazing thing!"
"What resurrection from antiquity have we here?" said old Zenas Wright,
falling on his knees beside Polaris, who was supporting the man's
head. "No museum I ever saw boasted a suit of armor like this one."
The scientist ran a finger over the delicate tracery on the glittering
corselet of the stranger.
Polaris sought and found the catch which released the chin strap and
laid the open helmet on the deck. Another chorus of exclamations
greeted the appearance of the stranger's head. It was covered with a
mass of wavy red hair, so red that it shone like flames in the sunlight.
Rumors of the wonder on deck had drawn the grizzled MacKechnie up from
his beloved engines.
"Mark me, yon laddie's a Scot--if he isna' of the wild Irish," was his
dry comment when he saw the fiery head on the deck.
Undoing its buckle, Janess next laid aside the odd mask from the face
of the stranger. Except that he had a high, bold nose and a mouth that
closed in a thin, firm line, little could be made of the features of
the man, they were so damaged by his long immersion in the sea and
impressed by the tightly drawn trappings of the mask. But he apparently
was a young man, of not more than thirty years.
In vain Dr. Marsey endeavored to force the man's clenched teeth apart
so that he might apply the neck of the brandy flask which a steward had
fetched. The jaw of the stranger was set like a rock and resisted all
effort, and the doctor was compelled to pour the liquor between the
locked teeth.
"If that doesna' fetch him, nothing whatever will," said MacKechnie,
the nostrils of his ruddy old nose twitching.
"Ah, he's getting it!" said Zenas Wright. With the first trickle of
the brandy down his throat, the unconscious man stirred faintly. His
mouth opened and closed again with a snap, and his hands unclenched and
let fall the bits of beams they had held so long. He coughed weakly. A
faint tinge of color flowed into his face. His eyelids twitched, but
did not open.
Dr. Marsey touched the man's temples and then his wrists with practised
fingers.
"I think that we shall hear his story yet," he said. "What he needs
now is a bed and nourishment. Bring him below."
Polaris looked into the battered face and was strangely stirred. The
grim plight of the man he had rescued, the mystery of him, the strength
of the spirit that seemed to dominate even that unconscious body; all
struck an answering chord in the nature of the son of the snows. For
he, too, had suffered and endured, almost to the gates of death, and
had remained steadfast. Was it a premonition that made him feel so
strongly that this man, should he live, would be his friend above many?
When the sailors would have taken up the stranger, Polaris waved them
aside, and himself carried the inert body below, the blazing head
resting on his shoulder.
MacKechnie gazed after him thoughtfully as he strode across the deck.
"Beware, laddie lad, beware!" the Scotchman muttered softly. "'Tis only
ill luck he'll be bringin' to ye, yon gowden mon. For ye hae saved him
from the sea."
* * * * *
Shivering throughout the length of her steel hull, the _Minnetonka_
drove southward. A shrieking wilderness of wind and wave surrounded the
ship. Reft from all guidance, she sheared through the furious waters
with no more of volition than some monster projectile launched by the
battling elements. Twice had the stout cruiser come free of scathe from
the white portals of the Antarctic. Now she seemed winged by death to
enter them once more and forever. In the grip of the tempest the ship
was no more than a toy--a helpless, beaten thing.
Calamity, like a black dog, had crept hard upon the heels of the
bizarre stranger. He had not been on the cruiser for six hours when a
storm burst, the like of which for violence no man on board the ship
ever had seen.
In an attempt to breast the gale and make for some port of safety,
one of the propeller shafts--weakened perhaps by the pounding of the
ice-drift months before--had snapped short off. Unequal to the double
task, its twin had sprung beyond all use. Thereafter the scant mercy of
chance ruled the destinies of the ship and of all she bore.
Nor was the damage to the shafting all that disaster had wrought. In
her great peril the ship was stricken dumb and could not summon aid.
Her wireless was out of commission. She could send no call across the
face of the waters to sister ships, bidding them to hasten to her
succor.
