He groped within the breast of his furred waistcoat and took out a small, flat packet, sewn in membranous parchment. "One more favor of your kindness, lady," he asked. "Please keep this packet until I ask it of you again. It is the message which I carry to the world at the north. Should I pass into the world of shadows, you will do me a great service if you will open it and send its contents to whom it is directed."
Rose Emer took the packet and hid it in her bosom.
"Now we will go on to the valley, before strength fails entirely," he said. He straightened up again, and bent to the toil of the pathway which he had marked out for himself. The girl leaned back against his straining breast. Once more, when she might have spoken, she kept silence.
They went on. Slowly, uncertainly, for Polaris staggered much, foot by foot, he fought his way across that bleak and endless quarter of a mile of snow.
Three hours after the air-ship had landed from its history-making dash in and out of the jaws of the antarctic, Captain Scoland and his two men were startled in their camp by an apparition.
Down the slope of the valley and through a circle of snarling dogs that rushed to attack and then slunk back affrighted, strode a grim-faced and silent man. On he came like a machine, or like one who walks wide-eyed at night. Behind him crept the tottering skeleton of a great gray wolf dog.
Slung across the breast of the man was a fur-wrapped bundle. With measured tread he walked on to the door of the shelter, paused, and with no word let his burden gently down into the snow. A corner of the robe fell aside and disclosed the face of Rose Emer. She had swooned, and lay like one dead.
Captain Scoland sprang forward with a strained cry of surprise and question. The strange man stood for an instant, his unseeing eyes fixed on the snow reaches beyond the valley. Then he tossed his arms above his head and pitched backward, inert and lifeless. The tottering wreck of a dog crept up and licked his face.