Then the adventurers heard from the lips of the king of the passing of the fires from Sardanes, the madness of Analos, the battles and the death march of the nation through the Gateway. Polaris translated the telling of the tale to Zenas Wright, who hung upon each word with breathless interest. Some days later, when the king had become strong enough to be about the cave and to keep the fire aglow, Polaris and Zenas Wright took torches and journeyed across the white valley to the Gateway hill, and paid a visit to the ancient temple of death on the ledge of the mighty crater. There was a spot from which the old scientist scarce could tear himself, even after he had spent hours in examination, and the torches were nearly exhausted. On the wall in one of the temple chambers they found hanging a small cross, with its ends curiously turned. It was not of the ilium of Sardanes, but of gold. "Priceless!" said Zenas Wright in an awed whisper. "That ornament came here from the Aegean Sea long before Christ was born in Judea." Although it seemed almost an act of sacrilege to disturb it, the old man plucked it from its place and carried it away with him. * * * * * Three more weeks passed, and Minos the king apparently was as whole and well as on that day when he fell over the guardian rock. Each day saw added preparations for their journey back to the _Minnetonka_. From the stores in the cavern Polaris replenished his sledge supplies, and packed the load for the sled of Minos. From boughs of the tough hymanan wood the son of the snows fashioned the frames of snowshoes and wove their nets of sinew of the bear. For both Minos and Memene he made them, and there was much sport when they both fared forth in the snow to try them. After much floundering and not a little lameness, both of the Sardanians mastered this new method of locomotion. Many questions Minos and his princess asked about the land to which they were going, and its people and customs. To them, who had known only the mountain-ringed valley and the impenetrable wilderness, it was well-nigh incomprehensible that a land could be where the sun shone alternately with the blackness of night, day by day, the whole year around. The immensity of the world, as pictured to them by Polaris and the geologist, staggered them. "And the ladies in thy great, far world, are they most fair," Memene asked--"fairer than those of poor Sardanes?" Polaris gazed on the regal beauty of the girl, and answered dryly, "Few, indeed," and bethought himself that her question boded ill for the king, should he ever look too long on other charms. "But in this land of thine, how will it fare with me," questioned Minos, "where possessions are valued thus and so, as thou tellest me, and where men barter of their labor and their wit for thy medium of exchange thou namest 'money'? Say, what shall be open to one like Minos, who hath naught, and who is but little skilled in aught?"