FOLLOWING NATURE'S TRAIL
Polaris drove his weary and dispirited dogs back along the trail to the
little camp. In the breast of the man burned an anger that made him
tireless, and that was proof against both the cold and the storm.
When he arrived at the camp he found the tall form of the Sardanian
king standing on guard. The Princess Memene, who had adapted herself
to their necessities with the bravery and fortitude of the true woman,
was busy about the portable oil cook stove in the shelter tent. Zenas
Wright slumbered peacefully in his sleeping bag.
Minos strode through the snow to meet the white-clad figure that urged
on the drooping brutes. Polaris greeted him with a strange smile.
"What hath happened to thee, my brother?" questioned the king;
"misfortune, it seemeth, from thy mien. Hath aught befallen thy ship?"
"This hath happened, O Minos," Polaris replied, leaning on his spear;
"the ship hath hailed into the north, and we four be left to travel
as seemeth us best for many a long hundred miles of perils, an the
tempests claim us not."
"Sailed--the ship! What mean--" and Minos paused. Here was a matter
that defied question.
He looked wonderingly at the son of the snows.
"Dost find it a riddle, Minos?" said Polaris with a hard laugh. "Well,
so do I also--a riddle that much I hope I shall one day have the
reading of." His anger came upon him again, and he clenched his strong
hands on the spear shaft so that the tough wood crackled in his grip.
"Many things might have happened, Minos. Some one thing _hath_
happened. The ship that should have been our rescue and our refuge is
surely gone, and on a rock yonder by the sea did I find writing on a
wooden slab that told of mine own death, and that of the old man, Zenas
Wright, and that of still another man of the ship's company."
"Another man of thy ship's company?" Minos said. His face grew stern.
"A man lay dead in the north pass of Sardanes, and who did not die of
age or sickness." The king glanced sharply at Polaris. "Couple that
with the double trail in the snow, my brother, and it is my mind that
thou art not far from reading of the riddle. Is it not so?"
"Mayhap," answered Polaris. "Yet would I do no man injustice by giving
word to that which is not proved."
"That, too, is well," said the king. "And now, for us, what is thy
counsel?"
"Let us wake the old man and the three of us make a plan," Polaris
replied. He tethered and fed the dogs, and the two men entered the tent.
Zenas Wright opened his eyes and blinked when Polaris shook him by the
shoulder. He straightway thrust out his hand.
"The flask, my son," he said with a droll smile; "I trust you filled
it. Not that I am what you'd call a toper, but I surely dreamed of that
cognac."
"With all the heart of me, old man, do I hope for the fulfillment of
that dream," said Polaris, and handed back the empty flask. "That it
will be soon, the chances are most slender. Every passing hour is
adding leagues to the distance between this empty bottle and the cask
with which it is acquainted."
Zenas Wright heard the tale of the shipless harbor, and met it like a
philosopher.
"So Scoland's gone," he said slowly. His old blue eyes narrowed a bit
as he thought, but he, too, held his tongue from his suspicions.
They held a council, three men and a woman, one old and wise in the
ways of the world, one to whom civilization was but a foster mother,
and two true children of a prehistoric past. The other three looked by
common consent to Polaris as the guiding spirit in this extremity.
"We are in your hands, now, my son," said the old scientist. "I guess
you are the leader of the Sardanian relief expedition. What shall it
be?"
"Two courses be open," Polaris said. "We can go back to the cave in
Sardanes and there live our lives and die our appointed deaths, for,
truly, I think no living man will ever come and seek us there. We
can strike out for the north over that path of many dangers, which I
followed once aforetime, with the Rose. And then, when we are come up
to the great seas that lie above this frozen land, if we take that
course, we must chance a rescue by some wandering ship--a small chance,
but I speak for that risk. Death lies at the ends of all paths, and I
think it better to meet it in the midst of our strong endeavor than to
have it find us out while we lie meekly to wait for it. What say you,
friends?"
Zenas Wright reached him a gnarled hand. "I'm with you, my lad," said
he. "I had hoped to lay a report of some moment before my colleagues
of the Geographical Society. I still have that hope. If there is a
man in the world who can guide us safely through the dangers which
face us, you are that man. And, if we fail, and leave our bones on the
road--well--I'm for the North."
Polaris translated to the two Sardanians. "Not two courses, my brother,
but one, let us say," said Minos gravely, and he, too, put his hand
in the hand of Polaris. "Let us fare along the northern road, and win
through or die. Myself and my princess, with only our poor knowledge,
would have tried that path had we lived until the light came, if you
had not come seeking us."