MacKechnie's dismal prophecy was likely to be visited, not on Polaris
Janess alone, but upon the entire ship's company.
In the pilothouse, with the gale screeching outside his windows,
Lieutenant Everson bent above his charts; but he was helpless and
well-nigh hopeless. Down in the engine room, its busy clamor stilled,
MacKechnie sat and stared bitterly at the mechanism which he so loved.
It was useless now, its splendid powers crippled, its fires dying away
to embers. If the inward prayers of the engineer were fervent, the
flow of Scotch profanity which passed his lips at whiles was far more
eloquent. He, too, was helpless. He cursed the day when he had decided
with Everson to round the Horn and take the eastern route. They had
learned at Dunedin, in New Zealand, that the Panama Canal was closed by
another Culebra slide, and they had thought that this was the quicker
way to the port of home.
Better the delay than this!
On all the ship two hearts only were unshaken by the catastrophe. One
was that of the stranger.
Freed of his armor, his body cleared and his scarred face and arms in
bandages, he lay tossing in a bunk in one of the cabins. Dr. Marsey was
unremitting in his care of the patient whom the sea had given him. Hot
gruel and small doses of brandy, administered alternately, had turned
the ebbing tide of the man's vitality. He was gathering strength. But
his consciousness still strayed beyond the powers of any tempest to
disturb it.
Another who thought nothing of the gale and its accompanying terrors
was Zenas Wright.
Coupled with his keen and scientific mind, there was in the old
geologist the enthusiasm of a boy, and an overmastering curiosity to
learn new things. Many and wild had been the guesses which had followed
the finding of the red-haired stranger. That he had been shipwrecked
was plain enough to all. But who and what was he?
Some star out of _opéra-bouffe_, said one, out of a job and reduced to
the necessity of wearing one of his own costumes. A lunatic, another
said, and found more to agree with him. But whence the armor and the
mask?
Let guessers guess and tempests roar, said Zenas Wright to himself. He
was on the trail of knowledge. So he slipped into the cabin where the
stranger lay. He stood at the head of the bunk and looked down where
the red hair of the derelict flared on the pillow. The impressions left
by the straps of his mask had filled out, and the lineaments of the man
were more distinguishable than they had been. It was an agreeable face,
thought Zenas Wright; all of it that the bandages did not hide. There
were distinct lines of humor at the corners of the straight mouth and
tiny wrinkles at the base of the craggy nose--lines which said that the
wearer of them was a hearty fellow, who ofttimes had laughed long and
merrily at jokes, whether of his own or another's making.
"But," thought Zenas to himself, "Marsey's been giving the fellow
altogether too much brandy, or else he is in a rare fever." The
geologist laid the back of his hand to the man's cheek. He found
it cool. But it was ruddy to the ears, with the ruddiness that is
associated with an intimate camaraderie with the wine cups.
At the touch of the old man's fingers, the stranger ceased his tossing.
His eyes opened. One flash from them Zenas Wright caught, and he saw
that they were sea-blue, bright and leaping eyes. Then their lids
closed. The man shook his head wearily, and from his lips trembled what
might have been a moan or a muttered word. The scientist bent hastily
to listen, but the man made no further sound. As the old man watched
him, his form relaxed and he lay apparently in a dreamless, voiceless
slumber.
* * * * *
From the floor, Wright took up the shining helmet, and from a stand
the queerly fashioned mask. He was about to leave the cabin when
his attention was arrested by the garb which the stranger had worn
underneath his armor and which was flung across the back of a chair.
One garment it was, even to the feet of it, like the sleeping suit of a
child. It was of a soft, fine fabric, almost of the thinness of gauze,
yet firmly and closely woven and warm to the feel. But it was neither
of cotton nor of wool, nor yet of silk, or any other material with
which the scientist was familiar.
He shook his head over it; and then, with the mask and helmet, he left
the cabin.
Straight to the deserted ship's laboratory the geologist went, and shut
himself in. And there, some time afterward, Polaris, threading his way
through the swaying corridors with Rose Emer clinging to his arm, found
him.
