He struggled madly. He clawed at the very rock of the floor, and dragged himself inch by inch toward the death he sought. His breath came in gasps. His jaw fell. The iron spirit of the man held back dissolution itself until his will was accomplished. Groping and crawling, he reached at last the polished chute in the rock, cut there by the priests centuries before and worn smooth by the passing of thousands of Sardanians. "I thank thee, master," he sighed, content. He rolled into the chute, and his body shot downward and outward above the fiery lake. His red robe spread wide as he took the plunge, like the wings of some immense crimson bird swooping downward from a flaming sky to a blazing sea. * * * * * Minos the king stood by his fire on the hill of Latmos. With folded arms he stood, and the Lady Memene sat near to him on a log of hymanan wood cut for the burning. Their eyes strained across the white Sardanian valley. Both were silent. They saw the long procession of those about to die sweep up the fire-lighted steeps of the Gateway to the Future. They heard the chant of death from two thousand throats as the people marched across the upper terrace and through the gloomy portal of the cliff, to the music of the trumpeters and the booming of the drum of time. When the last man had passed within, they still heard the muffled thunder of the drum. Then that ceased also. Strong spirited as were they both, their hearts seemed to stop with it. "Now art thou and I and Kalin the last Sardanians in the living world," the king said. So he spoke, not knowing that under the rocks and the snows, many long leagues to the northward, Kalin, the priest, lay asleep where Polaris Janess had left him nearly two years before. "That end is come which the priest preached and the people feared," he continued, "the end which Minos could not believe would come. Nor doth he believe yet, nor will so believe, that it is wrought of a god. Nature hath withdrawn her mercy, and all things in Sardanes die. "Believing not, Minos hath tarried. Now he is a king no longer. He hath no people left to rule. Naught remaineth but a snow-swept valley which death hath touched." From her seat on the log the girl arose. She stood in front of Minos, so close that her soft breath fanned his cheek. A slow, red flush that was not of the firelight overspread her features. Her dark eyes flashed like jewels. She spoke, and her heart was in her voice.