BACK TO LIFE AND LIGHT
Screaming in a desperate frenzy that cast aside all fear, the Princess
Memene sprang back along the passage and caught up another spear to
replace that which the stroke of the bear had spun from her grasp.
In her veins surged up the blood that had faced death on many a
hard-fought battlefield in the years when the world was young, and
counted no odds. Pale to the lips, her eyes ablaze, she fronted her
towering antagonist. For the bear was over the rock now, reared on his
hinder legs, and advancing to make an end.
At her feet writhed the dying dog, above her swung the crescent talons;
the roaring, slavering jaws were opening wide to rend and tear her
tender flesh.
Came a flash of fire from the passage, a crashing report that echoed
and vibrated through the rocky corridor. The bear stiffened in every
limb and line. A shudder ran through his immense bulk. He turned half
around and, with one unearthly howl, collapsed across the floor of the
passage, his life gushing from him in a crimson torrent that jetted
from under his shoulder.
As though in the grip of a dream, the girl saw the beast go down. She
heard the fiendish clamor of the ravening pack behind her, sounding
faint and from a distance. Then with a shout a great man clothed in
white furs strode into the passage. His cap had fallen from his head,
and long golden hair fell about his shoulders. In his hand he carried a
smoking rifle.
For a moment he stood out to the girl's sight, clear cut as a living
cameo. The darkness fell upon her. Vainly she strove to command her
dizzying senses. Her knees gave way. With a little sigh, she pitched
forward, falling across the carcass of the bear, which still was moving
feebly in its death agony.
Polaris leaped over the body of his fallen foe and stood, peering about
him with quick glances. As his eyes became accustomed to the half light
in the cavern, he saw the princess lying across the dying monster, her
long black hair disheveled and mingled with the snowy fur of the brute.
He stooped and caught up the girl and laid her gently to one side,
where the beast in the throes of dissolution might not do her harm.
Looking beyond her, he saw the small room hung with skins, saw the six
gray dogs crouched in leash, every burning eye turned on him, and, at
the farther side of the room, saw the long, broad form of a man lying
loose flung across a low pallet, his head hanging over its side. All
that he saw, and then from the dusk along the wall of the passage a
gaunt, gray form reared up in his path, and he forgot all else.
"Pallas!" he cried. "Pallas! Are you come back from the dead?"
Taking a stiff step forward, the dog gathered all the strength in
her weakening frame and raised herself on her hind legs. She set her
forepaws against the breast of the master loved so well and, whining,
strove to look into his face. Her eyes were glazing, and the blood was
spurting fast from a ghastly wound in her neck.
"No, my Pallas, you are no ghost--but soon will be," Polaris said with
breaking voice. "I find you, and I lose you." He steadied the dog with
his strong hands and laid her cold muzzle against his cheek.
With each gasping breath she tried to bark her joy, but she was too
weak. A low howl burst from her lungs that carried with it a world
of glad greeting, affection, and farewell. She shuddered, her head
drooped, and her limbs relaxed.
"Good-by, Pallas," whispered the master. He lowered the limp body to
the floor and stepped forward, wet-eyed, to explore the other wonders
of the cave. First he carried the unconscious girl into the room and
laid her on one of the large chests, drawing a blanket over her.
Crouching along the wall, where they were tied fast to a beam, the six
children of Pallas watched his every motion, their hackles erect, their
teeth bared. He ran his eyes approvingly over their powerful forms, and
noted with a smile the leathern harness that hung on the beam.
"You serve a master who has trained you well," he muttered. "Soon you
and I shall be fast friends."
* * * * *
Approaching the pallet, Polaris took the man who lay there by the
shoulders and turned him over, placing his head back on its pillow. He
started with surprise when, despite the emaciation of sickness and a
ten days' growth of beard, he recognized the well-remembered features
of the Sardanian king.
"You, too, Minos?" he exclaimed. "Truly, the ways of fate are strange."
A touch of the hand told him that the heart of the king still beat. He
glanced around the room. The fireplace, with its dead ashes, told its
story. For the first time he realized the cold of the place.
"A wound, sickness, the loss of fire, and no means to make one, then
the beast. I find you in evil case, indeed, Minos the king," he said.
He hurried to the fireplace and piled wood upon the hearth. With his
keen knife he hacked splinters and set them to the wood. Producing a
box of matches from the breast of his shirt, he struck them and fired
the pile in many places. Going back to the king, he exerted his great
strength, and dragged the couch across the rocky floor to the side of
the fireplace. He spread a rug on the floor and laid the girl on it.
She showed no sign as yet of returning consciousness.
