With Minos and the old man he rolled boulders in a ring around a hollow in the side of a cliff and set up a camp there--a welcome home for a time at least to Zenas Wright. Now that the goal of their journeying was near, the geologist was not ashamed to admit that he was weary. Several times Polaris explored without success paths that seemed likely, and at length marked one that led, by devious turns and detours, to the open water. Following it through to the shore, he penetrated north along the coast a number of miles. He found that there which sent him back to camp on flying feet. "Now are our troubles at an end!" he shouted. "I have found a ship!" * * * * * Scoland and his men had been a half day on their northern journey when the _Minnetonka's_ wireless operator brought to Scoland's cabin the following message: Earthquake or volcano cut ship off from sea. Fear in great danger. Aronson, _Felix_. Directing the operator to answer that they were on their way north, Scoland gave the orders that hurled the cruiser on with redoubled speed to meet this new peril! Icebergs floated along their sea path, but in diminished numbers, and in size far inferior to those whose menace had made the great southern drive and jam so perilous to the ship. When they reached the lower neck of Ross Sea, the passage that had taken twenty-nine days of weary and dangerous labor, blasting every rod of the way through the solid ice of the jam, was accomplished in four hours. Wireless exchanges kept them informed that the position of the _Felix_ was unchanged. Scoland found her at the upper end of Ross Sea, cut off from open water. As islands appear suddenly from the depths of the South Pacific, so had the volcanic forces upheaved the Antarctic sea bottom. The _Felix_ had ridden at anchor in a sheltered bay. Now she lay in a basin, surrounded entirely by land and rocks. A strip nearly two hundred yards across separated the ship from the tossing open waters of the sound. So shallow was the water where the ship was that the vessel had heeled over and lay on her starboard side, her decks tilted at a precipitous angle. Scoland saw at once that his supply ship was hopeless of rescue. It would have taken tons of explosive to blast a channel to where she lay, and, that accomplished, there would be no water to float her. Off the edge of the strip of sea bottom that had been thrown up by the volcanoes, the water was some twelve fathoms. Scoland laid the cruiser alongside the ledge, rigged carrying tackle, and spent two days replenishing the coal-bunkers of the _Minnetonka_, to the great satisfaction of Engineer MacKechnie, who was assured that, if the cruiser failed to escape from the jaws of the southland, it would not be from lack of coal for her engines.