Chartering the United States second-class cruiser Minnetonka, Polaris, Wright, and Captain James Scoland set sail to rescue the Sardanians. Scoland, who loved Rose Emer, deserted Janess and Wright in the wilderness and went back to America to woo the Rose-maid. But Rose Emer refused him, and gray Marcus, Polaris's dog, protected her from Scoland's profaning lips and tore the recreant captain so horribly that the man went mad, and in his madness revealed his inhuman treachery.
Again the Minnetonka turned her nose to the mysterious South, and Rose Emer went down the bitter seas to find her sweetheart.
Meanwhile Polaris and old Zenas Wright found Sardanes a waste of snows, its volcanic girdle cold and dead, its people, led by the mad priest of Analos, gone to their doom through the fiery "Gateway" of their god Hephaistos. Only Minos, the kind, and his bride, the Lady Memene, remained alive, hidden in a cave in the hills. Those four, Polaris, Wright, and the two Sardanians, were picked up by the Minnetonka near the Antarctic Circle as they were making their perilous way northward in a small launch which they had found in the wreck of Captain Scoland's supply ship.
In the story which follows will be related the tale which was brought back to America by old Zenas Wright—what befell Polaris and his companions after the Minnetonka turned northward—homeward.
CHAPTER I
THE GOLDEN STRANGER
On the bridge of the cruiser Minnetonka stood Minos, the Sardanian king, staring southward in the wake of the ship, southward where his lost, dead kingdom lay buried under the soft, cruel snows beyond the unchartered antarctic seas. Ahead of the ship, full of promise, full of hope, was America. For the Minnetonka had rounded the Horn that morning and was on her long straight course for the port of home.
Below him, in her cabin, was the girl bride of Minos, the Lady Memene, so strangely won and saved from the crowning horror of his kingdom's fall. It was mid-forenoon of a cloudless day. Gay voices echoed along the decks of the cruiser. Gladness was in the very air the voyagers breathed—the gladness of the homeward-bound.
But the mien of the king was somber. There was a shadow on his brow and deeper shadows in his dark eyes gazing so steadily into the south. Bright as were his prospects, memory still whispered sadly to him of the only spot on earth which had been home to him. He could not forget.