"A wound, sickness, the loss of fire, and no means to make one, then the beast. I find you in evil case, indeed, Minos the king," he said. He hurried to the fireplace and piled wood upon the hearth. With his keen knife he hacked splinters and set them to the wood. Producing a box of matches from the breast of his shirt, he struck them and fired the pile in many places. Going back to the king, he exerted his great strength, and dragged the couch across the rocky floor to the side of the fireplace. He spread a rug on the floor and laid the girl on it. She showed no sign as yet of returning consciousness. While he was at work, he heard the voice of Zenas Wright calling him insistently from the hill slopes outside the cave, where he had left him to mind the dog team. Polaris hastened out, and met the old man in the passage. "I was getting worried," the scientist said. "I've unhitched those wicked brutes of yours and given them something to chew on. They'd have taken a chance at me if I hadn't, I guess. What's in there?" In a few words Polaris told him what he had found, the old geologist tugging at his white beard and punctuating the tale with many an exclamation of surprise. "Now haste you within, old man, with that flask of yours," said Polaris, "and see if the man may be saved. The girl, I think, is sound and well--she has only fainted--but Minos the king has been sorely wounded, and lies so ill that his bones almost show through his flesh." Zenas Wright ran to the sledge and fetched a small medicine case and a leather-covered flask of brandy. Polaris helped him to scramble over the rock to the inner corridor. "'Ware the dogs," the young man cautioned. "Keep well away from them, or they will have the clothes from off your back. There are some things to be done out here, and then I will join you." The scientist hastened along the passage. By the leaping firelight he surveyed the strangest room that ever he had seen in all his threescore and odd years. The huge carved chests, the cloths and rugs of strange materials, the quaint utensils, the weapons of iridescent ilium, lighted the fires of enthusiasm in his eyes. "Marvelous!" he said. Well as he would have liked to stop at once, and handle and study those curiosities, he hurried on, giving a wide berth to the snarling brutes, which gave him no friendly greeting. He reached the side of the couch and bent above the still form of the king. With expert fingers, the old man felt the wrists of Minos. "Um-m, he's not so bad," he muttered. He unbound the bandage from the king's head and inspected the wound in the sick man's temple. It had been a deep gash and a wide, but it was nearly healed. Zenas Wright found a small flagon and water, in which he mixed a draft of the fiery brandy. Supporting the king's head on his arm, Wright forced his lips and teeth apart and poured the strong spirit down Minos's throat.