While he was at work, he heard the voice of Zenas Wright calling him
insistently from the hill slopes outside the cave, where he had left
him to mind the dog team.
Polaris hastened out, and met the old man in the passage.
"I was getting worried," the scientist said. "I've unhitched those
wicked brutes of yours and given them something to chew on. They'd have
taken a chance at me if I hadn't, I guess. What's in there?"
In a few words Polaris told him what he had found, the old geologist
tugging at his white beard and punctuating the tale with many an
exclamation of surprise.
"Now haste you within, old man, with that flask of yours," said
Polaris, "and see if the man may be saved. The girl, I think, is sound
and well--she has only fainted--but Minos the king has been sorely
wounded, and lies so ill that his bones almost show through his flesh."
Zenas Wright ran to the sledge and fetched a small medicine case and a
leather-covered flask of brandy. Polaris helped him to scramble over
the rock to the inner corridor.
"'Ware the dogs," the young man cautioned. "Keep well away from them,
or they will have the clothes from off your back. There are some things
to be done out here, and then I will join you."
The scientist hastened along the passage. By the leaping firelight he
surveyed the strangest room that ever he had seen in all his threescore
and odd years. The huge carved chests, the cloths and rugs of strange
materials, the quaint utensils, the weapons of iridescent ilium,
lighted the fires of enthusiasm in his eyes.
"Marvelous!" he said. Well as he would have liked to stop at once, and
handle and study those curiosities, he hurried on, giving a wide berth
to the snarling brutes, which gave him no friendly greeting. He reached
the side of the couch and bent above the still form of the king.
With expert fingers, the old man felt the wrists of Minos. "Um-m,
he's not so bad," he muttered. He unbound the bandage from the king's
head and inspected the wound in the sick man's temple. It had been a
deep gash and a wide, but it was nearly healed. Zenas Wright found a
small flagon and water, in which he mixed a draft of the fiery brandy.
Supporting the king's head on his arm, Wright forced his lips and teeth
apart and poured the strong spirit down Minos's throat.
The sick man coughed weakly, but swallowed the liquor. Almost
immediately a line of color crept across his white face. He turned on
the old man's arm, his head wavered from side to side; then he settled
himself, and his deep, regular breathing indicated that he had passed
from swooning into sleep.
From the king the geologist passed to the girl. He lifted the long,
dark tresses from her face. "A beauty, or would be if she was washed,"
he commented. For Memene's cheeks were stained with tears, and grime
from the floor where she had fallen, and smeared with blood that had
jetted from the polar bear.
Polaris's fire was blazing hotly, and the room was warm. Wright
loosened the girl's dress at the neck. He poured a few drops of the
brandy into her mouth. Finding a small cloth, he dipped it in water,
and laved her face and hands. Fear, rage, and despair had combined
strongly in the shock which brought about her faint, and she did not
respond at once. When he saw that her breathing was becoming easier,
the old man left her, and set about re-dressing the wound on the head
of the sick man.
He was busy with scissors, bandages, and ointment, when he heard a
gasping cry behind him.
Over him stood Memene. Far above her head, in the grip of both hands,
she swung the flashing ilium sword of Minos. Zenas Wright let fall his
bandages and shrank, startled fully as much by the rage of suspicion
and anger in the girl's face as by the menace of the glittering blade.
"Drop it, foolish girl! Drop it!" he shouted hastily, recovering
himself somewhat. "Can't you see that I'm only mending your man's
broken head?" He held out the bandages and pointed to the wound in
Minos's temple and the basin and balm.
His words meant nothing to the Sardanian princess, but she comprehended
the gestures. The suspicion left her dark eyes. Slowly she lowered
the sword. With a little cry she let it fall on the floor. In another
instant she was curled at the head of the king's couch, and her quick,
soft fingers were aiding the old man laving the wound, and picking
up for him, in turn, each article that he required, almost before he
indicated it.
Her eyes followed every minute step of the operations. She watched
jealously every fleeting shade of expression in the old man's face.
Several times she overwhelmed him with a torrent of words that were
"Greek" indeed to him. He could only spread his hands out helplessly
and shake his head in answer.
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 the _Minnetonka_. 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 call _thalmi_, 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, Adventurer
JAMES PARKERSON, seaman
Of the Sardanian Relief Expedition, Who
Perished 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 the _Minnetonka_ lay, 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 the _Minnetonka's_ guns.
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 the
_Minnetonka_ made 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 the _Minnetonka_,
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 the
_Minnetonka_ was churning northward, a long wake of black smoke
trailing over the waters behind her.