Into the clear space stepped H'yemba, the smith. His powerful right hand he raised on high. And boldly, in a loud voice, he cried:
“Folk of the Merucaans, this cannot be!”
“Itcannot be? Who says it cannot be?Who dares stand out and challenge me?”
“I, H'yemba, the man of iron and of flame!”
Stern faced him, every nerve and fiber quivering with sudden passion. At realization that in the exact psychological moment when success lay almost in his hand, this surly brute might baffle him, he felt a wave of murderous hate.
He realized that the dreaded catastrophe had indeed come to pass. Now his sole claim to chieftainship lay in his power to defend the title. Failure meant--death.
“You?” he shouted, advancing on the smith.
His opponent only leered and grimaced offensively. Then without even having vouchsafed an answer, he swung toward the elders.
“I challenge!” he exclaimed. “I have the right of words!”
Vreenya nodded, fingering his long white beard.
“Speak on!” he answered. “Such is our ancient custom.”
“Oh, people,” cried the smith, suddenly facing the throng, “will ye follow one who breaks the tribal manners of our folk? One who disdains our law? Who has neglected to obey it? Will ye trust yourselves into hands stained with law-breaking of our blood?”
A murmur, doubtful, wondering, obscure, spread through the people. By the greenish flare-light Stern could see looks of wonder and dismay. Some frowned, others stared at him or at the smith, and many muttered.
“What the devil and all have I brokennow?” wondered Allan. “Plague take these barbarous customs! Jove, they're worse than the taboos of the old Maoris, in the ancient days! What's up?”
He had not long to wonder, for of a sudden H'yemba wheeled on him, pointed him out with vibrant hands, and in a voice of terrible anger cried:
“The law, the law of old!No man shall be chief who does not take a wife from out our people!None who weds one of the Lanskaarn, the island folk, or the yellow-haired Skeri beyond the Vortex, none such shall ever rule us. Yet this man, this stranger who speaks such great things very hard to be believed, scorns our custom. No woman from among us he has taken, but instead, thatvuedmaof his own kind! What? Will ye--”
He spoke no further, for Allan was upon him with one leap. At sound of that word, the most injurious in their tongue, the fires of Hell burst loose in Stern.
Reckoning no consequences, staying for no parley or diplomacy, he sprang; and as he sprang, he struck.
The blow went home on the smith's jaw with a smash like a pile-driver. H'yemba, reeling, swung at him--no skill, no science, just a wild, barbaric, sledge-hammer sweep.
It would have killed had it landed, but Allan was not there. In point of tactics, the twentieth century met the tenth.
And as the smith whirled to recover, a terrible left-hander met him just below the short ribs.
With a grunt the man doubled, sprawled and fell. By some strange atavism, which he never afterward could understand, Allan counted, in the Folk's tongue: “Hathi, ko, zem, baku” and so up to “lamnu”--ten.
Still the smith did not rise, but only lay and groaned and sought to catch the breath that would not come.
“I have won!” cried Allan in a loud voice. “Here, you people, take thisgreun, this child, away! And let there be no further idle talk of a dead law--for surely, in your custom, a law dies when its champion is beaten! Come, quick, away with him!”
Two stout men came forward, bowed to Allan with hands clasped upon their breasts in signal of fresh allegiance, and without ceremony took the insensible smith, neck-and-heels, and lugged him off as though he had only been a net heavily laden with fish.
The crowd opened in awed silence to let them pass. By the glare Allan noticed that the man's jaw hung oddly awry, even as the obeah's had hung, in Madison Forest.
“Jove, what a wallop that must have been!” thought he, now perceiving for the first time that his knuckles were cut and bleeding. “Old Monahan himself taught me that in the Harvard gym a thousand odd years ago--and it still works.Onequestion settled, mighty quick; and H'yemba won't have much to say for a few weeks at least. Not till his jawbone knits again, anyhow!”
Upon his arm he felt a hand. Turning, he saw Vreenya, the aged counselor.
“Surely, O master, he shall not live, now you have conquered him? The boiling pit awaits. It is our custom--if you will!”
Allan only shook his head.
“All customs change, these times,” he answered. “Iam your law! This man's life is needed, for he has good skill with metals. He shall live, but never shall he speak before the Folk again. I have said it!”
To the waiting throng he turned again.
“Ye have witnessed!” he cried, in a loud voice. “Now, have fear of me, your master! Once in the Battle of the Walls ye beheld death raining from my fire-bow. Once ye watched me vanquish your ruler, even the great Kamrou himself, and fling him far into the pit that boils. And now, for the third time, ye have seen. Remember well!”
A stir ran through the multitude. He felt its potent meaning, and he understood.
“I am the law!” he flung at them once more. “Declare it, all! Repeat!”
The thousand-throated chorus: “Thou art the law!” boomed upward through the fog, rolled mightily against the towering cliff, and echoed thunderlike across the hot, black sea.
“It is well!” he cried. “One more sleep, and then--then I choose from among ye two for the journey, two of your boldest and best. And that shall be the first journey of many, up to the better places that await ye, far beyond the pit!”
Straining his eyes in the night, pierced only by the electric beam that ran and quavered rapidly over the broken forest-tops far below, Allan peered down and far ahead. The fire, the signal-fire he had told Beatrice to build upon the ledge--would he never sight it?
Eagerly he scanned the dark horizon only just visible in the star-shine. Warmly the rushing night wind fanned his cheek; the roar of the motor and propellers, pulsating mightily, made music to his ears. For it sang: “Home again! Beatrice, and love once more!”
Many long hours had passed since, his fuel-tanks replenished from the apparatus for distilling the crude naphtha, which he had installed during his first stay in the Abyss, he had risen a second time into that heavy, humid, purple-vapored air.
With him he now bore Bremilu, the strong, and Zangamon, most expert of all the fishermen. Slung in the baggage-crate aft lay a large seine, certain supplies of fish, weed and eggs, and--from time to time noisily squawking--some half-dozen of the strange sea-birds, in a metal basket.
The pioneers had insisted on taking these impedimenta with them, to bridge the gap of changed conditions, a precaution Stern had recognized as eminently sensible.
“Gad!” thought he, as the Pauillac swept its long, flat-arc'd trajectory through the night, “under any circumstances this must be a terrific wrench for them. Talk about nerve! Iftheyhaven't got it, who has? This trip of these subterranean barbarians, thus flung suddenly into midair, out into a world of which they know absolutely nothing, must be exactly what a journey to Mars would mean to me. More, far more, to their simple minds. I wonder myself at their courage in taking such a tremendous step.”
