Dully through the wall of rock penetrated the dismayed clamor of the Sardanians in the passage, and the muted sound of their spears smiting on the stone. No efforts of theirs could so much as shake the boulder. Nothing short of giant powder would dislodge it.
Desperate at his plight, made mad with fury, or surpassingly daring was Minos the Prince, for he picked himself up with a shout and charged headlong at the men and dogs who confronted him.
"This task to me brother," shouted Polaris to Kalin, who lifted spear to defend himself. Polaris had sprung down from the pedestal of the rocking stone, and he leaped unhesitatingly into the path of Minos.
With lightning swiftness he caught a grip on the haft of the spear which the prince whirled up to pierce him. For a moment the two men stood tense, with upstretched arms, battling fiercely, but without motion, for the mastery of the weapon. Then Polaris widened his grip on the shaft and twisted it sharply from his antagonist's grasp.
They stood breathing deeply, and Polaris cast the spear away, at the same time sternly ordering off the dogs which would have rushed on Minos.
"A trick," said Minos with a smile, glancing at his empty hands. "Another trick, O clever stranger! Now try a fall with Minos, where tricks will not avail." He flung his arms around Polaris.
His grip was of steel. In all Sardanes the "smiling prince" was known as the strongest man. Once, for a wager, he had trussed the legs of a full grown pony, and had carried it on his shoulders unaided, from the river to the Judgement House.
Round about Polaris his long legs tightened, and he tugged upward mightily, in an effort to tear his antagonist from his foothold and hurl him down. He would have plucked an ordinary man from the earth like a toy, but he was not pitted against an ordinary man. He was the strongest man in Sardanes, but Sardanes was small, and her strong men few. Polaris was perhaps the strongest man in the world.
He stood firm. Not only that, but he thrust his hands upwards, gripping the prince in the armpits, and slowly straightened his arms, despite the utmost effort of the struggling prince to pinion them to his sides. Strain as Minos might, he could not break that grip beneath his shoulders.
Slowly, very slowly, Polaris straightened his arms. As he did so, he bent his hands in from the wrists, exerting an ever increasing pressure at each side of Minos's broad chest. To his own intense astonishment, the prince, whom no man ever had mastered, felt his foothold growing insecure, felt his ribs slowly curving in and his breathing growing short and painful, felt his mighty arms slipping.