After a day's rest they turned their faces to the east and followed the
chain of the barrier range until they reached once more the Hunters'
Road. There they made a camp in the trail, while Polaris took the gray
dogs of Minos, which were stronger, and which had learned to obey him,
and drove through to Sardanes. From the cave on Mount Latmos he took
of the stores of meats and grain all that he dared to load onto the
sledge. They would need all the supplies that they might carry with
them.
Fearless in the face of their disasters, the members of the little
party rested their hopes on the broad shoulders of the son of the
wilderness, and they began their bitter drive. That leader set his
tireless strength and will of iron to the task, with a silent tongue
and a flame in his heart--a flame and a vision of a dear face a
continent and a half away to the north, that he swore he would live to
see again.
* * * * *
When men had failed them and fortune had seemed to turn her face away,
a mighty friend aided them--no less a one than old Mother Nature. The
path that might have been so beset with hardships, she elected to make
smooth, and tempered even her wild winds, so that the going of the
travelers was more swift than they had dared to hope.
Long before they came to the notch in the chain of ice mountains,
through which Polaris had passed north on his previous journey, they
reached the monstrous seam that the furious volcanic fires had left
across the southern continent when they had poured from their ancient
bed in Sardanes to rear their flaming bulwarks on the shores of Ross
Sea.
Where the fiery torrents had burst through under the barrier range,
the mountains must have been but empty shells of volcanoes active
ages agone. One of them had collapsed. Where once it had reared its
snow-capped peak, was now a jagged gash like a broken wall.
Through that gash the travelers went. It took them all of an arduous
day's labor to reach a spot from where they could see on ahead--labor
that was wasted, should they find that the lands beyond offered no
hope of a pathway. Most of the way the dogs were useless. The brutes
finally had been whipped into a semblance of amity, and flocked along
without fighting; more, it is true, through fear of the ready lash than
because of any love between the two breeds. With all their weights of
food and trappings the sledges were lifted by the son of the snows and
the Sardanian, and carried over many a torn and twisted scar in the
half-healed breast of the mountain.
If the thews of Polaris were more mighty than those of the king, in
endurance the men were equal. They performed feats that perhaps no
other two men in the whole world could have accomplished.
At last they gained a height in the pass from where the miles lay
spread out before them. As far as their eyes could see was a mark
across the land, as though a mighty iron wheel, white hot, had turned
its slow way northward, searing everything that it could not crush. Not
all the snows that had fallen had been sufficient to obliterate that
trail.
"There, my son, lies a road that we cannot lose," said Zenas Wright
when he set eyes on it. "And we know where it leads to--straight to
Ross Sea. There, above the volcanic area, is the most likely place of
all in the Antarctic regions for a ship to come."
"Aye, Zenas Wright, it is a good, broad roadway," Polaris said. "It
will be the play of children to follow it, set against the difficulties
of that other path to the east, which I took."
On through the pass they struggled, and were on the plain beyond in
three days. The pathway of the fires was not so smooth to follow as it
had looked from afar, but still offered no great obstacles. Once more
the long whiplashes sang over the galloping dogs, and Polaris, who
had not sung in many weeks, lifted his voice as he ran in a lilt that
quivered across the snows and woke strange echoes from the cliffs.
Most wonderful of all the journey was the wiry, dogged strength of
Zenas Wright. Hour by hour the old man toiled on with the younger,
seeming never to tire. When they insisted that he ride on one of the
sledges, it was always under protest that he did so.
Often he tapped the pocket in which he still carried an empty flask.
"I'm just chasing the fellow that went north with my cognac," he would
say, or some other quip that exhibited his undaunted spirit and helped
to hearten his companions.
Of a like spirit was the Princess Memene, and tender and gracious and
true. No hardship of the many that were her lot wrung word of complaint
from the lips of the bride of Minos. Only as they proceeded farther
north, they noticed that she seemed to tire more easily, and rode more
upon the sledge, and noticing, they were much concerned thereat. But
Memene seemed not a whit concerned, meeting their solicitude with a
brave show of strength, and smiling gently to herself ofttimes when no
one saw.
Came a day when far on the northern horizon they saw low-hanging clouds
of curling smoke, and when a north wind brought an acrid smart to their
eyes, and a tempering of the atmosphere.
"Yonder flame the moons of thy Sardanes," Polaris said to Minos, and
the king nodded and his eyes grew sad with memory.
Two days' travel brought them to the foothills of the coast range of
mountains, into which the volcanic torrent had broken. Then they were
forced to make a detour inland, to seek a gap through which they might
approach Ross Sea. About them was little snow, on the mountains none at
all, and the climate was such that the members of the party had to shed
their heavy parkas.