And in his heart a new and keener admiration for the basic stamina of the Merucaans took root.
“They'll do!” he murmured, as he scanned his lighted chart once more, and cast up reckonings from the dials of his delicately adjusted instruments.
Half an hour more of rapid flight and he deemed New Hope River could not now be far.
“No use to try and hear it, though, with this racket of the propellers in my ears,” thought he. “The searchlight might possibly pick up a gleam of water, if we fly over it. But even that's a small index to go by. The signal-fire must be my only real guide--and where is it, now, that fire?”
A vague uneasiness began to oppress him. The fire, he reckoned, should have shown ere now in the far distance. Without it, how find his way? And what of Beatrice?
His uneasy reflections were suddenly interrupted by a word from Zangamon, at his right.
“OKromno, master, see?”
“What is it, now?”
“A fire, very distant, master!”
“Where?” queried Stern eagerly, his heart leaping with joy. “I see no fire. Your eyes, used to the dark places and the fogs, now far surpass mine, even as mine will yours when the time of light shall come. Where is the fire, Zangamon?”
The fisher pointed, a dim huge figure in the star-lit gloom. “There, master. On thy left hand, thus.”
Stern shifted his course to southwest by west, and for some minutes held it true, so that the needle hardly trembled on the compass dial.
Then all at once he, too, saw the welcome signal, a tiniest pin-prick of light far on the edge of the world, no different from the sixth-magnitude stars that hung just above it on the horizon, save for its redness.
A gush of gratitude and love welled in the fountains of his heart.
“Home!” he whispered. “Home--for whereyouare that's home to me! Oh, Beatrice, I'm coming--coming home to you!”
Slowly at first, then with greater and ever greater swiftness, the signal star crept nearer; and now even the flames were visible, and now behind them he caught dim sight of the rock-wall.
On and on, a very vulture of the upper air, planed the Pauillac. Stern shouted with all his strength. The girl might possibly hear him and might come out of their cave. She might even signal--and the nearness of her presence mounted upon him like a heady wine.
He swung the searchlight on the cañon, as they swept above it. He flung the pencil of radiance in a wide sweep up the cliff and down along the terrace.
It gave no sight, no sign of Beatrice.
“Sleeping, of course,” he reflected.
And now, Hope River past, and the cañon swallowed by the dense forest, he flung his light once more ahead. With it he felt out the rocky barrens for a landing-place.
Not more than twenty minutes later, followed by Bremilu and Zangamon, Stern was making way through the thick-laced wood and jungle.
Awed, terrified by their first sight of trees and by the upper world which to them was naught but marvel and danger, the two Merucaans followed close behind their guide. Even so would you or I cling to the Martian who should land us on that ruddy planet and pilot us through some huge, inchoate and grotesque growth of things to us perfectly unimaginable.
“Oh, master, we shall see the patriarch soon?” asked Bremilu, in a strange voice--a voice to him astonishingly loud, in the clear air of night upon the surface of the world. “Soon shall we speak with him and--”
“Hark! What's that?” interrupted Stern, pausing, the while he gripped his pistol tighter.
From afar, though in which direction he could not say, a vague, dull roar made itself heard through the forest.
Sonorous, vibrant, menacing, it echoed and died; and then again, as once before, Stern heard that strange, hollow booming, as of some mighty drum struck by a muffled fist.
A cry? Was that a cry, so distant and so faint? Beast-cry, or call of night-bird, shrill and far?
Stern shuddered, and with redoubled haste once more pushed through the vague path he and Beatrice had made from the barrens to Settlement Miffs.
Presently, followed by the two colonists who dared not let him for a moment out of their sight, he reached the brow of the cañon. His hand flash-lamp showed him the rough path to the terrace.
With fast-beating heart he ran down it, unmindful of the unprotected edge or the sheer drop to the rocks of New Hope River, far below.
Bremilu and Zangamon, seeing perfectly in the gloom, hurried close behind, with words of awe, wonder and admiration in their own tongue.
“Beta! Oh, Beatrice! Home again!” Stern shouted triumphantly. “Where are you, Beta? Come! I'm home again!”
Quickly he scrambled along the broken terrace, stumbling in his haste over loose rocks and débris. Now he had reached the turn. The fire was in sight.
“Beta!” again he hailed. “O-hé!Beatrice!”
Still no answer, nor any sign from her. As he came to the fire he noted, despite his strong emotions, that it had for the most part burned down to glowing embers.
Only one or two resinous knots still flamed. It could not have been replenished for some time, perhaps two hours or more.
Again, his quick eye caught the fact that cinders, ashes and half-burned sticks lay scattered about in strange disorder.
“Why, Beatrice never makes a fire like that!” the thought pierced through his mind.
And--though as yet on no very definite grounds--a quick prescience of catastrophe battered at his heart.
“What'sthis?”
Something lying on the rock-ledge, near the fire, caught his eye. He snatched it up.
“What--what canthismean?”
The colonists stood, frightened and confused, peering at him in the dark. His face, in the ruddy fire-glow, as he studied the thing he now held in his hand, must have been very terrible.
“Cloth!Torn! But--butthen--”
He flung from him the bit of the girl's cloak which, ripped and shredded as though by a powerful hand, cried disaster.
“Beatrice!” he shouted. “Where are you? Beatrice!”
To the doorway in the cliff he ran, shaken and trembling.
The stone had been pushed away; it lay inside the cave. Ominously the black entrance seemed staring at him in the dull gleam of the firelight.
On hands and knees he fell, and hastily crawled through. As he went, he flashed his lamp here, there, everywhere.
“Beatrice!Beatrice!”
No answer.
In the far corner still flickered some remainder of the cooking-fire. But there, too, ashes and half-burned sticks lay scattered all about.
To the bed he ran. It was empty and cold.
“Beatrice! Oh, my God!”
A glint of something metallic on the floor drew his bewildered, terror-smitten gaze.
He sprang, seized the object, and for a moment stood staring, while all about him the very universe seemed thundering and crashing down.
The object in his hand was the girl's gun. One cartridge, and only one, had been exploded.
The barrel had been twisted almost off, as though by the wrenching clutch of a hand inhuman in its ghastly power.
On the stock, distinctly nicked into the hard rubber as Stern held the flash-lamp to it, were the unmistakable imprints of teeth.
With a groan, Allan started backward. The revolver fell with a clatter to the cave floor.
His foot slid in something wet, something sticky.
“Blood!” he gasped.
Half-crazed, he reeled toward the door.
The flash-lamp in his hand flung its white brush of radiance along the wall.
With a chattering cry he recoiled.
