Now, to accommodate their pace to that of the tottering blind man, or to carry him, nearly doubling the load of the dogs, spelled almost sure defeat.
He gave no inklings of his foreboding to either Kalin or Rose Emer, but cheered the priest as best he might in his affliction, and pressed on with what speed was possible. Three more laps on the journey they made before the steely fortitude of Kalin gave way, and he could no longer force his exhausted limbs to bear the weight of his failing body. In mid career across the snows, he stumbled from the path and fell prone in lee of a huge drift.
Polaris plucked him from the snow.
"Kalin is outdone!" gasped the Sardanian. "Thou, my brother, and the Lady Rose must go forward and leave me. On to the north, O brother! Kalin dieth!"
"Not so, Kalin," answered Polaris. "My breath will leave my body before I desert my brother. Didst thou falter in Sardanes, when all were against the strangers? And shall Polaris desert thee now?"
"But for the lady's sake, thou must," persisted Kalin. "Thou mayest not fail her, and delay is death."
"She would not buy even her life at such a price, O Kalin," said Polaris. "Together we will fare to the north, or together will we keep eternal watch here in the snows."
Unheedful of the protests of the priest, he carried him to the sledge and rearranged the load on the vehicle, making a place for Kalin at the rear behind the girl. Thus they took up again the tale of the journey, but more slowly than they had yet traveled, the load taxing the powers of the diminishing team-pack.
Once broken in the pride of his endurance, the priest rapidly lost hold on himself, and his vitality seemed to ooze from him with the passing hours. At the second stop after Polaris had made a place for him on the sledge the son of the snows discovered that one of his legs, which seemed to be paralyzed, was frozen from foot to knee; yet Kalin did not seem to know it.
At the close of a particularly trying march—their going no longer could be called a dash—Polaris made their camp at the sheltered side of one of the hummocks of rock and ice with which the land was sprinkled and all of them, dogs and humans, slumbered wearily for many hours.