ing party of giants restrained him not
at all. The one clear thought burning in his weary brain was that
Richard Alden, his best friend--the man with whom he had traveled over
half the world, by whose side he had faced many a perilous
situation--must at that moment lie in peril, the extent of which he
could only surmise.

"Must have been about a dozen of them," he said thickly. And, holding
the Winchester ready, he commenced once more to plod on through the
stinging sheets of wind-driven ice particles. More than once he had
great difficulty in not losing that crimson trail, for here and there
the restless, white crystals completely blotted out the splashes.

All at once Nelson checked his pathetically slow progress, finding
himself on the top of an eminence, looking down in what appeared to be
a vastly deep natural amphitheater of snow and ice. At the bottom, and
perhaps a hundred yards distant, was a curious black oval from which
appeared to rise a dense, wind-whipped column of whitish vapor.

"My eyes must be going back on me," muttered Nelson through stiffened
lips. How intolerably heavy his fur suit seemed! His strength was
about gone and that curious black mouthlike circle seemed infinitely
far away. But, spurred by fears for his friend, he started downward
for the precipitious trail leading directly towards it.

Once he stepped inside the crater, he became conscious of a terrific
side pressure which gripped him as a whirlpool seizes a luckless
swimmer. The wind buffetted him from all angles, dealing him powerful
blows on face and body, which, too strong for his weary body, sent him
reeling weakly, drunkenly across the hard, glare ice towards the
vortex. Twice he slipped, each time finding it harder to arise. But
at last he approached what on closer inspection proved to be a
subterranean vent of black rock.

"Steam!" he gasped. "It's steam coming out of there!"

* * * * *

Swayed by a dozen conflicting emotions, he paused, the Winchester
barrel wavering like a reed in his enfeebled grasp.

"The whole thing's crazy," he decided. "I must be frozen and lying
somewhere, delirious. Poor Dick! Can't help him much now."

Like a man in a nightmare who advances but feels nothing under his
feet, Nelson staggered on towards that huge, gaping aperture of black
rock. On the threshold a pool of melted snow water made him stare.

"Hell!" he said. "It's only a volcanic vent of some kind."