Minos of Sardanes

by Charles B. Stilson

Outspanning and tethering his own team to a rock, the son of the snows crept forward cautiously to the brink of the chasm.

Scarcely a yard below the level of the broken snow bridge, Scoland's sledge was caught fast between two projecting teeth of rock and hung over the crevasse. Head downward in their harness, and frozen stiff and dead, dangled the carcasses of two of the captain's huskies. Below them the forward harness hung in strips. Peering into the lower deep of the crevasse, as his eyes became accustomed to its gloom, Polaris could make out the mass of fallen snow from the bridge. It lay forty feet below him, on the floor of the crevasse, which extended away to either side in an irregular corridor, rock-walled and carpeted with snow. Of the man and the other dogs he could see nothing.

He shouted, and his heart leaped gladly, when, faint and weak and far-away, came an answering halloo, followed immediately by the howling of dogs. Scoland lived!

Lengths of thin, stout rope were part of the equipment of every sledge, and with each a small steel pulley for hauling. Polaris sprang to his sledge and fetched his tackle.

Testing every inch of the rock with his utmost strength, he crept over the lip of the crevasse, whipped a short bight of rope about one of the rocks that held the wreck of Scoland's sledge, swung his pulley and threaded it. Of rope he had nearly a hundred feet, so that, doubled, it reached the floor of the crevasse, and to spare. He did his work in haste.

Within five minutes of the time of Scoland's answering hail from the depths, Polaris went down the doubled rope hand under hand, and set foot on the crevasse bottom. He shouted again, and again received a faint answer, away to the south in the windings of the crooked corridor. He started that way, and had gone but a few steps when, whimpering and howling, two of the captain's dogs came floundering through the snow to meet him.

When Scoland broke through the crust he had been running with the dogs ahead of his sledge. He had pitched downward with the mass of falling snow, and landed, badly shaken but uninjured, on the floor of the crevasse. He saw at once that it would be impossible at the point where he fell to scale the height of the crevasse wall. The corridor-like fissure, extending south, took an upward course. The captain followed its windings in that direction, hoping that it would lead again to the surface.

Another mishap had made his case almost hopeless. A break in the rocky floor, masked by snow, yawned across the entire width of the chasm. In the half darkness, Scoland had reached its edge. Too late he felt the snow slipping from beneath his feet, and fell again. He had found himself in a pocket some eight feet deep, its sides so sheer that he could not climb them. Vainly he explored every inch of the walls at either side, and tore at the rocks until his hands bled, in an effort to gain a hold. His struggles only brought exhaustion. Three of his huskies had taken the leap, the other two remaining in the upper corridor.

Utterly worn out, the captain at length had curled himself up with the beasts. The warmth of their bodies alone had held the life in his body, for the cold was deadly. Dogs and man were waiting for slow death when they heard the hail of Polaris.

Flat on his stomach, Polaris crawled to the edge of the break in the floor. Cramped and chilled, Scoland was barely able to stand and stagger to the wall. Polaris reached down and found that he could grasp Scoland's upstretched arms between wrists and elbows. Turning on his back, the son of the snows exerted his mighty sinews. Scoland hung almost a dead weight, but he raised him. Up, up, slowly, carefully, and then over the edge, and the captain lay gasping beside him.