"It shall be done!" And from a thousand: "What is the will of the god? How may we be saved? Tell us quickly, Analos!"
To his full height drew the priest. His face was alight with triumph. He had chosen his words and his time well. Advantage was with him.
He cast a glance over his shoulder at Minos. The king had come down from his throne. The nobles were grouped around him. To this new terror Minos had found no answer. He had no comfort to give his frenzied people to which they would listen. Superstition and fear and the wild words of the priest held them in thrall. Analos had full sway.
Not for an instant was the crafty priest at a loss. His god was in the ascendant. Now was the time to wrest into his own hands the power he desired in the valley. With the blind faith of a fanatic, he believed in the ancient religion; but, like many another priest in the world before him, be invested his own person with much of the power of the godhead he preached.
Troubled not a whit was he by the calamity that threatened in the valley. That was punishment merely—how dire or how long he cared not. When it was completed Sardanes would be in the hollow of his hand.
"Back to your homes, ye Sardanians!" he thundered. "And pray to the Lord Hephaistos for mercy. On the third day from now shall word come to you from the Gateway, the word of the ancient god. When the word cometh, obey it, or he shall not spare you. Let the word go forth through the valley that the captains of all the crafts and the nobles of the land be assembled here in the Judgment House on the third day. Then shall the commands of Hephaistos be made known to them. Away! Away! Analos hath spoken."
He threw his mantle over his head, passed out through the narrow portal at the side of the dais, and was gone, on his way through the gloom to the Gateway. In subdued silence the people trooped from the hall and slipped away to their homes.
Soon the thrashing propellers of the Minnetonka carried her beyond the radius of light sent out across the sea from the bursting volcanoes. It lay far behind, a garish bar athwart the waters. That faded also, until only a reflection could be seen against the sky, a waving, lambent radiance, like that of the Aurora Australis—which the voyagers had deemed it to be when first they had sighted it on their way into Ross Sea.
As they passed into the gloom of the Antarctic night their perils grew apace, and their real fighting began. Everywhere the bergs lay about them. Now here, now there, darted the cruiser, backing, turning, and zigzagging, seeking the safety course. Again rolling clouds made stygian gloom, and the cruiser fought on through the unquiet seas by the rays of her powerful searchlights.