"Never a need to freeze here," said Polaris, "or to starve either,
while there be bears to kill." Not a single monarch of the wastes had
they encountered in all their journey, but, as they approached the
volcanoes, signs had not been lacking that bears were to be found in
the neighborhood.
As there was lack of snow on which to sledge, Polaris deemed it best to
find out where they could best make their way through to the sea before
attempting the labor of dragging the vehicles on any needless path.
With Minos and the old man he rolled boulders in a ring around a hollow
in the side of a cliff and set up a camp there--a welcome home for a
time at least to Zenas Wright. Now that the goal of their journeying
was near, the geologist was not ashamed to admit that he was weary.
Several times Polaris explored without success paths that seemed
likely, and at length marked one that led, by devious turns and
detours, to the open water. Following it through to the shore, he
penetrated north along the coast a number of miles. He found that there
which sent him back to camp on flying feet.
"Now are our troubles at an end!" he shouted. "I have found a ship!"
* * * * *
Scoland and his men had been a half day on their northern journey when
the _Minnetonka's_ wireless operator brought to Scoland's cabin the
following message:
Earthquake or volcano cut ship off from sea. Fear in great danger.
Aronson,
_Felix_.
Directing the operator to answer that they were on their way north,
Scoland gave the orders that hurled the cruiser on with redoubled speed
to meet this new peril!
Icebergs floated along their sea path, but in diminished numbers, and
in size far inferior to those whose menace had made the great southern
drive and jam so perilous to the ship. When they reached the lower neck
of Ross Sea, the passage that had taken twenty-nine days of weary and
dangerous labor, blasting every rod of the way through the solid ice of
the jam, was accomplished in four hours.
Wireless exchanges kept them informed that the position of the _Felix_
was unchanged. Scoland found her at the upper end of Ross Sea, cut off
from open water. As islands appear suddenly from the depths of the
South Pacific, so had the volcanic forces upheaved the Antarctic sea
bottom. The _Felix_ had ridden at anchor in a sheltered bay. Now she
lay in a basin, surrounded entirely by land and rocks. A strip nearly
two hundred yards across separated the ship from the tossing open
waters of the sound. So shallow was the water where the ship was that
the vessel had heeled over and lay on her starboard side, her decks
tilted at a precipitous angle.
Scoland saw at once that his supply ship was hopeless of rescue. It
would have taken tons of explosive to blast a channel to where she
lay, and, that accomplished, there would be no water to float her.
Off the edge of the strip of sea bottom that had been thrown up by the
volcanoes, the water was some twelve fathoms.
Scoland laid the cruiser alongside the ledge, rigged carrying tackle,
and spent two days replenishing the coal-bunkers of the _Minnetonka_,
to the great satisfaction of Engineer MacKechnie, who was assured that,
if the cruiser failed to escape from the jaws of the southland, it
would not be from lack of coal for her engines.
Aronson and his crew, choosing between a swaying shore and a heaving
sea bottom, had left the _Felix_ and made camp among the rocks inland,
where, instead of the antarctic rigors of climate to be expected in
that latitude, they were oppressed by almost torrid heat, the result
of their volcanic surroundings. Very glad were all of them to feel the
decks of the steel cruiser beneath their heels; and would have been
willing to chance the seas with depleted coal-bunkers to hurry their
departure from a place where, as the Swedish ship's master said, "the
Almighty had put them in dry dock, and they hadn't been able to figure
out whether He was going to spill a new sea or build an island."
Leaving the sturdy old _Felix_ mewed up to be the prey of what chance
or providence rules the ordering of volcanoes, the cruiser struck out
for the north and America.
* * * * *
On a blustering March morning, Captain James Scoland sat in the
reception hall of an ancient homestead in Commonwealth Avenue, Boston,
and told his story to a sad-eyed young woman, a young woman who did not
weep, but whose tightened lips and wistful gaze told of a grief that
tears could not soften or relieve.
By cable and by wireless from South American shores, days before,
had come speeding on electric wings the tidings of the failure of
the Sardanian relief expedition. All America had been thrilled with
sorrow and pity at the news, sorrow for the famous scientist who had
lost his life on his chosen path, and for the equally famous son of
the wildernesses, Polaris Janess, who had trodden that path to death
with him; pity for the unknown nation that had been crushed out by
inexorable nature, and pity most of all for the gray-eyed girl who sat
alone in her Boston mansion, grieving for a hero-lover lost.
The captain finished his tale. "And so there was nothing to do but to
come back," he said; "and I have come. And, Rose, is there nothing
I can say that will bring back to your eyes the light I used to know
there?"
