"Yes, I left him," he croaked hoarsely, "left him, alive, he and the doddering old man. Ha! ha! ha! I reached Sardanes and found them there, and they didn't see me. Ha! ha! I came away again, and they didn't know I left them, with a dead man to keep them company--in frozen, dead Sardanes--" He caught sight of his face in a mirror, and his voice broke. "_My God!_" he whispered. He held his arms out toward his reflection in the glass. "God!" he repeated, and collapsed on the floor in a fit of convulsions. Combe and other servants brought ropes and tied him. A little later men came and took Captain James Scoland away. Like a far-flung, radiant ray of dazzling sunshine, one fact penetrated through all the horror of the moment to the heart of Rose Emer. Polaris, her Polaris, was alive! Alive, and living, might be saved--_must_ be saved! She left the horrors of the hall on flying feet. Before the madman was out of her house, Rose Emer had called up Washington on the long-distance telephone, and had spoken with the Secretary of the Navy. * * * * * Enough of English had the Sardanians learned to understand the words of Polaris, when he shouted that he had found a ship, and their glad exclamations were mingled with those of Zenas Wright, as the three sprang to meet the returning explorer. "A ship, said I," Polaris said, lifting his hand, "but naught did I say of men or rescue. 'Tis the _Felix_, caught fast in the rocks by some mischance that is our great good fortune. She has been abandoned." He made haste to explain how he had found the ship. "Unless Scoland found means to empty her, which seems unlikely," he continued, "she has that on board to keep us four in comfort for years, if need be." Breaking camp at once, they followed his lead through the mountain gap to the rocky shore. Aye, there lay the _Felix_, right enough, and snug in her basin, but how were they on shore to reach her? Polaris did not delay for long in solving that problem. Stripping Minos's sledge of hymanan wood of all its load, he set it afloat in the basin. It served him in lieu of a raft. For a paddle he took his long spear and poled his improvised craft out on the still waters of the miniature sea. It floated him safely, although his weight submerged it so that the water lapped at his ankles. "Give me that flask, old Zenas Wright," he cried joyously. "I'll warrant you wait not long for the filling of it now, even if I have to desert this stout boat, and swim to the ship."