Through the influence of Zenas Wright and of Scoland, the United States second-class cruiser Minnetonka was turned over for the use of the expedition, and manned. All the great fortune his father had left him Polaris had guaranteed in payment for the expenses of the expedition. Danger and death lay before him. He would be a poor man if he returned. He did not falter.
He stood on the deck of the rushing ship, his topaz eyes turned toward the blazing, thundering mountains on the shores of Ross Sea. Their weird lights shone on his handsome, high-featured face, but at times he saw them not. Persistently there arose before him a picture of a quaint old New England garden, bright with its sunshine, its phlox and marigolds and honeysuckle. He looked again into the gray eyes of the garden-woman; long eyes, wet with tears. He felt her soft lips cling to his. In the moaning of the wind he heard again her sad voice pleading, "Oh, Polaris—how can I let you go?" and a great gray dog that answered to the name of Marcus stood by them, whining and ill at ease.
From his reverie the voice of Zenas Wright recalled him.
"The bergs are getting thicker," the old man said. "Stout as this ship is, we will have to slow down soon, or risk worse than we've risked already. You say the sea narrows down there ahead?"
"Aye, old man, it narrows, and then sweeps wide again, so wide that from one coast you may not see the other for many a long day," Polaris answered. When he spoke it was with the quaintness of expression that had come to him from the pages of the "Ivanhoe" of Scott, a treasure he had found among the few of his father's books that were not of science, and over which he had pored and pondered lovingly through many years. A few short months of civilization had not worn that custom from him.
Zenas Wright gazed aft. "Well, whatever happens to me now," he said, "I've seen a sight to-day few men have ever seen."
He waved his old hand toward the spouting hills, which they were now leaving behind him. "I'd like to study that eruption and write a book on it," he added regretfully. Despite his age, and the long hours he had spent on the bridge he left it with a vigorous springy step as he went below.
At racing speed, wherever the way lay clear, the stanch Minnetonka tore forward, her nose of steel pointed straight into the dark, mysterious South, hurling her eight thousand tons through every available gap in the ice flotilla with all the strength of her twenty-one thousand horsepower.
Down the seas behind the vessel, faster and ever faster, crept the dawn of a six-months' day.