"Of all puzzles, surely this is the strangest," he muttered. "Yet will I have its answer on that day when I find Captain Scoland again, so sure—so sure as my name is Polaris Janess!"
He glanced again at the swirling waters in the bay below him, where a stout cruiser should have ridden at anchor, but where no ship was; and then, with his dogs at his back, he strode away into the shrieking wilderness.
On the tenth day after the departure of Polaris Janess and Zenas Wright from the camp, the crashing and grinding of bergs beyond the mouth of the little harbor where the Minnetonka lay, warned Scoland and his men that the mighty southern drive of ice was on. The jam through which they had smashed their perilous way was broken. Soon the bay was filled with swirling drift that churned its surface water into a caldron of foam.
Close watch was kept lest one of the glittering monsters from the outer sea enter the bay and crowd the good ship against the rocks ashore. Once that danger was imminent, and the berg which thrust its menacing bulk into the neck of the bay was shattered by the Minnetonka's guns.
When the passing of three weeks had brought no sign of the two men who had penetrated into the white Antarctic fastnesses to carry the message of salvation from the outer world to Sardanes, speculation grew into anxiety among the members of the expedition left behind with the ship. Several of the hardier members of the expedition, who were inured to life in the cold places of the earth, broke their forced inactivity by short trips inland with the sledges and dogs, in the hopes of meeting the returning adventurers. Not even a trail was left to follow. The drifting snows had obliterated every trace of travel.
Most restless of all the company was the lean, dark captain, and day by day that restlessness grew. Spurred on by his unquiet spirit, he at length turned the command of the ship over to Lieutenant Everson, and announced that he was determined to make a dash inland and ascertain the fate of the two men who had gone before. He took a well-stocked sledge, and prepared to penetrate all the way to Sardanes, providing he could find it. With him went one sailor, that same James Parkerson whom Polaris had snatched from the icy waters of Ross Sea when the Minnetonka made her first drive into the blasted channel of the great jam.
Cool, confident, and daring, Scoland had no fears in making his sortie into the wilderness. He was equipped with a map drawn from memory by Polaris, and had little doubt but that he could find the Sardanian valley. He had a premonition that was more than half a conviction that, having found the valley, he should find no living man in it.
When he had seen the fury of the fires that had burst forth on the shores of Ross Sea, and had considered the distance which those fires must have traveled, he had lost faith in the ultimate success of the relief expedition. The more he had thought of it, the more was he convinced that the nation they sought to save had been engulfed in the snows of the Antarctic and had perished utterly.
Reason further told him that some serious misadventure must have befallen Wright and Janess; else why had they not returned to the ship long before?