So busy with his work was old Zenas that he did not see or hear the
entrance of Janess and the girl. For a time they stood in silence and
watched him. They saw him spill drops from a vial on the surface of
the helmet. Then he went at it with a small drill which he had fetched
from the machine shop. That was a bit of hard work, for he puffed and
mopped his brow. He collected with care the particles which fell under
the bite of the drill. Those he tested with drops from another bottle,
and then again, opening and discarding a number of chemicals. At length
he got a reaction which appeared to satisfy him, for he chirruped
gleefully and nodded his white old head.
Next Wright donned the mask and fastened its straps. Polaris and Rose
heard the whistling of his breath through it. He then drew a bucket of
water from a tap, set it on one of the laboratory stands, ascended a
stool, and suddenly plunged his head into the pail.
Zenas had not stopped to figure out the displacement of the container
of a well-developed scientific brain. It was considerable. Much of
the water splashed out on the floor, and not a little of it went down
inside the scientist's collar. Nothing daunted by the cold trickle of
the inundation, he bravely kept his head in the bucket, from which
arose at once a prodigious gurgling and bubbling.
The old man's shoulders shook as though a fit of coughing had seized
him. One minute, two, three, passed. Zenas stood so still that Polaris
became alarmed. He stepped to the geologist's side and shook him by the
arm. The only response he got was an impatient gesture of a hand, which
seemed to say, "Go away and don't bother me."
Presently Wright raised his head from the depths of the bucket, and
ludicrous enough he looked, with the odd snout of the mask projecting
from his face, his white thatch of hair all plastered flat and the
water running from his beard and making a mess of his cravat and shirt
front. But above the mask his little dark eyes were triumphant. When he
saw Polaris at his side, he could scarcely wait to unfasten the mask.
"There," he shouted, and he shook the thing above his head, "there is
one of the greatest inventions of modern times. I don't know what is in
the inside of it, or just what it does, but I'll find out. If that chap
yonder is the inventor of it, he can take it to the United States, take
out a patent on it and make a scandalous amount of dollars, and we can
all become human submarines. How long was I down?"
"About five minutes, Daddy Wright," said the girl, who had taken a
strong liking to the plucky old geologist and his bluff ways.
"Five minutes!" Wright's tones were awestruck. "And I took every breath
regularly and naturally, except when I had to sneeze! And it was real
oxygen I got, too. Not a drop of water came through this thing, and it
was very good breathing. Well, I've made two discoveries."
"And those are?" Polaris questioned.
"That our friend yonder with the red topknot can live under the water
like a fish, _and that he wears armor of gold which makes a light in
the dark_. Look here."
Wright took up the open helmet. Stepping to the switch, he shut off the
lights in the laboratory.
Faintly at first, and then strongly and more strongly, the helmet
glowed in the darkness. The light grew, until the two men and the girl,
standing close together, could dimly see each other's faces.
It was uncanny, this strange metal headpiece with its fan-shaped crest,
all luminous with a flickering and phosphorescent radiance.
"What does it?" Rose Emer whispered, the tempest for the time forgotten.
Zenas Wright turned on the lights.
"I cannot tell," he replied. "But if it's not radium, it is something
that is closely akin to radium. The outer surface of the helmet is of
gold. I've tested it with acids. The gold is laid--not plated, but laid
on thickly--over an inner shell of steel. And finely tempered steel it
is, too, as my drill will bear me witness. But the light comes from
still another metal, which is inlaid upon the tracery in the gold here."
He turned the helmet in his hands. Over all of its surfaces were the
fine lines of a design of twining vinery, with here and there small,
conventionally shaped flowers. In the lines of the chasing was inlaid,
as Wright had said, another metal. It seemed to be a reddish and rusty
dust, which clung in the surface of the gold along all of the lines of
the graven design. It was that which made the light.
