Scoland spoke confidently. Still, he felt in his heart a return of the forebodings that had warned him against this man since first he had set eyes upon him.
"Who are you, lad, and how did you come to be in the south?" old Zenas Wright spoke up from the foot of the table. His tone was kindly, and there was no suspicion, only deep interest, in the keen eyes he turned on the youth.
"As best I may, I will answer those questions," said Polaris. "I was born in the white south. My mother I never saw—only a grave with the name Anne above it. My father sleeps beside that grave, and above him is the name Stephen."
Zenas Wright started visibly and seemed about to interrupt the tale, but did not, and Polaris continued:
"Other names than those I know not that they had. My father reared me, and I never saw another human being until I met those of the party of Captain Scoland. My father died. He gave me a message to bring to the north—a message addressed to the National Geographic Society of the United States. In that message, he told me, was the story of a great discovery he had made—that would ring around the world—and in it also was the history of myself, which he never told me. We lived far to the south for many years, for my father hurt himself in a fall and could not travel.
"When he died and I came north, I passed and burned the ship in which he went to the south. Its name was the Yedda.
"This man has reached the pole. I do not wish to make his glory dim, but—he is not the first to stand at the pole. I have come here—"
He hesitated and glanced around the circuit of the big table. Every man there was leaning forward in strained attention.
"The message—the message your father sent?" queried President Dean, and held out a shaking hand. "Give us that message."
"I have lost that message," said Polaris quietly.