Rose Emer did not answer him. She sat looking at the wall, seeing
through it and beyond it. Many a thousand miles away her fancy pictured
clearly a great plain of ice and rocks and snows, storm-swept by
shrieking tempests. She saw a dismantled sledge half covered by the
drifting white, and beside it a lowly mound, the monument above all the
hopes and joy of her young life. She shuddered, and a little bitter cry
of desolation burst from her lips. At her feet a great gray dog raised
himself on his forefeet, rested his shaggy head upon her knees and
whined uneasily.
Scoland arose and stood beside her. As if he divined the heart of the
man, gray Marcus left his place at the feet of his mistress and stalked
across the hall to the doorway, where he stood watching the visitor
with gloomy eyes of distrust and menace. The hair around the great
brute's neck was ruffled, and his powerful muscles were flexed. Neither
the man nor woman took heed of Marcus. He stood quietly, but very
watchful.
"Rose, dear Rose, can it be that this wild man from the wilderness
held such power over you that you have forgotten all that we once were
to each other?" Scoland said, his emotions fast carrying him beyond
caution, or comprehension of the fitness of time or place.
Rose Emer raised her head suddenly and looked into the man's burning,
brooding eyes.
"What do you mean, Captain Scoland?" she said with quiet dignity, but
with a mounting flush on her cheeks and a flash in her eyes that boded
rising indignation. "You forget--"
"No, Rose, I do _not_ forget," he interrupted. "I shall never forget
that you were mine first, and were stolen from me. Janess, who held you
in the glamor of romance, is gone now. We have the present to face,
with its things as they are--the future with things as they may be, if
we will them so. Is it too much for me to hope that some time--not now,
I know, but some time--we may take up our lives where they once seemed
to be shaping and live them on--together?"
Before the girl opened her lips to speak, Scoland read her answer
in her eyes, in the angry tilt of her chin. It maddened him beyond
restraint.
"God!" he cried, "is that accursed barbarian to stand forever at each
turn of my life and thwart me?" His voice rose into a shrill shriek.
"No! No!" he shouted. "Not to be balked like this have I risked my
eternal soul to hell fire! You were, you are, you shall be mine. Mine!
_Mine!_"
Cast loose in his madness from all moorings of caution, he sprang at
the girl, his arms outstretched to seize her and crush her to him.
"Stop!" The voice of Rose Emer rang out, clear and commanding. She
leaped from her chair and backed against the wall, checking him with
outstretched hand. Her deep eyes were aflame with anger. "You shall not
touch me. You have insulted a noble man who is dead. Your words are an
insult to me also. I will not listen to you. Go!" She pointed to the
door.
Attracted by the loud voices, a gray-haired butler came hestitatingly
into the room from the back of the house. "William," said the girl,
"you will please open the door for this man."
But Scoland did not heed. It is to be doubted if he even heard her;
and, if he did, her words fell meaningless on his ears. Whirled on
in the rush of his emotion, he thrust the chair from his way and
approached her. She struck him in the face with her clenched hands,
but without effect. His arms were closing around her. She felt his hot
breath on her cheek.
The butler, who had stood aghast for an instant, started hastily to
cross the room to the assistance of his mistress, but he was not needed.
An eye more keen by far than that of the aged servant had watched the
course of events, and a force more powerful than his now intervened.
Scoland's hand had just touched the girl's shoulder when a bolt of
living fury shot across the hall and hurled him so violently against
the wall that its stout oaken panels quivered, and he went down under
the weight of gray Marcus. Over-leaping in his rage, the dog missed his
aim, which was the man's neck. The gnashing fangs closed on Scoland's
cheek below the left eye, and tore the flesh down to the chin. His
victim down, the furious animal crouched on the body, worrying it
horribly.
Instinctively, Scoland threw up his arms to protect his throat. The
brute seized on one of his bare hands, and the bones crunched in the
grip of the iron jaws. Screaming aloud, the man sought to roll over on
his face. The sharp teeth ripped through his sleeves and deep into the
biceps of his right arm.
Rose Emer stood paralyzed in white horror against the wall. Blood
spurted from Scoland's mangled face and stained her skirts.
"Marcus! Back, Marcus!" she cried.
The fighting blood of the dog was up, and she might as well have
commanded the wind. She threw her arms around the shaggy neck of the
brute and strove with all her strength to drag him from the shrieking,
slavering creature that had been James Scoland. Combe, the butler,
came to her aid, bringing a heavy oak chair, a leg of which he thrust
between the dog's jaws. Between them, the man and the girl finally
tore Marcus from his prey, and his mistress led him, still snarling
hideously, into another room and shut him in.
With the help of Combe, Scoland dragged himself to his feet and stood
leaning heavily on a chair, his breath coming in great gasps. One
glance Rose Emer had of his ghastly, disfigured countenance, and
averted her eyes with a shudder. His punishment had been swift and
horrible, more so than she knew. It was not alone the flesh that Marcus
had marred. The brain had given way also.