"That chap over there is no actor, and he's not a crazy man," said the
geologist earnestly; "but an enigma that I'm going to solve, if the
good Lord will give me the time. We had on this ship before he came two
survivors of a history to make an archeologist weep tears of joy. Now
we have a third, and, to my mind, more wonderful even than are they!
"Boy--" He turned and clapped Polaris on the shoulder. "I only hope
that I shall live long enough to pen the 'finis' to the book that I'm
going to write some day!"
* * * * *
For seven days, fraught with perils through every passing hour, the
hurricane belabored the staggering ship. South by southeast, the storm
drove her on. The whip of the gale and the shock of the mighty waves
which arose to meet its lash were incessant.
Past the Falklands, their rocky headlands dimly seen through the flying
scud; past the Aurora Island group, and on past lonely Georgia, the
hard-pressed _Minnetonka_ fled down the raging sea path under the goads
of the storm demons. Nowhere might she tarry. Candlemas Island and
Saunders and Montague in turn were left behind, and then Thule, last
link between the South Atlantic and the frigid wastes of the Antarctic
Sea.
Off the adamant cliffs of far Thule the cruiser nearly left her bones.
She struck a hidden rock, struck so fiercely that the massive steel ram
was torn from her prow, and with it the triple rails, with which she
had been equipped to withstand the ice-shocks, in her antarctic voyage,
were stripped from her entire starboard side.
When Thule had disappeared in the murk, the swing of the tempest
turned, and the cruiser was forced eastward in a whirling race of
current and gale. Like a smitten thing that seeks a lonesome spot in
which to die, the ship passed on into the mysteries of the uncharted,
treacherous seas which lie east by south from Thule.
Helpless still the cruiser rode. Unable to make repairs to her
shafting, Lieutenant Everson did the only thing that he could do; he
kept her head-on with the seas and let her run before the tempest.
Through all those days and nights of peril the stranger lay in his
cabin. His consciousness had returned, and at times he sat up and gazed
curiously at those who visited him; but he seemed to be in a mental
haze. He ate heartily of what was given to him, and his strength grew.
He spoke to no one.
Among the men on the _Minnetonka_ were those who, one or another, were
conversant in nearly all of the languages of the civilized world. One
by one they were called in by Zenas Wright to try their tongues on the
stranger. He met them all with blank looks, sometimes with smiles; but
he answered none. He seemed to comprehend none.
Polaris visited the cabin often. His liking for the man grew. He
imagined that the stranger was more cordial to him than to any of
those who attended him. Once or twice the son of the snows surprised a
wistful regard in the bright blue eyes of the man, an expression that
was lost almost as soon as perceived. And once the stranger reached
Janess's hand and held it with his own for a moment, turning it and
feeling of its wonderful thews with his fingers. It was then that he
seemed the nearest to speech. Presently he let the hand fall with a
smile and a flash of white teeth.
It was after that last disaster, off the hard coasts of Thule, that
Engineer Ian MacKechnie went quite daft.
What had come upon the ship had seemed to numb the Scotchman. By day
and by night he sat in his silent engine room beside the lifeless
boilers, his cold pipe clenched between his set teeth, his lips
working. Occasionally he stumped heavily up the steel stairways to the
decks. His stays above were brief always, and always he returned to the
engine room. When he slept at all, it was only to nod in his chair.
Before his bloodshot eyes strange fantasies played themselves through,
and were sequeled in his fitful dreams. Always, they had the same
grisly climax.
In one of the night watches the old man appeared on the cruiser's
bridge. Everson, almost as sleepless as the engineer, was in the
pilothouse. The fury of the gale had subsided somewhat; but it still
roared on with a vigor that chilled the strong heart of the commander.
He saw the engineer as he came onto the bridge, and went out to speak
to him.
"Meester Everson," MacKechnie said, raising his voice to a shout to
cope with the shrieking clamor of the storm, "Meester Everson, wull ye
do a strange act and save the bonnie ship and a'?"
"Why, what is it, Mac? What do you advise now?" the lieutenant asked.
