feel the full force of a mother's love and sacrifices only when too
late? Why must it be that the deepest of all unselfish love goes ever
unrewarded?

"Peters scarcely knows how he got from the room. He staggered out into
the grounds, and saw that the remainder of the party were already seated
in the boat.

"But I must hasten on. Let me say in a few words, that the party
returned to the ducal palace, and immediately prepared to rescue Lilama
from the power of her discarded lover, the exiled Ahpilus. The rescue
party, on the advice of the Duke, was small. He explained to Peters that
so far as mere human force was concerned, a thousand men could never
rescue the maiden. Her return to them, alive and in health, would depend
upon strategy, or possibly might be accomplished as a result of some
superhuman individual effort. He was of opinion, he remarked--and he
judged from what he had been told by government officials lately
returned from 'Crater Mountains' and also from changes in the young man
observed by himself preceding the sentence of banishment--that Ahpilus
was a maniac. The Duke went on to say that he really felt but little
hope of ever again seeing, alive, his loved young 'cousin.' Then he
explained that, whilst there were spots on 'Crater Mountains,' from five
to eight miles from the central crater, on the far side of the nearer
hills, hot enough to roast a large animal, there were other spots on the
far side of the remoter mountain ranges where, protected from crater
radiation and exposed to antarctic air-currents, the temperature was
almost always far below the freezing-point, and sometimes so cold that
no animal life, even antarctic animal life, could endure it for an hour.
He said that poor Lilama was lost, unless some other exile should save
her--which was unlikely, even if possible--or unless we could invent