Commanding his laboring breath, Scoland shook his uninjured hand at the
shrinking girl.
"Curse you!" he cried, his voice rising into an unnatural screech.
"Curse you and your devil-brute! May your heart rot in loneliness,
waiting for your wild man. He'll never find his way back from where I
left him. He'll die hard, for he is strong. He will starve and wander
and go blind and mad--as I am going mad, and then he'll freeze--very
slowly, and die--and come and haunt me--"
"What are you saying!" Rose Emer sprang toward him. She forced her
unwilling eyes to look upon that terrible face. "You _left_ him, you
say? _Alive?_"
Scoland threw back his head and laughed--the shrill, terrifying
laughter of a maniac.
"Yes, I left him," he croaked hoarsely, "left him, alive, he and the
doddering old man. Ha! ha! ha! I reached Sardanes and found them there,
and they didn't see me. Ha! ha! I came away again, and they didn't know
I left them, with a dead man to keep them company--in frozen, dead
Sardanes--"
He caught sight of his face in a mirror, and his voice broke.
"_My God!_" he whispered. He held his arms out toward his reflection in
the glass. "God!" he repeated, and collapsed on the floor in a fit of
convulsions.
Combe and other servants brought ropes and tied him.
A little later men came and took Captain James Scoland away.
Like a far-flung, radiant ray of dazzling sunshine, one fact
penetrated through all the horror of the moment to the heart of Rose
Emer. Polaris, her Polaris, was alive! Alive, and living, might be
saved--_must_ be saved! She left the horrors of the hall on flying feet.
Before the madman was out of her house, Rose Emer had called up
Washington on the long-distance telephone, and had spoken with the
Secretary of the Navy.
* * * * *
Enough of English had the Sardanians learned to understand the words
of Polaris, when he shouted that he had found a ship, and their glad
exclamations were mingled with those of Zenas Wright, as the three
sprang to meet the returning explorer.
"A ship, said I," Polaris said, lifting his hand, "but naught did I say
of men or rescue. 'Tis the _Felix_, caught fast in the rocks by some
mischance that is our great good fortune. She has been abandoned." He
made haste to explain how he had found the ship. "Unless Scoland found
means to empty her, which seems unlikely," he continued, "she has that
on board to keep us four in comfort for years, if need be."
Breaking camp at once, they followed his lead through the mountain gap
to the rocky shore.
Aye, there lay the _Felix_, right enough, and snug in her basin, but
how were they on shore to reach her?
Polaris did not delay for long in solving that problem. Stripping
Minos's sledge of hymanan wood of all its load, he set it afloat in the
basin. It served him in lieu of a raft. For a paddle he took his long
spear and poled his improvised craft out on the still waters of the
miniature sea. It floated him safely, although his weight submerged it
so that the water lapped at his ankles.
"Give me that flask, old Zenas Wright," he cried joyously. "I'll
warrant you wait not long for the filling of it now, even if I have to
desert this stout boat, and swim to the ship."
In a few minutes he had poled his way to where the _Felix_ lay, her
decks far aslant, but her rail still above water. To board her, he was
forced to leap from the floating sledge. He caught the rail with his
hands and pulled himself aboard. He clambered up the tilting deck and
forced the forward hatch, which had been battened down by Scoland's
men. Below decks he found all right and tidy. A glance into the hold
discovered its stores of supplies almost intact. At least, he and his
companions faced no menace of starvation.
Returning to the deck, he made his way aft, and opened the cabin hatch.
He found the storeroom where the ship's supply of spirits was kept, and
smashed in the door with a blow of his foot. Smiling as he did so, he
filled the flask of Zenas Wright.
As he emerged on deck once more, he glanced shoreward. Danger, white,
cruel, and desperate, was stalking his companions and they knew it not.
From his position of vantage on the deck of the _Felix_, Polaris saw a
moving mass that showed silver against its dark background in the rocks
some hundred feet back from the shore of the basin, where his fellow
travelers were waiting for him. Gliding among the boulders, with all
the sinuous caution of a cat intent upon a group of mice, an immense
polar bear was creeping to attack them!
Noiselessly, the great brute crept on in the cover of the rocks. The
wind blew from the party, so that the keen-nosed dogs were unaware of
the presence of a foe, and sounded no alarm.
Across the waters Polaris sent a warning shout. "A white bear!" he
shouted, pointing. "In the rocks behind you! Ready with your guns if he
charges!"
As he raised his voice a change in the wind or some other appeal to
their finely attuned senses, informed the dogs that their foe was near.
Gray runners and brown turned to face the rocks, every neck bristling.
