Overhead was a crisscross of slender wooden beams, and in the midst of them was set a translucent globe of porcelain or clouded glass, through which a strong light was shed, light that was almost as clear in its quality as that of day. At the sight of those crossed beams, Polaris's memory stirred quickly. Where had he seen such before? Ah, he had it! It was just such a lattice-work that had made a raft for the stranger when he had found him floating in the sea. What was the meaning of it? The screaming fury of the tempest, with its menace to all that he held dearest; the terrible moments when the _Minnetonka_ went roaring down to ruin; the struggle in the sea; the agony of resuscitation; the grim fear that had choked him when he saw his dear lady lying there so pale and still--all those transitions had shaken even the strong will and cool brain of the son of the snows. He shook his head impatiently, as though the fog through which his mind groped were a physical fact, to be dismissed so. Here at his side was the living answer to the questions that now trooped thick and fast--the man who had promised him life on the sinking deck of the cruiser and who had made that promise good. "Where are we, and who and what are you?" Polaris asked him. The answer was as ready as it was surprising. "We are under the sea in the captain's cabin of a fademe in the navy of the great king, Bel-Ar. And I"--he bowed slightly and smiled--"I am the Captain Oleric the Red, also of the navy of the great king, but at present without a fademe to command." * * * * * So unusually circumstanced from his very birth had been the life of Polaris Janess that he long before had accepted and made his own the philosophy which the Prince of Denmark taught to Horatio. Things that the ordinary man would scoff at and reject as preposterous had been the incidents of his everyday existence. So now the extraordinary declaration of him who named himself Oleric the Red did not move him to any great show of surprise. Instead, there came to him the sorrowful vision of the good gray cruiser, sundered and wrecked and going down to the ocean's bed, bearing with her many a man whom he had been glad to call his friend--men who twice had risked their lives in the antarctic perils that others might live. With that picture in his mind came a thought that drove all the mists from his brain and made it burn with a sense of outrage and anger. He snapped himself erect, and with hands clenched and blazing eyes looked down on Oleric. "The breaking of the good ship yonder came not from within, but from without," he said sternly. "That great ray of strange light that cut her like a knife was some devil's device of these that you call fademes. Is it not true?" Over the face of Oleric passed a shadow that made it sad. But his eyes were steadfast and unflinching.