Minos of Sardanes

by Charles B. Stilson

In his wild adventurings northward he had found Rose Emer, an American heiress, lost in the snows. Where they made their camp an ice floe broke up, and they were whirled down the coast to the south again on an enormous berg. Inland, they had found the kingdom of Sardanes—Sardanes, the mystical volcanic valley, set like an emerald in the white fastnesses of the Antarctic, blooming with tropical verdure, and peopled with a fragment of the ancient Greek nation, the Hellenes, whose victories Bard Homer sang. And they were the first people from the outer world of men to set foot there in nigh upon three thousand years.

There a king would have wedded the American Rose, but Polaris fought his way out of that valley with his dogs and guns, saving the girl, and taking with them Kalin, the young high priest of Sardanes. The priest had died in the snow-lands, but the man and the girl had come at last to the ship Felix, Scoland's ship, from which the girl had strayed.

Long before they reached America, Rose Emer had lost a not-too-warm admiration for the captain in a great love for the man who had saved her. Scoland, the daring explorer, who had reached the South Pole in an airship, saw the girl won from him by the man from the wilderness.

Fearing lest the girl was glamoured by the strange events through which they had passed, and might come to scorn the half barbarian that he was, Polaris delayed to wed her for a year, which he devoted to intense study of men and their ways. Of books he knew much, and commanded many languages; of men he knew little.

Before the year was ended came Zenas Wright, with a report from the Smaley and Hinson expedition into Ross Sea, telling of a mighty volcanic outbreak there. The scientist declared it to be an outpouring of the fires which warmed Sardanes. With the going of those fires, he asserted, the mystic valley was doomed to return to the wastes, and its wonderful people to die.

"It is fitting that the man who discovered Sardanes should be the man to save her," said Zenas Wright to Polaris, "and without you, who know the way and the people, the trip would be well-nigh hopeless."

Polaris had responded to the call of what he deemed to be an almost sacred duty. Still unwed, he said farewell to his Rose maid for another long year, to start south and face the hardships and perils of the Antarctic once more, and to fetch to America the two thousand or so inhabitants of Sardanes, or as many of them as should be found alive.

With tireless haste a relief expedition was organized. Dogs were brought down from the upper reaches of the Yukon. Men whose lives and callings had inured them to the perils of the colds and the tempests of the snow-lands were enlisted for the great errand.

Foremost among those who came to enlist for the venture was Captain James Scoland. He came with a heart full of hot hate for the man who had balked him, and whom he considered little more than a half-mad barbarian. But he hid his hate well, and bided his time. With Polaris Janess, the enmity that had been between himself and the captain was a closed book. He had forgotten and forgiven. Scoland was a man of unquestioned bravery, a born leader of others. Above all, he had the knowledge of the Antarctic that made him an invaluable ally.

Polaris accepted his proffered services gladly.