There, roughly yet unmistakably imprinted on the white limestone surface, he saw the print, in crimson, of a huge, a horrible, a brutally distorted hand.
Stern'scry of horror as he scrambled from the ravaged, desecrated cave, and the ghastly horror of his face, seen by the firelight, brought Zangamon and Bremilu to him, in terror.
“Master! Master! What--”
“My God! The girl--she's gone!” he stammered, leaning against the cliff in mortal anguish.
“Gone, master? Where?”
“Gone! Dead, perhaps! Find her for me! Find her! You can see--in the dark! I--I am as though blind! Quick, on the trail!”
“But tell us--”
“Something has taken her! Some savage thing! Some wild man! Even now he may be killing her!Quick--after them!”
Bremilu stood staring for a moment, unable to grasp this catastrophe on the very moment of arrival. But Zangamon, of swifter wit, had already fallen on his knees, there by the mouth of the cave, and now--seeing clearly by the dim light which more than sufficed for him--was studying the traces of the struggle.
Stern, meanwhile, clutching his head between both hands, dumb-mad with agony, was choking with dry sobs.
“Master! See!”
Zangamon held up a piece of splintered wood, with the bark deeply scarred by teeth.
Stern snatched it.
“Part of the pole I gave her to brace the rock with,” he realized. “Even that was of no avail.”
“Master--this way they went!”
Zangamon pointed up along the rock-terrace. Stern's eyes could distinguish no slightest trace on the stone, but the Merucaan spoke with certainty. He added:
“There was fighting, all the way along here, master. And then, here, the girl was dragged.”
Stern stumbled blindly after him as he led the way.
“There was fighting here? She struggled?”
“Yes, master.”
“Thank God! She was alive here, anyhow! She wasn't killed in the cave. Maybe, in the open, she might--”
“Now there is no more fighting, master. The wild thing carried her here.”
He pointed at the rock. Stern, trembling and very sick, flashed his electric-lamp upon it. With eyes of dread and horror he looked for blood-stains.
What? A drop! With a dull, shuddering groan, he pressed forward again.
Out he jerked his pistol and fired, straight up, their prearranged signal: One shot, then a pause, then two. Some bare possibility existed and that she still might live and hear and know that rescue came--if it could come before it were eternally too late!
“On, on!” cried Allan. “Go on, Zangamon! Quick! Lead me on the trail!”
The Merucaan, now aided by Bremilu, who had recovered his wits, scouted ahead like a blood-hound on the spoor of a fugitive. One gripped his stone ax, the other a javelin.
Bent half double, scrutinizing in the dark the stony path which Allan followed behind them only by the aid of his flash, they proceeded cautiously up toward the brow of the cliff again.
But ere they reached the top they branched off onto another lateral path, still rougher and more tortuous, that led along the breast of the cañon.
“This way, master. It was here, most surely, the thing carried her.”
“What kind of marks? Do you see signs of claws?”
“Claws? What are claws?”
“Sharp, long nails, like our nails, only much larger and longer. Do you see any such marks?”
Zangamon paused a second to peer.
“I seem to see marks as of hands, master, but--”
“No matter! On! We must find her! Quick--lead the way!”
Five minutes of agonizing suspense for Allan brought him, still following the guides, without whom all would have been utterly lost, to a kind of thickly wooded dell that descended sharply to the edge of the cañon. Into this the trail led.
Even he himself could now here and there make out, by the aid of his light, a broken twig, trampled ferns and down-crushed grass. Once he distinguished a blood-stain on a limb--fresh blood, not coagulated. A groan burst from between his chattering teeth.
He turned his light on the grass beneath. All at once a blade moved.
“Oh, thank God!” he wheezed. “They passed here only a few minutes ago. They can't be far now!”
Something drew his attention. He snatched at a sapling.
“Hair!”
Caught in a roughness of the bark a few short, stiff, wiry hairs, reddish-brown, were twisted.
“One of the Horde?” he stammered.
A lightning-flash of memory carried him back to Madison Forest, more than a year ago. He seemed to see again the obeah, as that monster advanced upon the girl, clutching, supremely hideous.
“The hair! The same kind of hair! In the power of the Horde!” he gasped.
A mental picture of extermination flashed before his mind's eye. Whether the girl lived or died, he knew now that his life work was to include a total slaughter of the Anthropoids. The destruction he had already wrought among them was but child's play to what would be.
And in his soul flamed the foreknowledge of a huntà l'outrance, to the bitter end. So long as one, a single one of that foul breed should live, he would not rest from killing.
“Master! This way! Here, master!”
The voice of Zangamon sent him once more crashing through the jungle, after his questing guides. Again he fired the signal-shot, and now with the full power of his lungs he yelled.
His voice rang, echoing, through the black and tangled growths, startling the night-life of the depths. Something chippered overhead. Near-by a serpent slid away, hissing venomously. Death lurked on every hand.
Stern took no thought of it, but pressed forward, shouting the girl's name, hallooing, beating down the undergrowth with mad fury. And here, there, all about he flung the light-beam.
Perhaps she might yet hear his hails; perhaps she might even catch some distant glimmer of his light, and know that help was coming, that rescuers were fighting onward to her.
Silent, lithe, confident even among these new and terribly strange conditions, the two men of the Folk slid through the jungle.
No hounds ever trailed fugitive more surely and with greater skill than these strange, white barbarians from the underworld. Through all his fear and agony, Stern blessed their courage and their skill.
“Men, by God! They'remen!” he muttered, as he thrashed his painful way behind them in the night.
Of a sudden, there somewhere ahead, far ahead in the wilderness--a cry?
Allan stopped short, his heart leaping.
Again he fired, and his voice set all the echoes ringing.
A cry! He knew it now. There could be no mistake--a cry!
“Beatrice!” he shouted in a terrible voice, leaping forward. The guides broke into a crouching run. All three crashed through the thickets, split the fern-masses, struggled through the tall saber-grass that here and there rose higher than their heads.
Allan cursed himself for a fool. That other cry he had heard while on his way from the Pauillac to Settlement Cliffs--that had been her cry for help--and he had neither known nor heeded.
“Fool that I was! Oh, damnable idiot that I was!” he panted as he ran.
From moment to moment he fired. He paused a few seconds to jack a fresh cartridge-clip into the automatic.
“Thank God I've got a belt full of ammunition!” thought he, and again smashed along with the two Merucaans.
All at once a formidable roar gave them pause.
Hollow, booming, deep, yet rising to a wild shriek of rage and horrid brutality, the beast-cry flung itself through the jungle.
And, following it, they heard again that muffled drumming, as though gigantic fists were flailing a tremendous tambour in the darkness.
