He looked again. No, his eyes did not deceive. Smoke was curling up from the valley, a thin blue spiral. The bird man had alighted there. There was a camp of men. Food and warmth, rescue and life for his precious burden--all were there in that little valley, a bare quarter of a mile away across the snow. Could he ever reach it? Into his brain leaped a multitude of quick thoughts. Joy and the shadow of an old suspicion came together. He knelt again in the snow and aroused Rose Emer. "Lady," he said very softly, "you are saved. Yonder," and he pointed across the snow toward the valley--"yonder is the smoke of a camp, and an air-ship from the south just landed in that valley." Rose Emer strained her eyes across the snow. She saw the smoke and comprehended. For an instant she bowed her face on her arms. When she raised it her eyes were streaming. Out of hard despair tear time had come again. She caught his hand to her breast, and then raised it to her lips. He snatched it from her. "Oh, but I thank you; words are too feeble to say it. I thank you for life, Polaris!" "Lady," he made answer, "I am going to make a strange request of you. Yonder are those of your own people--the American captain and his men. It is my wish that when we come among them you will say nothing of my origin, of where you found me, or what has befallen us, more than is necessary to tell--" "It is enough that you ask it," the girl broke in. "Never mind any further reason. I will do as you say." He groped within the breast of his furred waistcoat and took out a small, flat packet, sewn in membranous parchment. "One more favor of your kindness, lady," he asked. "Please keep this packet until I ask it of you again. It is the message which I carry to the world at the north. Should I pass into the world of shadows, you will do me a great service if you will open it and send its contents to whom it is directed." Rose Emer took the packet and hid it in her bosom. "Now we will go on to the valley, before strength fails entirely," he said. He straightened up again, and bent to the toil of the pathway which he had marked out for himself. The girl leaned back against his straining breast. Once more, when she might have spoken, she kept silence. They went on. Slowly, uncertainly, for Polaris staggered much, foot by foot, he fought his way across that bleak and endless quarter of a mile of snow. Three hours after the air-ship had landed from its history-making dash in and out of the jaws of the antarctic, Captain Scoland and his two men were startled in their camp by an apparition. Down the slope of the valley and through a circle of snarling dogs that rushed to attack and then slunk back affrighted, strode a grim-faced and silent man. On he came like a machine, or like one who walks wide-eyed at night. Behind him crept the tottering skeleton of a great gray wolf dog.