It was the first time for hours that either of the men had spoken. Indeed, since the ship had entered this arm of the sea and come upon the stupendous eruption of nature's vitals, there had been little conversation aboard, with the exception of sharp orders and a few subdued comments among the crew. Volcanoes they had expected to find, but no such tremendous display as here confronted and overawed them. "Now, this is Ross Sea. Back there to the northwest lie Mount Sabine and Mount Melbourne. Here, where the great hills burn, is King Edward VII Land," pursued the young man. "Yonder," he pointed ahead to the south, "lies the pathway to Sardanes. Shall we be in time, old Zenas Wright, or will the end have struck already?" Zenas Wright, member of the American Geographic Society, one of the first geologists of his day and world famous as an authority on volcanic phenomena, tore his gaze unwillingly from the most splendid exhibit of his favorite science his eyes had ever seen. He shook his shaggy, white old head slowly. "I can not tell, my son," he said. "Often the great changes of nature are of slow growth, and may be months or years in the making. Again, they are done in a day. An outburst of such violence as this one I've never seen before. It would seem to me that the end must be at hand down there, if not already passed. We must make haste." He turned his short, wide-shouldered figure. Clutching the bridge rail with mittened hands, he settled his ears again into the protection of his great ulster, and feasted his eyes on a sight of which he would never tire. * * * * * From the wheelhouse another man came onto the bridge. He was tall, lean and weather-beaten with close-set eyes above high cheekbones, and the alert and upright carriage of a soldier. For a moment the three conferred, the newcomer tugging impatiently at his sparse, black mustache, while he took in the scene around him with sharp glances. "Speed, and speed, and more speed, Scoland," said the old scientist. "Aye, speed," echoed the young giant, "all the speed in your good ship, Captain, while yet there is open water. Yonder, ahead, the ice gathers for the drive, and there we must needs go slowly. So speed while speed we may." Scoland nodded shortly and strode back to the wheelhouse. Down the speaking-tube to the engine-room went his call: "Crowd her, Mac, crowd her!" "Aye, Meester Scoland, aye! But, mon, is she no doin' beautifully the noo?" The grizzled MacKechnie turned from the tube in the bowels of the cruiser, to bellow his orders among cursing, panting stokers and sweating coal-passers. For this was a race with death; not the death of one man, or of a ship's crew, but the extinction of a nation. Down this swirling pathway one of the men on the ship had passed once before. No stout ship swam under his feet on that journey. He rode on a careening iceberg. He was the fur-clad young viking on the bridge. His name was Polaris Janess.