Author of "Polaris—of the Snows" Copyright 1916 by Popular Publications, Inc....

Two men stood on the bridge of a speeding ship in a place of ice and fire. A storm rode with them, a tempest that shrieked and moaned and tore, and around the ship seethed and tossed the waters of the furious Antarctic Sea. Ice floes cracked and crashed. Giant bergs, staggering under the lash of the gale, added the dull thunder of their impact to the wild din. Yet all the fury and clamor afloat paled in comparison with the appalling splendor of that which was taking place on shore. On the port s

On the brink of the ledge of death in the crater of the Gateway to the Future crouched Analos, high priest in Sardanes. Two hundred feet below him in the monstrous funnel of the crater, seethed the lake of undying fires. Billowing vapors wafted from that troubled caldron passed upward beyond him, an endless procession of many-hued wraiths. First mist, smoke and sulfurous gases intermingled, spiraled and coiled in the drafts that blew through the mountain's cone, and passed on to the vent of the

In the forest on the slopes above the Judgment House, Minos and his men halted, and the king made a division of his forces. If there was to be battle of the few against the many, he must have a fortress. "Imacar," he said, "take thou six men and speed on to the cave in the side of Latmos. Hold it against all comers. Seven men may there defy a thousand. I come hither anon, I and these others." In haste Imacar told off his men, and the king and the others plunged ahead along the forest paths. Belo

At the opening of the passage into the cave the way was scarcely wide enough for two men to enter abreast. Farther in, where the entrance curved, it was narrower yet. There Minos elected to meet the attackers. He ordered the other men into the cave, whither Patrymion went sorely against his will. "Art not going to take all the sport to thyself, king, I hope?" he asked. "I would make claim to a share in it." "Thou shalt have it, and to spare, my lad," said Minos comfortingly. "No one of us will h

When Nature issues a decree, the execution thereof is pitiless. She recks naught of dynasties or nations. When she would have a clean page on which to write, she erases, if needs be, and with inexorable completeness, the fairest characters she may have inscribed previously. The smallest and the greatest, the tiny grass blade, the towering forest giant, the lowly anthill, the lofty mountain, the blind worm in the dust, proud man, the "lord of creation"—be any or all of these in her path. Nature b

Screaming in a desperate frenzy that cast aside all fear, the Princess Memene sprang back along the passage and caught up another spear to replace that which the stroke of the bear had spun from her grasp. In her veins surged up the blood that had faced death on many a hard-fought battlefield in the years when the world was young, and counted no odds. Pale to the lips, her eyes ablaze, she fronted her towering antagonist. For the bear was over the rock now, reared on his hinder legs, and advanci

Polaris drove his weary and dispirited dogs back along the trail to the little camp. In the breast of the man burned an anger that made him tireless, and that was proof against both the cold and the storm. When he arrived at the camp he found the tall form of the Sardanian king standing on guard. The Princess Memene, who had adapted herself to their necessities with the bravery and fortitude of the true woman, was busy about the portable oil cook stove in the shelter tent. Zenas Wright slumbered