“Master!” whispered Zangamon, recoiling a step. “Oh, Kromno, what isthat?”
“Never have we heard such in our place!” added Bremilu, gripping his ax the tighter. “Is that a man-cry, or the cry of a beast--one of the beasts you told us of, that we have never seen?”
“Both! A man-beast! Kill! Kill!”
Now, Allan, sure of his direction, took the lead. No longer he flashed the light, and only once more he called:
“Beatrice! O Beatrice! We're coming!”
Again he heard her cry, but suddenly it died as though swiftly choked in her very throat. Allan spat a blasphemy and surged on.
The two white barbarians followed, peering with those strange, pinkish eyes of theirs, courageous still, yet utterly at a loss to know what manner of thing they were now drawing near.
They burst through a thicket, waded a marshy swale and went splashing, staggering and slipping among tufts of coarse and knife-edged grasses, the haunt of unknown venomous reptiles.
Up a slope they won; and now, all at once the roar burst forth again close at hand, a rending tumult, wild, earthshaking, inexpressibly terrible.
All three stopped.
“Beatrice! Are you there? Answer!” shouted Stern.
Silence, save for a peculiar mumbling snuffle off ahead, among the deeper shadows of a fern-tree thicket.
“Beatrice!”
No answer. With a groan Allan shot his light toward the thicket. He seemed to distinguish something moving. To his ears now came a sound of twigs and brushwood snapping.
Absolutely void of fear he pressed forward, and the two colonists with him, their weapons ready. Stern held his revolver poised for instant action. His heart was hammering, and his breath surged pantingly; but within him his consciousness and soul lay calm.
For he knew one of two things were now to happen. Either that beast ahead there in the gloom, or he, must die.
Asthe three pursuers steadily advanced, the thing roared once more, and again they heard the hammering, drumming boom. Zangamon whispered some unintelligible phrase.
Allan projected the light forward again, and at sight of a moving mass, vague and intangible, among the gigantic fronds, leveled his automatic.
But on the instant Bremilu seized his arm.
“O master! Do not throw the fire of death!” he warned. “You cannot see, but we can! Do not throw the fire!”
“Why not? Whatisthat thing?”
“It seems a man, yet it is different, master. It is all hair, and very thick and strong, and hideous! Do not shoot, O Kromno!”
“Why not?”
“Behold! That strange man-thing holds the woman, Beatrice, in his left arm. Of a truth, you may kill her, and not the enemy.”
Allan steadied himself against a palm. His brain seemed whirling, and for a moment all grew vague and like a dream.
She was there--Beatrice was there, and they could see her. There, in the clutches of some monster, horrible and foul! Living yet?Dead?
“Tell me! Does she live?”
“We cannot say, O Kromno. But do not shoot. We will creep close--we, ourselves, will slay, and never touch the woman.”
“No, no! If you do he'll strangle her--provided she still lives! Don't go! Wait! Let me think a second.”
With a tremendous effort Allan mastered himself. The situation far surpassed, in horror, any he had ever known.
There not a hundred yards distant in the dense blackness was Beatrice, in the grip of some unknown and hideous creature. Advance, Allan dared not, lest the creature rend her to tatters. Shoot, he dared not.
Yet something must be done, and quickly, for every second, every fraction of a second, was golden. The merest accident might now mean death or life--life, if the girl still lived!
“Zangamon!”
“Yea, master?”
“Be very bold! Do my bidding!”
“Speak only the word, Kromno, and I obey!”
“Go you, then, very quietly, very swiftly, to the other side of these great growing things--these trees, we call them. Then call, so that this thing shall turn toward you. Thus, I may shoot, and perhaps not kill the woman. It is the only way!”
“I hear, master. I go!”
Allan and Bremilu waited, while from the thicket came, at intervals, the savage snuffling, with now and then a grumbling mutter.
All at once a call sounded from far ahead.
“Come!” commanded Allan. Together he and Bremilu crept through the jungle toward the thicket.
Wide-eyed, yet seeing almost nothing, Allan crawled noiselessly, automatic in hand. The Merucaan slid along, silent as an Apache.
“Tell me if you see the thing again--if you see it turn!” whispered Stern. “Tell me, for you can see.”
Now the distance was cut in half; now only a third of it remained. Before Stern it seemed a fathomless pit of black was opening. Under the close-woven arches of the giant fern-trees the night was impenetrable.
And as yet he dared not dart the light-beam into that pit of darkness, for fear of precipitating an unthinkable tragedy--if, indeed, the horror had not already been cons summated.
But now Bremilu gripped his arm. Afar, on the other side of the thicket, they heard a singular commotion, cries, shouts, and the vigorous beating of the fern-trees.
“The thing has turned, master!” the Merucaan exclaimed, at Allan's side. “Now throw the fire-death!Etvur!Quickly, throw!”
Stern swept the thicket with his beam.
“Ah! There--there!”
The light caught a moving, hairy mass of brown--a huge, squat, terrible creature, its back now toward them. At one side Stern saw a vague blackness--the long, unbound hair of Beatrice!
He glimpsed a white arm dangling limp; and in his breast the heart flamed at white-heat of rage and passion.
But his hand was steel. Never in his life had he drawn so fine a bead.
“Hold the light for me!” he whispered, passing it to his companion. “I want both hands for this!”
Bremilu held the beam true, blinking strangely with his pink eyes. Stern, resting his pistol hand in the hollow of his left elbow, sighted true.
A fraction of a hair to the left, and the bullet might crash through the brain of Beatrice!
“Oh, God--if there be any God--speed the shot true--” he prayed, and fired.
A hideous yell, ripping the night to shreds, burst in a raw and rising discord through the forest--a scream as of a damned soul flung upon the brimstone.
Then, as he glimpsed the white arm falling and knew the thing had loosed its grip, the light died. Bremilu, starting at the sudden discharge close to his ear, had pressed the ivory button.
Stern snatched for the flash-lamp, fumbled it, and dropped it there among the lush growths underfoot.
Before he could more than stoop to feel for it a heavy crash through the wood told that the thing was charging.
With bubbling yells it came, trampling the undergrowth, drumming on its huge breast, gibbeting with demoniac rage and pain--came swiftly, like the terrific things that people nightmares.
Behind it, shouts echoed. Stern heard the voice of Zangamon as, spear in hand, the Merucaan pursued.
He raised his revolver once more, but dared not fire.
Yet only an instant he hesitated, in the fear of killing Zangamon.
For, quick-looming through the darkness, a huge bulk, panting, snarling, chattering, sprang--an avalanche of muscle, bone, fur, mad with murder--rage.