Stimulated by the brave demeanor of the fearless children of Pallas the
huskies' ugly snouts were as snarlingly defiant as the others.
Over the rocks and into the open clambered the bear. His flanks were
lean, and he was hunger-mad, to the point where numbers did not daunt
him. He stood uncertain for but a moment, then broke into a lumbering,
padded gallop, which, clumsy as it seemed, would have pressed a fleet
runner hard to distance. A menacing roar answered the ear-splitting
clamor of the dogs.
Wright and the Sardanian seized rifles from the sledge. Sternly calling
back the dogs, they opened fire together. Minos, a novice in the use of
the weapon, missed widely at the first shot, and in his haste jammed
the lever of his rifle. The bullet of Zenas Wright, who was always an
indifferent marksman, only grazed the flank of the bear, injuring him
little and adding much to his rage. Again the geologist fired, but did
not stop the great brute. The galloping monster was close upon them.
As he shouted his warning from the ship Polaris scrambled to the
nearest davits that swung a boat. With no time to manipulate the ropes,
he cut through them with his keen knife, and leaped for the boat as it
fell. More by good fortune than else, the craft was not swamped. The
son of the snows headed inshore, pulling so powerfully at the oars that
their oaken lengths bent to his strokes. Swiftly as moved the boat, the
drama ashore was played through before its prow touched the rocks.
Once more the scientist pressed the trigger in desperation, but a
leaping, frenzied dog struck him from behind in the hollows of his
knees, spoiling his aim, and sending him sprawling on his face. Minos's
spear lay buried under the load that had been cast from his sledge. The
third rifle was out of order and useless. Weaponless, he stood in the
front of the charging enemy, except for his dagger and the light rifle,
which he now clubbed and swung over his shoulder--a slight defense
against the onset of the polar monster.
As the bear reached him, it reared on its hind legs, towering far above
even the great height of the king. One vast forepaw, armed with its
formidable talons, swung high to strike. Aloft also went the steel
rifle in the grip of Minos. With the agility and eye of a trained
boxer, the bear, even as it struck out with one paw, whirled the other
with lightning quickness. The gun was torn from Minos's grasp, and spun
through the air, to fall with a splash many feet out in the waters of
the basin.
From the falling stroke of the crescent claws the king sprang back,
snatching his dagger from his belt. Around him seethed the dogs, his
own good gray beasts, no longer to be restrained from the battle, the
huskies hanging doubtfully behind them. The white giant seemed to have
marked the Sardanian for his prey, for, paying no attention to the
dogs, he came on in a vengeful rush that they could not stop.
With his back to the sledge, Minos bestrode the body of Zenas Wright,
who had struck his head against a rock, and lay stunned. Dark was the
outlook. A woman's hand turned the balance. Tearing in desperate haste
at the packs that had been thrown from their sledge, the Princess
Memene strove to reach the spear of Minos, but found another weapon
first.
* * * * *
Again the bear reared to attack, when over Minos's shoulder was thrust
a broad and shining blade of ilium. With a shout, the king let fall the
puny dagger, and gripped hard the hilt of the good sword under whose
razor edge many a stout Sardanian had fallen. Swiftly he swung the
great blade, and far out, all the weight of his shoulders behind the
stroke.
Before the bear could strike again, the sword hit him in the side, well
below the shoulder, and so deeply that he howled in agony, and fell to
all fours.
Immediately he was all but buried by a wave of maddened dogs. Drenched
with the blood that spurted from the sword gush, the king leaped to one
side, whirling the heavy weapon aloft. Once more the bear essayed to
rear, and to shake from him the swarming furies that hung at his sides,
and clung to his jowls.
His mighty head, blood-bedabbled and fearful, rose out of the ruck
of dogs. It offered a fair mark to the watchful king. Down came the
glittering blade, the air whining under it, and struck on the bear's
neck. The bones parted under the stroke. So deeply had it bitten, that
the sword was wrenched from Minos's hand.
With a last convulsive effort that threw the dogs from him, the polar
monster arose to his full height and toppled backward, crashing to
earth, stone dead.
Zenas Wright came to his senses a few moments later, with an
unmistakable tang of cognac in his throat, and an aroma in the air that
made him smile, despite the pain of his bruised head.
"It's a brave spirit," he gasped. Then he got up and extended his hand
to the Sardanian king. "I guess I owe my life to a braver," he added.
"My friend, I thank you."
Minos understood a part of the remark. He grasped the proffered hand
with a deprecating shake of his head.
Untroubled by the fears which had driven Aronson and his men from the
ship, the members of the party took up their quarters on the _Felix_,
drawing upon her inexhaustible stores for comforts which had long been
denied to them.
