"Drop it, foolish girl! Drop it!" he shouted hastily, recovering himself somewhat. "Can't you see that I'm only mending your man's broken head?" He held out the bandages and pointed to the wound in Minos's temple and the basin and balm.
His words meant nothing to the Sardanian princess, but she comprehended the gestures. The suspicion left her dark eyes. Slowly she lowered the sword. With a little cry she let it fall on the floor. In another instant she was curled at the head of the king's couch, and her quick, soft fingers were aiding the old man laving the wound, and picking up for him, in turn, each article that he required, almost before he indicated it.
Her eyes followed every minute step of the operations. She watched jealously every fleeting shade of expression in the old man's face. Several times she overwhelmed him with a torrent of words that were "Greek" indeed to him. He could only spread his hands out helplessly and shake his head in answer.
Clutching at his arm when the bandage was made fast, she pointed to the sleeping man. Zenas Wright replied to the concern and the question in her face by placing his finger first over the heart of Minos and then on the wound, and smiling and nodding.
Wild joy shone in the eyes of Memene. She made as if to kneel at Zenas Wright's feet, then remembered that she was a princess. She raised her arm in the Sardanian salute. Then the strange girl threw herself into a chair, covered her face with her hands, and gave way to her woman's need for tears.
On the hill slope Polaris busied himself making a camp for his huskies, for, said he, "There would be a rare uproar, without end, did I take them in there where the gray brood of my Pallas are."
He stamped a circle in the snow, and made a fire of hymanan wood from Minos's store of firewood. He found Minos's sledge and set it against the cliff, with wooden blocks for braces. He rolled a big log into place in front of it, screwed a number of rings which he carried for the purpose into its side, and tethered the huskies, where they might not come at the stores on the other sledge. Some loose robes cast into the hollow behind the log sufficed, and the tired brutes crawled onto them thankfully and curled up for a well-earned rest.
So tired were they that they bolted without fighting for the food he threw to them—and it is a tired husky, indeed, that will not try to rob his neighbors of his rations.
Presently the step of the son of the snows sounded in the passage to the cave room. The Princess Memene sprang up and faced him.