"'Tis you mon that the laddie plucked from the sea," replied
MacKechnie. "Wull ye no gi' orders to cast him o'er the side again, and
save the ship?"
Everson answered with a short laugh. "This is a poor time for joking,
Mac," he said.
"'Tisna' jokin' wi' me, Meester Everson," MacKechnie said. His tones
were deadly earnest. "Yon's no' a proper mon, whatever. He's one that
has sorely angered the big sea, and the deep rages mightily for him. If
ye dinna gi' him up, we'll all be ganging our way wi' him, down to auld
Davy Jones." His voice rose shrilly. "I'm fey," he cried. "I'm fey, and
I hae the secon' seeght! Heed me, mon!"
Everson shifted his position so that he got the light from the
pilothouse full on MacKechnie's face. It was drawn and wild-eyed.
"You're a superstitious fool, Mac," the lieutenant said. "You had
better go below and turn in. You look as though you had not had a wink
in a week."
"Supersteetious! Aye, mon, maybe, and a fu' to bootie," rejoined the
Scot. "And I've been havin' no sleep, I grant ye. Ma certes, how can a
mon sleep wi' _him_ glarin' and glommerin' yonder i' the engine room?
Heave him o'er the side, I'm tullin' ye, Meester Everson, as was done
wi' the prophet Jonah. 'Tis the only way whatever to save the ship.
"Supersteetious! An' are ye no supersteetious yer ain sel', Meester
Everson? Haven't I seen that ye always throw the deuces fra' yer hand
when ye play for siller at poker? I tull ye, yon's a deuce-mon. He
mustna' remain. Think it o'er, laddie; think it o'er. When ye hae seen
what I hae seen--"
He turned away, and the rest of his words were lost in the skirl of the
wind. Suddenly he backed up, clutching at the bridge rail and colliding
violently with Everson.
"See! See!" he screamed. "He's comin' for me the noo! I lockit him fast
i' the great kist i' the boiler room; but such as him are na' held by
bolts or bars. He's comin' for me!"
Moaning in abject terror, MacKechnie went down on his knees. He pointed
at the decks below with a trembling arm.
Everson looked in the direction indicated by the shaking finger of the
Scot.
* * * * *
A light hung at the foot of the bridge ladder. In the patch of radiance
it made, stood the stranger. He was dressed from head to foot in his
golden armor. His helm was on his head, and the whole flashed and
shimmered in the rays from the lamp.
As Everson stared at him, the man turned away from the foot of the
ladder and walked to the rail of the ship. There he stood gazing out
into the darkness and the storm.
Unnerved by the sudden appearance of the object of their discussion,
Everson hesitated for a moment. Then he started for the ladder to
descend to the deck. MacKechnie, his teeth chattering with fright, laid
hold of the lieutenant by the leg, but Everson shook off his grasp and
went on. As the commander set foot on the ladder, the stranger quit the
rail and came back toward the bridge.
Everson, half-way down the ladder, called sharply as the man came
opposite him. But the stranger did not pause or look up. He passed
the bridge with steady steps and crossed the deck toward the main
companionway. The lieutenant was about to proceed to the deck and
follow, when a wild and wailing cry behind him, piercing above the
booming of the seas, halted his step. He turned.
It was MacKechnie who had screamed. He was on his feet and coming along
the bridge. In the set face of the Scot was a look of such frozen
horror that it shook the lieutenant. With eyes glaring straight ahead,
the engineer passed Everson by as though he did not see him, descended
the ladder to the deck, and walked to the rail. He paused where the
stranger had stood only a moment before. He raised his hand as if to
strike at some shape visible to him alone. Again he cried out wildly.
Before Everson could move to stay him, the Scot climbed the rail and
threw himself into the sea.
Shouting to the men of the watch to fetch lanterns, Everson ran aft
along the side. It was useless. The crazed MacKechnie, whirled away in
a raging swirl of waters in which no man could live, was gone beyond
their ken. No cry came back to his fellows from the blackness. Only the
wind roared and the tortured waters thundered. In the plight of the
ship it was impossible even to attempt to pick up the lost man.