For two of them, the ship was a revelation of wonders undreamed of.
Machinery, books--a hundred and one things were marvels to the two
Sardanians. They learned with an eagerness that was almost childlike,
absorbing knowledge against the coming of that time, so hoped for, when
they should become of the great world of their visions. That, having
come this far, they would reach that goal of their desires, they did
not doubt.
To Polaris Janess and the geologist the situation was more serious.
They knew that the chances were few that any ship should penetrate into
Ross Sea, perhaps in many years. The Pole had been discovered. The
Smaley and Hinson exploring expedition had come and gone. There was no
reason of which the scientist and his companion knew to call other men
to brave the perils of the Antarctic.
"If we are ever to get out of here, we must help ourselves, lad," Zenas
Wright said to Polaris, as they discussed their plight several days
after their coming to the ship. He shook his white head. "It seems just
about hopeless. There's only one way, and that's by water, and we're
cut off from the sea, even if we could navigate the ship, which is
doubtful."
"But a boat--" Polaris began.
"Suicide!" exclaimed the old man. "One of those shells wouldn't live
for five miles. Even if it should, they are not large enough to hold
the four of us and the things which it would be absolutely necessary
for us to have. Once away from this volcanic neighborhood we have a
long stretch of icy sea to traverse. The nearest land where we should
find aid is New Zealand, and that is more than two thousand miles to
the north."
"There's a large boat with an engine and a sail," Polaris said, "but it
is in pieces."
"What's that!" shouted Zenas Wright, "an auxiliary launch? Lead me to
it, boy! Pieces or no pieces, we can put it together. I know enough for
that, with you two strapping big fellows to help. If there's enough
gasoline aboard to run her when she's assembled, we will have to chance
her. It's our only chance."
Without delay the two of them scrambled along the slanted decks. Aft of
the deckhouse, under her tarpaulin, they found the launch. As Polaris
had said, she was in pieces. Only the hull lay on the deck of the
_Felix_, a stout twenty-five-foot craft. Her sixty horsepower engine
and her auxiliary mast, sail, and jib were below decks.
Zenas Wright looked her over with flashing eyes. "If there's gasoline
enough we may make it," he said. "We've _got_ to make it!" He did a
mental computation. "It's a rough two thousand miles to New Zealand.
Let's see. If you can steer, son, and I think you can, running
twenty-four hours a day, and using the sails to save gas when we can,
we can make it in a month--if we meet no obstacles; which, of course,
we will. We must provision for two months. If that doesn't take us
through, God rest our souls!"
"Set us at work, for there is need for haste," Polaris said. "We must
be out of this place before winter closes in above us." He called the
Sardanian.
In the paint locker and the hold they found gasoline, twenty
twenty-five gallon tanks of it--more than they could take with them.
Under Zenas Wright's directions, they coaled the donkey engine on the
forecastle head, rigged tackle to the mainmast, and hauled the engine
up through the hatch. Many hours were spent in searching for various
parts of the mechanism which they needed, but they found it all at last.
The patient mechanical knowledge of the scientist was equal to the task
of installing the engine. With that in its place, they stepped the
mast, hauled the gasoline tanks on deck and shipped their cargo. With
spirits new in the hope their work aroused, they sang at their labors.
Memene, who had drooped, regained her usual vigor and vivacity.
So stoutly did the two young giants set their hands to their task that
within four days of the time they started they attached the sturdy
launch to the davits and swung her over the side of the _Felix_ by aid
of the invaluable donkey engine. Zenas Wright immediately went aboard
and tried out the engine. He spent the most of another day tinkering
with the mechanism until it suited him, and then announced that they
were ready for their perilous dash for the open sea and freedom.
The ring of rock that had made the _Felix_ prisoner did not offer the
same obstacle to the launch that it did to the greater ship. Near the
north coast of the bay was a channel deep enough so that the launch
could barely pass through to the sea. In a number of places it was so
narrow that Wright and Janess were forced to use drills and dynamite,
and blow away projecting rocks.
It was a great regret to the voyagers that they could not take their
dogs with them. There was not room on the launch for the animals and
food for them. Zenas Wright, now formally nominated the leader of the
expedition, by right of his knowledge of navigation, compromised to the
extent of carrying along two of the gray brutes of Minos, named Kalor
and Thetis. But the old man conditioned that, if it came to a question
of food scarcity, the brutes would have to be done away with. The rest
of the animals they turned loose ashore.
Not forgotten in their preparations for departure was the wealth of
Sardanian rubies. Finding a small leather traveling bag on board the
_Felix_, Polaris packed it with the skin sacks in which they had placed
the gems before they had left the cave on Latmos.