Crack!spoke the automatic, point-blank at this rushing horror, this blacker shadow in the blackness.
The fire-stab revealed a grinning white-fanged face close to his own, and clutching hands, and terrible, thick, hairy arms.
Then something hurled itself on Stern; something bore him backward--something beside which his strength was as a baby's--something vast, irresistible, hideous beyond all telling.
Stern felt the flesh of his left arm ripped up. Crushed, doubled, impotent, he fell.
And at his throat long fingers clutched. A fetid, stinking breath gushed hot upon his face. He heard the raving chatter of ivories, snapping to rend him.
Up sprang another shadow. High it swung a weapon. The blow thudded hollow, smashing, annihilating.
Hot liquid gushed over Allan's hand as he sought to beat the monster back.
Then, fair upon him, fell a crushing weight.
Swooning, he knew no more.
Thebright beam of the flash-lamp in his face roused Allan to a consciousness that he was bruised and suffering, and that his left arm ached with dull insistence. Dazed, he brought it up and saw his sleeve of dull brown stuff was dripping red.
Beside him, in the trampled grass, he vaguely made out a hairy bulk, motionless and huge. Bremilu was kneeling beside his master, with words of cheer.
“It is dead, O Kromno! The man-beast is dead! My stone ax broke its skull. See, now it lies here harmless!”
The currents of thought began to flow once more. Allan struggled up, unmindful of his wounds.
“Beatrice!Where is the girl?” he gasped.
As though by way of answer, the tall growths swayed and crackled, and through them a dim figure loomed--a man with something in his arms.
“Zangamon!” panted Allan, springing toward him. “Have you got her? The girl--is she alive?”
“She lives, master!” replied a voice. “But as yet she remains without knowledge of aught.”
“Wounded? Is she wounded?”
Already he had reached Zangamon, and, injured though he was, had taken the beloved form in his arms.
“Beatrice! Beatrice!” he called, pressing kisses to her brow, her eyes, her mouth--still warm, thank God!
He sank down among the underbrush and gathered her to his breast, cradling her, cherishing her to him as though to bring back life and consciousness.
To her heart he laid his ear. It beat! She breathed!
“The light, here! Quick!”
By its clear ray he saw her hair disheveled; her coarse mantle of brown stuff ripped and torn, and on her throat long scratches.
Bruises showed on her hands and arms, as from a terrible fight she had put up against the monster. And his heart bled; and to his lips rose execrations, mingled with the tenderest words of pity and love.
“We must get her back to the cave at once!” he exclaimed. “Quick! Break branches. Make a litter--a bed--to carry her on! Everything depends on getting her to shelter now!”
But the two Merucaans did not understand. All this was beyond their knowledge. Ignoring his hurts, Allan laid the girl down very gently, and with them set to work, directing the making of the litter.
They obeyed eagerly. In a few minutes the litter was ready-made of fern-tree branches thickly covered with leaves and odorous grasses.
On this he placed the girl.
“You, Zangamon, take these boughs here. Bremilu, those others. Now I will hold the light. Back to the cave, now--quick!”
“We need not the light, master. We see better without it. It dazzles our eyes. Use it for yourself. We need it not!” exclaimed Bremilu, stooping above the body of the dead monster to recover his ax.
Involuntarily Allan turned the beam upon the horrible creature. There stood Bremilu, his foot upon the hairy shoulder, tugging hard at the ax-handle. Thrice he had to pull with all his might to loosen the blade which had buried itself deep in the shattered skull.
“A giant gorilla, so help me!” he cried, shuddering. “My God, Beatrice--what a ghastly terror you've been through!”
Still grinning ferociously, in death, with blood-smeared face and glazed, staring eyes, the creature shocked and horrified even Allan's steady nerves. He gazed upon it only a moment, then turned away.
“Enough!” said he. “To the cave!”
A quarter-hour had passed before they reached shelter again. Allan bade the Merucaans heap dry wood on the embers in the cavern, while he himself laid Beatrice upon the bed.
With a piece of their brown cloth dipped in one of the water-jars he bathed her face and bruised throat.
“Fresh water! Fetch a jar of fresh water from the river below!” he commanded Zangamon.
But even as the white barbarian started to obey, the girl stirred, raised a hand, and feebly spoke.
“Allan--oh--are you here again? Allan--my love!”
He strained her to his breast and kissed her; and his eyes grew hot with tears.
“Beatrice!”
Her arms were round his neck, and their lips clung.
“Hurt? Are you hurt?” he cried. “Tell me--how--”
“Allen! The monster--is he dead?” she shivered, sitting up and staring wildly round at the cave walls on which the fresh-built fire was beginning to throw dancing lights.
“Dead, yes. But hush, Beta! Don't think of that now. Everything's all right--you're safe! I'm here!”
“Those men--”
“Two of our own Folk. I brought them back with me--just in time, darling. Without them--”
He broke short off. Not for worlds would he have told her how near the borderland she had been.
“You heard my shouts? You heard our signal?”
“Oh--I don't know Allan. I can't think, yet--it's all so terrible--so confused--”
“There, there, sweetheart; don't think about it any more. Just lie down and rest. Go to sleep. I'll watch here beside you. You're safe. Nothing can hurt you now!”
She lay back with a sigh, and for a while kept silence while he sat beside her, his uninjured arm beneath her head.
His one ambition, now that he found she was not seriously hurt in body, was to keep her from talking of the horrible affair--from exciting herself and rehearsing her terrors. Above all, she must be quieted and kept calm.
At last, in her own natural voice, she spoke again.
“Allan?”
“What is it, sweetheart?”
“I owe you my life once more! If I was yours before, I'm ten times more yours now!”
He bent and kissed her, and presently her deepened breathing told him she had drifted over the borderline into the sleep of exhaustion.
He blessed her strength and courage.
“No futility here,” thought he. “No useless questions or hysterics; no scene. Strong! Gad, but she's strong! She realized she was safe and I was with her again; that sufficed. Was there ever another woman like her since the world began?”
Only now that the girl slept did he pay attention to the two Merucaans who, sitting by the cave door, were regarding him with troubled looks.
“Master!” said Zangamon, arising and coming toward him.
“Well, what is it now?”
“You are wounded, O Kromno! Your arm still bleeds. Let us bind it.”
“It is nothing--only a scratch!”
But Zangamon insisted.
“Master,” said he, “in this we cannot obey you. See? While you and the woman talked I fetched water, as you commanded. Now I must wash your hurts and bind them.”