Far aft Everson clung to the rail, dazed, stunned at the suddenness of
his old comrade's taking off. Knowing that he could do nothing to save
the mad Scotchman, the lieutenant at length turned back and went below,
to the cabin of the stranger. He threw open the door. The cabin was
dark, except where the curious armor shed its glow along the floor. For
that phenomenon Everson was prepared. Zenas Wright had told him of the
luminous metal. What did surprise the lieutenant was that the armor lay
on the floor. And so recently he had seen it on the cruiser's deck, and
its owner inside of it. To that he could swear. He turned on a light.
The stranger lay quietly in his bunk, apparently in slumber, his broad
chest rising and falling regularly. Not the flicker of an eyelid
betrayed that he was conscious of the keen scrutiny which the commander
bent upon him. Almost then did Everson give way to the superstitious
imaginings of MacKechnie. Then his searching eyes saw the gleam of
drops of sea water which beaded the golden corselet and helm. He drew
a long breath of relief; for he knew that he had not dreamed. Pursuing
his investigations no further, the lieutenant returned to his vigil on
the bridge.
Next day, to the gratification of Dr. Marsey and to the general
surprise of the others on the ship, the stranger left his cabin.
Clothing had been provided for him, but he would have none of it and
appeared on the deck clad in his armor. He proved to be an exceedingly
curious man, the stranger. He went everywhere about the ship,
apparently in fear of nothing, although the gale still ran high. He
watched all of the operations of seamanship with the closest interest,
but was careful to get in the way of no one.
His ruddy face and flaming hair, with the outer trappings which he
wore, made the man the object of much comment on the part of the
sailors of the _Minnetonka_; comment which was not untinged with
awe. All of that he heeded not at all. In the full possession of his
faculties, he still was speechless. What communication anyone on the
ship had with him was by means of signs, and that necessarily was
limited. He took his meals with those who shared the officers' mess.
Although it evidently was unfamiliar to him, he was quick to observe
and to imitate the table etiquette of his companions.
Only Everson was not surprised at his appearance. The lieutenant kept
his counsel and waited.
Word of the mad act of MacKechnie went abroad through the ship, spread
by the men of the watch. Among the sailors, superstitious after the
manner of their kind, grew a hostility to the strange man, an enmity
that became more and more pronounced as the hours brought to the
cruiser no relief from the battering of the elements. So strong did the
feeling grow that Lieutenant Everson feared for the safety of the man,
and told Polaris of it. Thereafter the son of the snows constituted
himself a bodyguard for the stranger in his wanderings about the ship,
and remained with him as much as possible. Zenas Wright, too, watched
over his prize with the jealous zeal of a proper scientist.
Not for worlds would the explorer allow this living conundrum to come
to harm until he had solved him. The old man continually plied the
stranger with English words, pointing out to him their equivalents and
seeking to encourage speech. For, unless the man might be taught to
talk, Zenas felt that his chances of learning more of him were slim
indeed.
To all of those advances the man answered with smiles only. He was very
courteous, extremely good-natured, but beyond the ring of silence which
he had drawn about himself, he would not or could not go.
Everson was little surprised, although he was mightily angered, when,
on the third day following the death of MacKechnie, he was waited upon
by a delegation of his sailors with a demand that the stranger be sent
from the ship. They did not ask his death--merely that he be set adrift
in one of the cruiser's small boats. A sea was running in which such a
craft could not survive for two minutes.
Shamefacedly, but sullenly, the men listened to the stern rebuke of
their commander. When they had left him reluctantly--and their ears
must have tingled to his opinions of their superstitions--Everson
redoubled his precautions for the safety of the stranger. The
lieutenant was morally certain that at the first opportunity that
should offer, an "accident" would befall the man from the sea.
