Charles B. Stilson

“ Thy home is a ruin. The fast-falling snows cover the land thou didst love well. Some few friends were faithful unto the death, but death came, and they left thee. All that thou hadst to lose, thou hast lost, save thy life, thy dogs yonder, and one other thing, which, perchance, thou wilt value but little. In all the world, Lord Minos, there is not one to take thee by the hand and call thee friend.
"This is the hour which Memene hath foreseen and awaited. Say not that thou art no more king, my Lord Minos. Thou art my king. ”

“ Zalos faced his men. "Is it not so?" he growled. "If there be a man among ye who thinketh otherwise, let him speak and stand forth." He fumbled with the dagger in his belt.
"Needst not fret with thy dagger, Captain," laughed one of the hunters. "We be all of one mind, and thou hast said it."
"I thank thee, friend," said Minos. His hand fell lovingly on the captain's shoulder.
"After all this useless talk, methinks some diversion impendeth," whispered the lad Patrymion. "Unless mine eyes are passing poor, spear points gleam in the thicket yonder and men are moving." ”

“ Minos raised his hand on high with the great sword shining in it.
"I, Minos, king in Sardanes until the end, do defy this Hephaistos. Hath he need of such as thou and Analos to do his will for him, he is no cause for fear. Away, ye superstition-ridden dullards, and run your mad pace through. Minos yieldeth not. He defieth all of you. Your god cometh not, nor will come, because—there is no god!"
Shaking and trembling in the fears aroused by the king's defiance, the nobles turned to go. Only Karnaon stood out from among them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But now there is no more fighting, and here is the end of all things. Yonder go our people. With them are our wives, our fathers and mothers and children. At the gates of the temple of death do they stand and hold out their hands to us. Lord, think us not disloyal. We ask thee that we may join them and die with them. O king, if thou goest not also, let us go to them."
He bowed his head on Minos's hand, and wet it with his tears. The king raised him gently.
"Zalos, old friend and comrade, faithful and true hast thou been unto the end, thou and all these men, thy friends and mine. ”

“ By a strange mischance came they to Sardanes, and might return no more whence they came. Here have their descendants lived in peace and plenty. But a little time agone two strangers, that Polaris—of the Snows, and the Rose girl, came among us. They, too, told us of the outer world—a place so different from this that we scarce could conceive of it. There the sun shineth always. Here he is hid from us for half of each year. There all things live in his warmth. Here are we warmed by the ring of fire-mountains, and all without is the bleak desert of ice and snow. ”

“ He hesitated, and then asked her, gravely and slowly, "Lady Memene, wilt be the bride of Minos?"
A ringing peal of silvery laughter was his answer, but the girl drew farther back into the shadows that the king might not see the red flush on her cheeks.
"Strange is the time thou choosest for thy wooing of a bride, O king! Thy kingdom tottereth. Scarce a score in all the land are faithful to thee. Thy head is target for curse of priest and spear of enemy. Mayhap Sardanes itself dieth. Yet dost thou woo a bride." ”

“ On his way to the pass, he stopped at the Gateway. He climbed the rugged terraces, passed the arch and the spiral pathway, groping his way in the darkness, and once more, and for the last time, stood within the temple of his father's god.
The night was clear, and the polar stars shone brightly down. Some portion of their radiance penetrated through the open summit of the mountain, making faint twilight within it. Fierce gusts of wind shrieked and eddied through the giant cone, tossing with them swirls of drifting snow. The gale clutched at the cloak of the king. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Wilt not yield to the god, and not let this fair valley perish, that hath stood for ages? Consider, for the people's sake—the people whom once thou didst love so well, and who love thee. It is promised thee that thou shalt not die if thou dost yield. Thou must, indeed, go to the Gateway and submit to what decree of punishment the god maketh, but not to death. Come, ere that we hold dear be gone, and Sardanes be blotted out."
"Strange is the love the people bear their king," answered Minos calmly. ”

“ Polaris shook his head gloomily.
"Much my heart does misgive me, old Zenas Wright," he said, "for I fear we are too late. Green, yon hills should be, and dark at their summits, but they are white. The breeze blows from them to us, but is tempered with no warmth. I fear that the great calamity which your science has foretold is complete, and that all Sardanes is passed away."
As they drew nearer to the mountain ring, out to their left across the snow-fields, they saw the evidences of a mighty disturbance of the face of the earth. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Not of the god are the rumblings of the hills, the dying fires and the coming of the snows."
"Thou blasphemest," Ukalles shouted in anger, "and in thy madness dost bring doom on us all. My curse and that of all these, and of the people, the priests and the great Hephaistos, lieth on thee, if thou dost not yield thee to his grace."
"Curse on, thou fool," was Minos's answer. "I mind thy curses as little as the wind that bloweth. If this god of thine be great and powerful, as thou sayest, and as the priests do preach, how is it that he doth allow me, one man alone, to stand in his divine path? ”

