For seven days, fraught with perils through every passing hour, the hurricane belabored the staggering ship. South by southeast, the storm drove her on. The whip of the gale and the shock of the mighty waves which arose to meet its lash were incessant.
Past the Falklands, their rocky headlands dimly seen through the flying scud; past the Aurora Island group, and on past lonely Georgia, the hard-pressed Minnetonka fled down the raging sea path under the goads of the storm demons. Nowhere might she tarry. Candlemas Island and Saunders and Montague in turn were left behind, and then Thule, last link between the South Atlantic and the frigid wastes of the Antarctic Sea.
Off the adamant cliffs of far Thule the cruiser nearly left her bones. She struck a hidden rock, struck so fiercely that the massive steel ram was torn from her prow, and with it the triple rails, with which she had been equipped to withstand the ice-shocks, in her antarctic voyage, were stripped from her entire starboard side.
When Thule had disappeared in the murk, the swing of the tempest turned, and the cruiser was forced eastward in a whirling race of current and gale. Like a smitten thing that seeks a lonesome spot in which to die, the ship passed on into the mysteries of the uncharted, treacherous seas which lie east by south from Thule.
Helpless still the cruiser rode. Unable to make repairs to her shafting, Lieutenant Everson did the only thing that he could do; he kept her head-on with the seas and let her run before the tempest.
Through all those days and nights of peril the stranger lay in his cabin. His consciousness had returned, and at times he sat up and gazed curiously at those who visited him; but he seemed to be in a mental haze. He ate heartily of what was given to him, and his strength grew. He spoke to no one.
Among the men on the Minnetonka were those who, one or another, were conversant in nearly all of the languages of the civilized world. One by one they were called in by Zenas Wright to try their tongues on the stranger. He met them all with blank looks, sometimes with smiles; but he answered none. He seemed to comprehend none.
Polaris visited the cabin often. His liking for the man grew. He imagined that the stranger was more cordial to him than to any of those who attended him. Once or twice the son of the snows surprised a wistful regard in the bright blue eyes of the man, an expression that was lost almost as soon as perceived. And once the stranger reached Janess's hand and held it with his own for a moment, turning it and feeling of its wonderful thews with his fingers. It was then that he seemed the nearest to speech. Presently he let the hand fall with a smile and a flash of white teeth.
It was after that last disaster, off the hard coasts of Thule, that Engineer Ian MacKechnie went quite daft.