Abruptly as it had struck, the storm of wind subsided. It was succeeded
by a torrential downpour of rain. The cruiser was left tossing on a
choppy sea. Dead ahead to the south was land--what land, no one on
the ship could say. A scant five miles away it loomed up before them
through the mists and the driving rain, a long and towering coastline,
the peaks of its frowning cliffs almost touching the low-rolling clouds.
In this, the first respite from many hours of perils, Lieutenant
Everson at once set about the task of repairing his crippled ship.
Then the crown was placed upon the work of calamity.
* * * * *
Lashed no longer by the flail of the tempest, the _Minnetonka_ was laid
to. Hope returned to those who rode upon her. Those who gathered on her
decks were almost gay again.
For the first time in many days the two Sardanians came up from their
cabin. The Lady Memene had proved a poor sailor, and in her deathly
illness that came of the buffeting of the ship, Minos never had left
her side, but had nursed her with all the tenderness of a woman. The
king remembered well a time, not long before, when he had lain near
death, and her soft hands had soothed him, and her care had kept the
spark of life within him.
It was nearly noon. Chatting of their experiences in the storm, and
laughing at their appearance in the oilskins which they wore against
the rain, a little group gathered on the forward deck of the cruiser.
Almost it seemed that the hand of fate collected and placed them there.
Polaris Janess and Rose Emer, the Sardanians, old Zenas Wright, and
Ensign Willis Brooks, a happy-go-lucky youth of large dimensions and an
inexhaustible supply of good spirits, who was the second in command on
the _Minnetonka_, made up the party.
Presently Lieutenant Everson, his repair work well under way, came
up from below and joined the others. Dr. Marsey might have been with
them also, but the kindly physician delayed below to attend one of
the engineers who lay ill of a fever. Before he had finished his
ministrations, the stroke fell which was so strangely to alter the life
course of every one of that party, and the good doctor was too late to
be numbered among them.
Almost on the heels of Everson the red-haired stranger ascended the
companionway. With his armor on as usual, but dangling his helmet and
his mask from his hand, he clanked across the deck, all unheedful of
the anathemas that the sailors mouthed as he stalked past them.
From the port in his cabin he, too, had seen the new land that lay
ahead. He strode by the group on the forward deck, but his eyes were
not for them. Ever watchful, Zenas Wright noted that the mien of the
stranger was curiously excited. His blue eyes gleamed. His lips were
parted. Something seemed deeply to concern him. He stood at the rail
and studied the looming coastline long and searchingly. In his face was
the rapt expression of the man who greets again a well-loved friend
after an absence of many days. From the shore he turned his eyes to the
sea and scrutinized it keenly.
Zenas Wright, watching, started. What was the man about? Was he
signaling? And whom? The explorer took a hasty step toward the rail to
investigate.
Beneath his feet he felt the deck of the cruiser heave like the breast
of an unquiet sleeper. A terrific roar burst from the bowels of the
ship, and she quivered in every plate of steel and oaken beam.
"The magazine!" cried Everson. The commander dashed for the
companionway, but he never reached it.
Amidships the decks heaved up and opened in a yawning wound that rent
the cruiser almost from rail to rail. Through the gap shot skyward an
immense column of smoke, laced with spurts of flame, and spread fanwise
many feet in the air. With it there ascended a mass of débris torn from
the vitals of the ship. For yards around the waves splashed to the fall
of the splintered wreckage. The swaying decks were littered with it.
And some of the fragments were of steel and iron that clanged as they
fell, and others were horrible shreds of men, and made no clangor.
Paralyzed in his tracks, his eyes distended, his very flesh stirring
from his bones at the horror of it, Everson faced the wraith of ruin
that arose in his path. A new manifestation tore speech from his lips.
"Look!" he shouted aloud in a strained and unnatural voice. "My God,
look! _The color!_"
In the heart and center of the standing column of smoke, seen faintly
at first and then in blazing brilliance, towered a mighty pillar of
light. But it was not like any light that any of those who gazed
upon it had ever known. For it was neither of red nor white, nor yet
of violet, yellow, or green, or any other color or hue of the solar
spectrum. Radiant, scintillant, indescribably beautiful, it thrust up
through the murk of disaster steadily and cruelly as the flaming sword
of an unkind fate. It was this that had pierced the ship and exploded
the magazine.