At last they bade farewell to the old _Felix_, now doubly deserted,
and put out for the open seas. It was nearly three months since the
two adventurers had left the _Minnetonka_ to find Sardanes, when they
passed out of the enclosed basin and turned the bow of the launch
northward. Around them roared the volcanic mountains. They saw the last
of the _Felix_ through a falling storm of impalpable ashes, so thick
that it darkened the sunlight.
* * * * *
Four weeks steady progress, sailing when they could and using their
treasured gasoline sparingly, carried them well above the Circle.
Unceasing vigilance alone enabled them to make that progress,
surrounded as they were by the menace of floating ice, collision with
which would have crushed their craft like an eggshell. When they made
use of their sail, Polaris took long spells at the wheel; but when it
was necessary to put the engine into commission old Zenas Wright could
neither rest nor sleep.
Came a day when the Princess Memene whispered briefly in the king's ear
the burden of a pretty secret that she could no longer bear to keep
from him. Close enfolded in his arms, she told him that which caused
him to flush as radiantly as she.
"Another king is coming," Minos murmured low. "Hail to the king! But
alas, his sire hath for him no kingdom to rule, unless indeed one may
be won in the land whither we are journeying."
"Mayhap not a king, but a princess," said Memene.
Strong of the hope that was in him, Minos made answer. "Nay, he shall
be a king."
And after thoughtful pause he added, "We will call him Patrymion."
Thus was another incentive added, bidding the wanderers bend every
effort to reach with speed the friendly arms of civilization.
* * * * *
When they came again to the region of nights and days they were forced
to do their traveling by sunlight mostly, and at night to drift. Twice
the chill in the air warned them just in the nick of time of the
proximity of icebergs, and they escaped them by recourse to the engine.
Then a storm came up from the southwest and hurled them north under
bare poles, with the prospect of utter destruction momentarily before
them.
"Let it blow," said Zenas Wright grimly. "If we can only keep afloat,
it's helping us north fast enough, and, besides, it saves gas."
North they went, and east, far out of the course they had laid for
New Zealand. For two days and nights the gale held, dying away in the
dawn of the third day. The first gray daylight found them tossing
on a choppy sea. When the light came, and Zenas Wright was able to
figure out their position, he announced that they were somewhere in
the neighborhood of the Tubuai Islands, a French possession, and they
decided to turn the prow of their boat in the direction of these
islands.
Taking the glasses, Polaris climbed a few feet up the mast and swept
the sea. He was unable to raise land in any direction.
What he did raise, however, sent him clattering back to the deck.
"A ship!" he cried. "Straight ahead of us, a steamship! I can see her
smoke!"
"Look again, lad," said the practical Wright, "and tell us which way
her smoke hangs, if you can."
"To the north," Polaris shouted a moment later. "And she's headed this
way, too!"
With a splendid disregard for their remaining gasoline, the scientist
forced his engine to its best efforts, and they soon were making
eighteen knots on their way toward the stranger.
Nearer and nearer came the two craft together, and finally those on
the launch saw the steamship swing off her southerly course and point
straight toward them.
They had been sighted.
Suddenly Polaris, who had been studying the approaching ship through
the glasses, threw them down and sent up a great shout:
"It's the _Minnetonka_!"
It was.
In another half hour they were alongside. A line was thrown them and
made fast. Canny even in that moment of excitement, Zenas Wright opened
a locker near the wheel and buckled fast to his leathern belt the
traveling bag that held the rubies of Sardanes.
While Polaris stood by with a boat-hook, fending the launch from the
steel side of the cruiser, the other clambered up the ladder, Minos
pausing to snatch up one of the gray dogs, climbing up with the animal
tucked under his arm. Catching up the other dog, Polaris leaped into
the ladder, and the deserted launch swung away from under him and
passed out of their lives forever.
Once safely on the deck, Minos and his bride stood clutching each
other's hands and gazing wonderingly at the scene, so different from
that of the only other ship they had ever set eyes on. Then, as the
officers and crew came forward in greeting, the Sardanian prince slid
an arm protectingly about his princess and met them hand to hand, while
Memene dimpled and blushed happily.
On the deck stood Lieutenant Everson, his eyes alight, his hands
outstretched. Before the son of the snows could grip those outstretched
palms, came flying feet.
"_Polaris!_"
In his dreams he had heard that voice, ringing nearly half way round
the world. He opened his arms. His amber eyes looked into her long eyes
of grey. Their lips clung.
"At last--my Rose Maid!"
* * * * *
_This novel is the second in the trilogy which began with "Polaris--of
the Snows." Each novel in the trilogy is complete in itself._
_The third story is "Polaris and the Goddess Glorian."_