Allan had to accede. Together the two Merucaans examined the injuries with words of commiseration. The “scratch” turned out to be three severe lacerations of the forearm. The gorilla's teeth had missed the radial artery only by a fluke of fortune.
They bathed away the clotted blood and bandaged the arm not unskilfully. Allan pressed the hand of Zangamon, then that of his companion.
“No thanks of mine can tell you what I feel!” he exclaimed straight from the heart. “Only for you to guide me, to drive the man-brute, to strike it down when it was just about to throttle me--only for you, bothsheandI--”
He could not finish. The words choked him. He felt, as never before, a sudden, warm, human touch of kinship with the Merucaans--a strong, nascent affection. Till now they had been savages to him--inferiors.
Now he perceived their inner worth--the strong and manly stamina of soul and body; and through him thrilled a love for these strange men, his saviors and the girl's.
Once more he seemed to see a vision of the future--a world peopled by the descendants of this hardy and resourceful folk, “without disease of flesh or brain, shapely and fair, the married harmony of form and function”--and, as with a gesture, he dismissed them wondering, not understanding in the least why he should thank them, he knew the world already had begun once more to come back under the hand, under the strong control of man.
“Sleep now, master,” Bremilu entreated. “We who are new to this strange world will sit outside the door upon the rock and watch those fires so far above that you call stars. And the big sun-fire that is coming, too--we would see that!”
“No, not yet!” Stern commanded. “You cannot bear it for a while. Stay within and roll the rock against the door and sleep. The great fire might injure you or even kill you, as it did the--”
He checked himself just in time, for “the patriarch” had all but escaped him. Zangamon, with sudden understanding, once more advanced toward him as he sat there by the girl.
“O master! You mean the ancient man? He is dead?”
Stern nodded.
“Yes,” he answered. “He was so old and weak, the touch of the fire in the sky--he could not bear it. But his death was happy, for at least he felt its warmth upon his brow!”
The Merucaans kept silence for a moment, then Stern heard them murmuring together, and a vague uneasiness crept over him.
He strove, however, to put it away; though in his heart the shame of the lie he had been forced to tell would not be quieted.
The colonists, however, made no further speech, but presently rolled the rock in front of the cave entrance, then wrapped themselves in their long cloaks and lay down by the fire.
Soon, like the healthy savages they were, they were fast asleep, with vigorous snorings.
Thus the night passed, while Stern kept watch over the girl; and another day crept slowly up the sky, and in the cave now rested four human beings--the vanguard of the coming nation.
Sternnever knew when he, too, drifted off to sleep; but he awoke to find Zangamon sitting beside him, with his cloak drawn over his head, while Beatrice and Bremilu still slept.
“The light, master--it is like knives to me! Like spears to my eyes, master! I cannot bear it!” whispered the Merucaan, pointing to where, around the interstices of the doorway, bright white gleams were streaming in.
Allan considered with perplexity.
“It hurts, you say?”
“Yes, Kromno! Once or twice I have tried to watch that strange fire, but I cannot. The pain is very great!”
“Humph!” thought Allan. “This may be a more serious factor than I've reckoned on. These people are albinos. White hair and pink eyes--not a particle of protecting pigmentation. For thirty or so generations they've been subjected to nothing but torchlight. The actinic rays of the sun are infinitely more penetrating than anything they've ever known. It may take months, years even, to accustom them to sunlight!”
And disquieting situations presented themselves to his mind. True, if it were necessary, the Folk could work and take the air only at night.
They could fish, hunt and till the soil by star and moonlight, and sleep by day; but this was by no means the veritable reestablishment of a real, human civilization.
Then an idea struck him.
“The very thing!” cried he. “Once I can put it into effect, it will solve the question. And the second generation, at the outside, will be normal. They'll ‘throw back’ to remote ancestry under changed conditions. In time, even if only a long time, all will yet be well!”
But now immediate labors and difficult problems were pressing. The future would have to look out for itself.
Stern felt positive that to let the Merucaans out of the cave would not only blind them, but might also kill them outright as well.
Their unprotected skins would inevitably burn to a blister under the rays of the sun, and they would in all probability die. So said he:
“Listen, Zangamon! You must stay here till the dark comes again, which will not be very long. The woman and I will prepare another cave for your dwelling. When it is dark you can fish in the flowing water beneath. In the mean time we will bring you your accustomed food and your nets from the flying boat.
“You must be patient. In a short time all things shall be as you wish, and you shall see the wonderful and beautiful world up into which I have brought you!”
The man nodded, yet Stern clearly saw his face betrayed uneasiness, distrust and pain. In all fairness, the Merucaans' first experience of the upper world had been enough to shake the faith even of a philosopher--how much more so that of simple and untaught barbarians!
Terror, violence, slaughter and insecurity--these all had greeted the colonists; and now, in addition, they found the patriarch was dead. Above all, they were virtually prisoners in this gloomy cavern of the rock.
But Stern was very wise. He by no means thought of commiserating or excusing. His only course was to make light of trials and hardships, and, if need were, to command.
He arose, carefully stopped up the chinks around the rock at the doorway, and bade Zangamon replenish the fire with dry sticks. Then, Bremilu awakening, they prepared food.
Now Beatrice, too, awoke. Allan took her in his arms, unmindful of the newcomers, and there were words of love and joy, and self-reproaches, and a new faith plighted between them once again.
She was unharmed, except for a few bruises and scratches. Her nerves had already recovered something of their usual strength. But at sight of Allan's bandaged arni she turned pale, and not even his assurances could comfort her.
They talked of the terrible adventure.
“It was all my fault, Allan--every bit my fault!” she exclaimed remorsefully. “It all came from my not obeying orders. You see, I was expecting you last night. Instead of staying in the cave, with the door barricaded, I lingered on the terrace, after having piled the signal-fire high with wood.
“I sat down and watched the sky, and listened to the river down below, and thought of you. I must have dozed a little, for all of a sudden I came wide-awake, shuddering with a terror I couldn't understand. Then I heard something moving down the path--something that grunted and snuffled savagely.
“I started up, ran for the cave, and just got inside when the brute reached it. I rolled the stone in place, Allan, but before I could brace it with the pole it was hurled back, and in crawled the gorilla, roaring and snapping like a demon!”
She hid her face in both hands, shuddering at the terrible memory. But, forcing herself to be calm, she went on again:
“I snatched up the pistol and fired. Then--”
“You hit him?”
“I must have, for he screeched most horribly and pawed at his breast--”
“So, then, that explains the blood-marks on the floor and the great hand-print on the wall?”
“Hand-print? Was there one?”
“Yes; but no matter now. Go on!”