“ The fire in the forest spread, until half the mountain was aflame, and the lower end of the valley presented a spectacle of unearthly splendor.
That flood of lava was a spurt of the very heart's blood of the valley. Even as it jetted from the side of the Gateway, halfway up the valley's rim three more of its volcanic guardians gave up their fiery ghosts, and the cold grip of the Antarctic took hold of their gaping throats. ”

“ He patted her rough head.
"Ha, Pallas," he said, "thou art another who fearest not the darkest the Gateway hath to send. And thou art the namesake of a goddess, if the scrolls of the priests read truly; a mighty goddess of old, who was the friend of this Hephaistos. Pallas Athene they did name her. A most wise goddess she, and came not to Sardanes." He rose and led the dogs to their quarters at the rear of the palace hall.
Far up in the side of the Mount Latmos, above the palace, a deep cave pierced the rock. It was the granary, storehouse, and treasury of the Sardanian kings. ”

“ Recovering his balance, the smith poised himself for another stroke. Minos, his head still swimming, raised his sword as if to parry, then cast it from him suddenly, lunged forward and gripped Gallando about the knees. He put forth his strength in a mighty tug, causing the smith to let fall the ax. Before ever a man could move to his rescue, Gallando found the arms of the king clipped about his waist.
Never but once in his life had a man bested Minos at the wrestling game. Now, fighting for his life, he crushed the burly smith to him. ”

“ The boat had nearly reached the edge of the basin when a strong white arm shot up, not ten feet away from it, and laid hold of a projection on one of the larger pieces of drift. A glad cry arose from floe and ship as, with a lusty thrashing of feet, Polaris emerged from the water and sprawled his length across the slippery surface. Again the shout, when it was seen that he dragged after him a smaller darker form. Parkerson, the sailor, was unconscious, having struck his head against floating ice in his fall. ”

“ There was not enough fodder to maintain the poor animals for long, and they died by the score. The slopes of the Gateway swarmed with wild goats, driven thither with all the rest by the sinister white invader that had crept to their loftiest haunts in the cliffs, and had cut them off from their food supplies. They and the horses were all that remained of animal life in Sardanes, except the dogs of Minos on Latmos.
Bitter as was the exigency, Analos the priest would not suffer the people to ascend to the terraces of the Gateway, where was still some warmth from within the hill. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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?" ”

“ Say, king, shall I loose the beasts on him?"
"Nay, loose them not," called Minos. He caught up his arms and hastened to join the lad on the hillside.
Some forty paces down the slope stood Analos.
Patrymion held the gray dogs by their collars. "Well would I like to see them worry him," he grumbled. "Perhaps it is best for the brutes," he added. "They would surely die of a stomach sickness, did they taste him."
"What wouldst thou of Minos, Analos of the Gateway?" demanded the king. "Thou hast turned the valley to madness. Here we have little need for thee. ”

“ Analos, guardian of the portals of the Gateway, dwelt alone with the majesty of his god, save for the wild goats, which cared naught for orders, priest or god.
Watch was kept no longer at the mouth of the cavern where Minos and his party lay. Well it was for them that it was so, else they had perished of cold. No longer was the cave tenable without fire. Like the people below in the valley, the refugees were forced to work in shifts of axmen to keep the lives within them. In the cave a fire roared constantly, and another without on the plateau. ”

“ He gazed down into the upturned faces of his people. At a signal, both priests and people knelt. For a space the crackling of the vast camp-fires was the only sound. Analos gathered his strength for what was to be his last speech. Never had man an audience more breathlessly attentive.
"Hephaistos calleth his children," the priest began, his voice hollow and solemn, his words falling slowly. "Through me, Analos, high priest in Sardanes, his life-long servant, he calleth. It is not for man to question the ways of the ancient god. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On down the roadway tore the party from the Judgment House. Minos parleyed no longer. He stooped and caught the girl under shoulders and knees, lifting her as a mother might lift a child.
"To Latmos!" he shouted. "Death be the lot of anyone that stays us!"
Thrusting his way through the hunters, he took the marsh path, running lightly and fleetly, for all the weight of his armor and his lovely burden. Zalos led his hunters in a short, fierce charge that turned back the men of Karnaon, and then the hunters broke and followed fast on the heels of their master. ”