"'Tis all varra weel, the gettin' on in such haste," he grumbled, "'but, ma certes, 'twill be a long, weary drive back again, and coal doesna grow on icebergs."
Several days of clear going gave all on the ship opportunity to take much needed rest, after the perils and labor that had racked both minds and bodies. Spring and spirits returned to jaded men, and it was an eager and hopeful crew that cheered to the echo on the day that Polaris shouted from the bridge:
"Steer the ship in to the left. Yonder is a point of land that my eyes remember well, and behind it a harbor that marks the end of this journey, I am certain."
It was the rocky promontory across which his own ship of ice had been broken, nearly two years before. Inland, to the north, extended the looming barrier range, which he had sought in vain to pass.
Polaris and old Zenas Wright stood on the bridge as the cruiser rounded the headland. The young man clapped the geologist on the shoulder, and pointed up the snow-covered slope, that led from the cove to the foothills beyond.
"There lies the way," he shouted, "straight in to the east, the way to Sardanes!"
Near to the cave entrance on the Latmos hill King Minos found the Lord Patrymion. The boy was sitting on a boulder, swinging his heels against it and whistling in a minor key the bars of a Sardanian love ditty. Leaning against the rock beside him was a long-hafted bear spear. In his belt were thrust a dagger and a heavy-bladed hatchet.
As the king came from among the trees, the lad stood up and saluted. Minos saw that the arm he raised was bandaged above the elbow. The king, whose own neck bore a slight cut, where a spear had stung as it hummed by him in the forest mêlée, and whose tunic and armor were red with blood not his own, smiled grimly.
"And did the Lord Patrymion perchance fall and bruise himself in the forest paths?" he asked.