“After that--oh, it was too ghastly! He seized me and I fought--I struggled against that huge, hairy chest; he gripped me like iron. My blows were no more than so many pats to him.
“I tried to fire again, but he wrenched the pistol away, and bent it in his huge teeth and flung it down. But, though he was raging, he didn't wound me--didn't try to kill me, or anything. He seemed to want to capture me alive--”
Allan shuddered. Only too well he understood. Gorilla nature had not changed in fifteen hundred years.
“After that?” he questioned eagerly.
“Oh, after that I don't remember much. I must have fainted. Next thing I knew, everything was dark and the forest was all about. I screamed and then again I knew nothing. Once more I seemed to sense things, and once more all grew black. And after that--”
“Well?”
“Why--I was here on the bed, and you were beside me, Allan--and these men of our Folk were here! But how it all happened, God knows!”
“I'll tell you some time. You shall have the story from our side some day, but not now. Only one thing--if it hadn't been for Zangamon here and Bremilu--well--”
“You mean they helped rescue me?”
He nodded.
“Without them I'd have been helpless as a child. They traced you in the dark, for they could see as plainly as we see by day. It was a blow from Bremilu's stone ax that killed the brute.Theysaved you, Beatrice! Not I!”
She kept a little silence, then said thoughtfully:
“How can I ever thank them, Allan? How can I thank them best?”
“You can't thank them. There's no way. I tried it, but they didn't understand. They only did what seemed natural to them. They're savages, remember; not civilized men. It's impossible to thank them! The only thing you can do, or I can do, is work for them now. The greatest efforts and sacrifices for these men will be small payment for their deed. And if--as I believe--the whole race is dowered with the same spirit and indomitable courage--the courage we certainly did see in the Battle of the Wall--then we need have no fear of our transplanted nation dying out!”
Much more there might have been to say, but now the meal was ready, and hunger spoke in no uncertain tones. All four of the adventurers ate in silence, thoughtful and grave, cross-legged, about the meat and drink, which lay on palm-leaves or in clay bowls hard-burned and red.
A kind of embarrassment seemed to rest on all, for this was the first time they had eaten together--these barbarians with the two folk of the upper world.
But the meal was soon at an end, and the prospect of labors to be undertaken cheered Allan's spirit. Despite his stiff and painful arm, he felt courage and energy throbbing in his veins, and longed to be at work.
“The very first thing we must do,” said he, “is fix up a place for our guests. They've got to stay here, out of the light, till nightfall. That will give us plenty of time. I want to get them settled in their own quarters, and bring them into some regular routine of life and labor, before they have a chance to get homesick and dejected.”
He warned the Merucaans to cover their heads with their cloaks while Beatrice and he opened the doorway.
He closed it then, with other rocks outside, and covered it with his own outer cloak; then, wearing only his belted tunic, he rejoined Beatrice half-way up the path to the cliff-top. Both were armed; he with his own automatic, she with the one they had found in the crypt.
“Our first move,” said he, “will be to transport the various things from the aeroplane. It will be something of a task, but I don't dare leave them out there on the barrens till night, when the men themselves could bring them in. The sooner we get things to rights the better.”
She agreed, and together they took the path toward the landing-place, which they had christened Newport Heights. Stern felt grateful that his right arm, his gun arm, was uninjured. The other mattered little for the present.
An idea crossed his mind to seek out the dead gorilla and make a trophy of the pelt; but he dismissed it at once. The beast was so repellent that the very thought of it fair sickened him.
They reached the plane in some few minutes, found everything uninjured, and loaded themselves with the Merucaans' goods and chattels. Stern took the bags of edible seaweed and the metal crate of fowl; she draped the big net over her shoulders, and together, not without difficulty, they returned to Settlement Cliffs.
Pass, now, all the minute details of the installation. By noon they had prepared a habitation for the newcomers, deep in a far recess of a winding gallery which thoroughly excluded all direct sunlight.
Only the dimmest glow penetrated even at high noon. Here they stowed the freight, built a rock fireplace, and threw down quantities of the long, fragrant grass for bedding.
They returned to their own cave, bade the colonists once more cover their heads, and entered, carefully closing the doorway after them. All four dined together, in true Merucaan style, on the familiar food of the Abyss. The colonists seemed a little more reassured, but talk languished none the less.
The afternoon was spent in preparing a second cave; for, in spite of all the girl's entreaties, Allan was determined to make another visit to the village of the Lost Folk as soon as his arm should permit.
“Nothing can happen this time, dear girl,” he assured her as they sat resting by the mouth of the newly prepared dwelling. “You'll have two absolutely faithful and efficient guards always within call by night. By day you can barricade yourself with them, if there's any sign of danger.”
“I know, Allan, but--”
“There's no other way! Our work is just begun!”
She nodded silently, then said in a low tone:
“Yours the labor; mine the waiting, the watching, and the fear!”
“The fear? Since when have you grown timid?”
“Only for you, Allan! Only for you! Suppose, some time, you should not come back!”
He laughed.
“We thrashed that all out the first time. It's old straw, Beta. My end of the task is getting these people here. Yours is waiting, watching--and being strong!”
Her hand tightened on his, and for a little while they sat quite still and without speech, watching the day draw to its close.
Far below, New Hope River chattered its incessant gossip to the vexing boulders. Above, in the sky, lazy June clouds, wool-white, drifted to westward, as though seeking the glory that there promised to transmute them into gold and crimson.
A pleasant wind swayed the forest, wherein the scarlet birds flitted like flashes of flame. The beauty of the outlook thrilled their hearts, leaving no room for words.
But suddenly Allan's eyes narrowed, and with a singular hardening of expression, a tightening of the jaw, he peered away at the dim, haze-shrouded line of far horizon to northeastward.
He cast a sidelong glance at Beatrice. She had noticed nothing.
One moment he made as though to speak, then repressed the words, and once more gazed at the horizon.
There, so vague as almost to leave a doubt in mind, yet, after all, only too terribly real, his keen sight had detected something which caused his heart to throb the quicker and his eye to gleam with hate.
For, at the very rim of the world, dim, pale, ominous, three tiny threads of smoke were hanging in the evening air.
A weeklater all was ready for Allan's second trip into the Abyss.
His arm had recovered its usual strength and suppleness, for his flesh, healthy as any savage's, now had the power of healing with a rapidity unknown to civilized men in the old days.
And his abounding vigor dictated action--always action, progress, and accomplishment. Only one thing depressed him--idleness.
It was on the second day of July, according to the rude calendar they were keeping, that he once more bade farewell to Beatrice and, borne by the Pauillac, headed for the village of the Lost Folk.