Zenas Wright, who had looked unshaken on many strange things, looked
upon this and cried out, even as had Everson:
"The color! A new color! Impossible; yet it _is_!"
With chaos and death linked together and roaring in front of him, the
old man, true scientist to the last, bent his eyes on the flaming
pillar in a challenging and analytical stare. If this was to be his
final vision, why, he would learn what he might from it before he went
into the shadow where all learning is valueless.
Like painted puppets carved from wood, the men and women on the deck
stood and gazed at the appalling ruin of that fell disaster. It was
only a moment in the happening, but a moment that bore the burden of
many moments in its intensity.
* * * * *
The pillar of light moved, and those that watched saw that everything
that it touched it destroyed. It swayed toward them, and the deck
crumpled away before its advance. It swung back. In its path was one of
the massive steel turrets of the cruiser. The light played against it.
The turret tottered; the steel of it seemed to melt and disintegrate.
The entire structure crumbled and crashed down, disappearing through
the gash in the decking. With the fall of the turret the light vanished
also.
From the companionway came the horrid remnant of a man who crossed the
deck to Everson. One of his arms had been torn away between the wrist
and elbow. His features were blackened and marred beyond recognition.
An eye was gone. His clothing hung about him in tatters, and the
tatters were burning. He halted in front of the lieutenant and raised
the maimed arm, from which the blood was spurting, in the semblance of
a salute.
"The ship--sinks. The--sea--on fire."
He croaked the words brokenly, and fell, and died at the feet of his
commander.
Up through the gap in her bottom surged the sea water, and the ship
began to settle. The _Minnetonka_ was sinking.
Everson pulled himself out of the daze which in that moment of dread
had benumbed his faculties. A glance he gave to the settling decks and
the useless boats. He had neither men nor the time to unship them.
He turned to his companions.
"Those who have prayers to say had best say them; for this is the end
of our traveling," he said simply. Suiting his action to the words, he
knelt on the deck.
At the side of Polaris Janess appeared the red-haired stranger. As he
had once before, he now caught up the hand of the son of the snows.
Holding it, he looked into Polaris's face and smiled, a fearless and
whimsical smile.
"A strong hand, my brother, strong to hold a kingdom. This is not your
death that is coming. I will save you and these with you. I promise,"
he said--and the marvel to Polaris and to the others was that the man
who before had been speechless now spoke readily and in excellent
English.
Not waiting for the answer, which, in his surprise, Polaris was slow to
give, the stranger left his side and ran across the deck. He strapped
his odd mask over his face, clapped his helmet on his head and fastened
it. He caught up from the deck a length of steel chain. With a run and
a leap, he was gone--over the fast settling rail and into the sea.
Scarcely had the golden helmet disappeared over the side when the waves
crossed the decks to meet the water that was spouting from the interior
of the cruiser.
"A madman!" Polaris muttered. He turned and gathered Rose Emer in his
arms. She clung to him, sobbing softly.
"Be brave, dear heart," he whispered. "It isn't hard to die, and
wherever we are going, we shall go together."
Around them rose the waves.
Held fast in the swirl of the sinking ship, every soul on the
_Minnetonka_ went down with her. From Everson, kneeling on his deck, to
the lowliest coal-passer in the depths of the cruiser, there was no man
but bowed his face to the waters.
Clasping his sweetheart with one arm, Polaris struck out fiercely. For
a moment he cherished the hope that he might keep to the surface and
reach the land beyond. But the suction of the sinking ship was too
strong for even his giant strength. He saw the others, his friends
struggling about him. The water came between his dear lady's face
and his. He strove to reach her lips with his own. His lungs seemed
bursting. His senses swayed.
Through the green waters he saw a great golden shape like a globe
approaching him. Another fantasy. Strong hands gripped him. They, too,
must be dreams.
The blackness became absolute.