Knowing from their actions that something lay there that was worthy of investigation, Polaris waded into the drift ahead of the frantic animals. Under the snow he found an overturned sledge and, within a radius of a few yards, the carcasses of eight dogs, stiff and cold. A glance told the man that each of the animals had been shot through the head. The sledge was of the same pattern as the one he drove! The dogs were of the same breed! * * * * * High on a jutting prominence of ice-sheathed rock, overlooking the storm-driven, tossing waters of the furious Antarctic Ocean, stood a man clothed in skins of the white bear, with a circle of whining dogs at his feet. A terrific gale lashed the crests of the waves into spray that froze as it flew, and which fretted the face of the rock as with driven hail. So keen and bitter the blast that the hardy brutes cringed and whimpered under its sting, yet it tore by the man unheeded. Towering among the shivering beasts, he stood like a man of marble. Every line of his handsome, high-featured face seemed graven. Only his tawny eyes smoldered. They were fixed on a small cairn, reared of rocks at the cliff brink. The tattered remnant of a small American flag whipped from a bit of ice-coated stick at the top of the cairn. Beneath it a slab of wood had been made fast in the rock, and on its face a careful hand had carved a simple, fateful legend: IN MEMORIAM ZENAS WRIGHT, A.G.S. POLARIS JANESS, Adventurer JAMES PARKERSON, seaman Of the Sardanian Relief Expedition, Who Perished in the Snows in November, 1923. Erected by orders, Captain James Scoland, Commanding Cruiser Minnetonka Moment succeeded moment. Still the man stood in the biting tempest, his eyes fixed steadfastly on the text of the simple memorial. He turned and faced the north, whence the gale was driven. Twice he raised his clenched fists above his head, as if presaging some fierce outburst of spirit, but no words came. His features relaxed into a stony smile. "Of all puzzles, surely this is the strangest," he muttered. "Yet will I have its answer on that day when I find Captain Scoland again, so sure--so sure as my name is Polaris Janess!" He glanced again at the swirling waters in the bay below him, where a stout cruiser should have ridden at anchor, but where no ship was; and then, with his dogs at his back, he strode away into the shrieking wilderness. * * * * *