He left behind him all matters in a state of much improvement. Zangamon and Bremilu were now well installed in the new environment and seemingly content. By night they fished in New Hope Pool, making hauls such as their steaming sea had never yielded.
They wandered--not too far, however--in the forest, gradually making the acquaintance of the wondrous upper world, and with their strangely acute instincts finding fruits, bulbs and plants that well agreed with them for food.
Allan had carefully instructed them in the use of the wonderful “fire-bow”--the revolver--warning them, however, not to waste ammunition. They learned quickly, and now Beatrice found her larder supplied each night with game, which they dressed and brought her in the evening gloom, eager to serve their mistress in all possible ways.
They fished for her as well, and all the choicest fruits were her portion. She, in turn, cooked for them in their own cave. And for an hour or two each night she instructed them in English.
Short are the annals of peace--and peace reigned at Settlement Cliffs those few days at least. Progress!
She could feel it, see it, every hour. And her thoughts of Allan, now abandoning their melancholy hue, began to thrill with a new and even greater pride.
“Only he, only he could have brought these things to pass!” she murmured sometimes. “Only he could have planned all this, dreamed this dream, and brought it to reality; only he could labor for the future so strongly and so well!”
And in her heart the love that had been that of a girl became that of a woman. It broadened, deepened and grew calmer.
Its fever cooled into a finer, purer glow. It strengthened day by day, transmuting to a perfect trust and confidence and peace.
Allan returned safely inside the week with two more of the Folk--warriors and fishers both. Beatrice would have welcomed the arrival of even one woman to bear her some kind of company, but she realized the wisdom of his plan.
“The main thing at first,” he explained, as they sat again on the terrace the evening of his return, “the very most essential thing is to build up even a small force of fighting men to hold the colony and protect it--a stalwart advance-guard, as if this were a military expedition. After that the women and children can come. But for the present there's no place for them.”
Now that there were four Merucaans, all seemed more contented. The little group settled down into some real semblance of a community.
Work became systematized. Life was beginning to take firm root in the world again, and already the outlines of the future colony were commencing to be sketched in.
So far as Stern could discover, no disaffection as yet existed. The Folk, in any event, were singularly stolid, here as in their own home. If the colonists sometimes muttered together against conditions or concerning the lie Allan had told about the patriarch, he could never discover the fact.
He derived a singular sense of power and exaltation from watching his settlers at their work.
Strange figures they made in the upper world, descending the cliff at night, their torches flaring on their pure-white hair bound with gold ornaments, their nets slung over their brown-clad shoulders.
Strange, too, were the sensations of Beta and Allan as they beheld the flambeaux gleaming silently along the pool or over the surface when the Folk put forth on the rude rafts Allan had helped them build.
And as, with the same weird song they had used in the under world, the heavy-laden Merucaans clambered again up the terraces to their dwelling in the rock, something drew very powerfully at Allan's heart.
He analyzed it not, being a man of deeds rather than of introspection; yet it was “the strong man yearning toward his kind,” the very love of his own race within him--the thrill, the inspiration of the master builder laying the foundations for better things to be.
Allan and the girl had long talks about the character of the future civilization they meant to raise.
“We must begin right this time at all hazards,” he told her. “The world we used to know just happened; it just grew up, hit-or-miss, without scientific planning or thought or care. It was partly the result of chance, partly of ignorance and greed. The kind of human nature it developed was in essence a beast nature, with ‘Grab!’ for its creed.
“We must do better than that! From the very start, now, we must nip off the evil bud that might later blossom into private property and wealth, exploitation and misery. There shall be no rich men in our world now and no slaves. No idlers and no oppressed. ‘Service’ must be our watchword, and our motto ‘Each for all and all for each!’
“While there are fish within the river and fruit upon the palm, none shall starve and none shall hoard. Superstition and dogma, fear and cruelty, shall have no place with us. We understand--you and I; and what we know we shall teach. And nothing shall survive of the world that was, save such things as were good. For the old order has passed away--and the new day shall be a better one.”
Thus for hours at a time, by starlight and moonlight on the rock-terrace or by fire-glow in their cave--now homelike with rough-hewn furniture and mats of plaited grass--they talked and dreamed and planned.
And executed, too; for they drew up a few basic, simple laws, and these they taught their little colony even now, for from the very beginning they meant the germs of the new society should root in the hearts of the rescued race.
The third trip was delayed by a tremendous rain that poured with tropic suddenness and fury over the face of the world, driven on the breath of a wild-shouting tempest.
For the space of two days heaven and earth were blotted out by the gray, hurling sheets of wind-driven water, while down the cañon New Hope River roared and foamed in thunder cadences.
Beta and Allan, warmly and snugly sheltered in their cave, cared nothing for the storm. It only served to remind them of that other torrential downpour, soon after they had reached the village of the Folk; but now how altered the situation! Captives then, they were masters now; and the dread chasms of the Abyss were now exchanged for the beauties and the freedom of the upper world.
No wind could shake, no deluge invade, their house among the everlasting rock-ribs. Bright crackled their fire, and on the broad divan of cedar he had hewn and covered thick with furs, they two could lie and talk and dream, and let the storm rage, careless of its impotent fury.
“There's only one sorrow in my heart,” whispered Beta, drawing his head down on her breast and smoothing his hair with that familiar, well-loved caress. “Just one, dear--can you guess it?”
“No millinery shops to visit, you mean?” he rallied her.
“Oh, Allan, when I'm so much in earnest, how can you?”
“Well, what's the trouble, sweetheart?”
“When the storm ends you're going to leave me again! I wish--I almost wish it would rain forever!”
He made no answer, and she, as one who sees strange and sad visions, gazed into the leaping flames, and in her deep gray eyes lay tears unshed.
“Sing to me!” he murmured presently.
Stroking his head and brow, she sang as aforetime at the bungalow upon the Hudson:
Stark wie der Fels,Tief wie das Meer,Muss deine Liebe,Muss deine Liebe sein!...
The third trip was made in safety, and others after it, and steadily the colony took shape and growth.
More and more the caves came to be occupied. Stern set the Merucaans to work excavating the limestone, piercing tunnels and chimneys, making passageways and preparing for the ever-increasing number of settlers.
Their native arts and crafts began to flourish. In the gloomy recesses fires glowed hot. Ores began to be smelted, with primitive bellows and technique as in the Under-world, and through the night--stillness sounded the ring and clangor of anvils mightily smitten.
Palm-fibers yielded cordage for more nets or finer thread for the looms that now began to clack--for at last some few women had arrived, and even a couple of the strong, pale children, who had traveled stowed in crates like the water-fowl.