By night the pool and river gleamed more and more brightly. Boats navigated even the rapids, for these were hardy water-people, whose whole life had been semi-aquatic.
The strange fowl nested in the cliff below the settlement, hiding by day, flying abroad by night, swimming and diving in the river, even rearing their broods of squawking, naked little monsters in rough nests of twigs and mud.
Some of the hardier of the first-arrived colonists had already--far sooner than Allan had hoped--begun to tolerate a little daylight.
Following his original idea, he prepared some sets of brown mica eye-shields, and by the aid of these a number of the Merucaans were able to endure an hour or two of early dawn and late evening in the open air.
The children, he found, were far less sensitive to light than the adults--a natural sequence of the atavistic principle well known to all biologists.
He hoped that in a year or so many of the Folk might even bear the noon-day sun. Once he could get them to working with him by daylight his progress would leap forward mightily in many lines of activity that he had planned.
An occasional short raid with the Pauillac had stocked the colony with firearms, chemicals and necessary drugs, cutlery, ammunition and some glassware, from the dismantled cities of Nashville, Cincinnati, Indianapolis and other places unidentified.
Allan foresaw almost infinite possibilities in these raids. Civilization he felt, would surge onward with amazing rapidity fostered by this detritus of the distant past.
He also unearthed and brought back to Settlement Cliffs the phonographs and records, sealed in their oiled canvas and hidden in the rock-cleft near the patriarch's grave.
Thereafter of an evening the voices of other days sang in the cave. Around the entrance, now protected by stout and ample timber doors, gathered an eager, wondering, fascinated group, understanding the universal appeal of harmony, softened and humanized by the music of the world that was. And thus, too, was the education of the Folk making giant strides.
Progress, tremendous progress, toward the goal!
Autumn came down the world, and the sun paled a little as it sank to southward in the heavens. Warmth and luxuriant fertility, fecundity without parallel, still pervaded the earth, but a certain change had even so become well marked. Slowly the year was dying, that another might be born.
It was of a glorious purple evening late in October that Allan made the great discovery.
He had come in from working with two or three of the hardier Folk on the temporary hangar he was building for the Pauillac on Newport Heights, to which a broad and well-graded roadway now extended through the jungle.
Entering the home-cave suddenly--and it was home now indeed, with its broad stone fireplace, its comfortable furnishings, its furs, its mats of clean, sweet-smelling rushes--he stopped, toil-worn and weary, to view the well-loved place.
“Well, little wife! Busy, as usual? Always busy, sweetheart?”
At his greeting Beatrice looked up as though startled. She was sitting in a low easy-chair he had made for her of split bamboos cleverly lashed and softly cushioned.
At her left hand, on the palm-wood table, stood a heavy bronze lamp from some forgotten millionaire's palace in Atlanta. Its soft radiance illumined her face in profile, making a wondrous aureole of her clustered hair, as in old paintings of the Madonna at the Annunciation.
A presage gripped the man's heart, drawing powerfully at its strings with pain, yet with delicious hope and joy as she turned toward him.
For something in her face, some new, beatified, maternal loveliness, not to be analyzed or understood, betrayed her wondrous secret.
With a little gasp, she dropped into her lap the bit of needlework and sought to hide it with her hands--a gesture wholly girlish yet--to hide and guard it with those hands, so useful and beautiful, so precious and so dearly loved.
But Allan, breathing hard and deep, strode to her, his face aflame with hope and adoration. He caught them up together in the gentle strength of his rough hands and pressed them to his heart.
Beside her he knelt silently; he encircled her with his right arm. Then he took up the tiny garment, smiling.
For a long minute their eyes met.
His brimmed with sudden tears. Hers fell, and her head drooped down upon his breast, and--as once before, at the cathedral--an eloquent tide of crimson mounted from breast to throat, from cheek to tendrilled hair.
About his neck her arms slid, trembled, tightened.
No word was uttered there under the golden lamp-glow; but the strong kiss he pressed, reverently, proudly, upon her brow, renewed with ten-time depth their eternal sacrament of love.
Days, busy days, lengthened into weeks, and these to months happy and full of labor; and in the ever-growing colony progress and change came steadily forward.
All along the cliff-face and the terraces the cave-dwellings now extended, and the smoke from a score of chimneys fashioned among the clefts rose on the temperate air of that sub-tropic winter.
At the doors, nets hung drying. On the pool, boats were anchored at several well-built stone wharfs. The terraces had been walled with palisades on their outer edge and smooth roadways fashioned, leading to all the dwellings as well as to the river below.
On top of the cliff and about three hundred yards back from the edge another palisade had been built of stout timbers set firmly in the earth, interlaced with cordage and propped with strong braces.
The enclosed space, bounded to east and west by the barrier which swung toward and touched the cañon, had all been cleared, save for a few palms and fern-trees left for shade.
Beside drying-frames for fish and game and a well-smoothed plaza for public assemblies and the giving of the Law, it now contained Stern's permanent hangar. The Pauillac had been brought along the road from Newport Heights and housed there.
This road passed through strong gates of hewn planks hinged with well-wrought ironwork forged by some of the Folk under the direction of H'yemba, the smith. For H'yemba, be it known, had been brought up by Stern early in December.
The man was essential to progress, for none knew so well as he the arts of smelting and of metal-work. Stern still felt suspicious of him, but by no word or act did the smith now betray any rebellious spirit, any animosity, or aught but faithful service.
Allan, however, could not trust him yet. No telling what fires might still be smoldering under the peaceful and industrious exterior. And the master's eye often rested keenly on the powerful figure of the blacksmith.
Across the cañon, from a point about fifty yards to eastward of Cliff Villa--as Beta and Allan had christened their home--a light bridge had been flung, connecting the northern with the southern bank and saving laborious toil in crossing via the river-bed.
This bridge, of simple construction, was merely temporary. Allan counted on eventually putting up a first-class cantilever; but for now he was content with two stout fiber cables anchored to palm-trunks, floored with rough boards lashed in place with cordage, and railed with strong rope.
This bridge opened up a whole new tract of country to northward and vastly widened the fruit and game supply. Plenty reigned at Settlement Cliffs; and a prosperity such as the Folk had never known in the Abyss, a well-being, a luxurious variety of foodstuffs--fruits, meats, wild vegetables--as well as a profusion of furs for clothing, banished discontent.
Barring a little temporary depression and lassitude due to the great alteration of environment, the Folk experienced but slight ill effects from the change.
And, once they grew acclimated, their health and vigor rapidly improved. Strangest of all, a phenomenon most marked in the children, Allan noticed that after a few weeks under the altered conditions of food and exposure to the actinic rays of the sun as reflected by the moonlight, pigmentation began to develop. A certain clouding of the iris began to show, premonitory of color-deposit. The skin lost something of its chalky hue, while at the roots of the hair, as it grew, a distinct infiltration of pigment-cells was visible. And at this sight Allan rejoiced exceedingly.
Beatrice did not now go much abroad with him, on account of her condition. She hardly ventured farther than the top of the cliff, and many days she sat in her low chair on the terrace, resting, watching the river and the forest, thinking, dreaming, sewing for the little new colonist soon to arrive. Some of their most happy hours were spent thus, as Allan sat beside her in the sun, talking of their future. The bond between them had grown closer and more intimate. They two, linked by another still unseen, were one.
“Will you be very angry with me, dear, if it's a girl?” she asked one day, smiling a little wistfully.
“Angry? Have I ever been angry with you, darling? Could I ever be?”
She shook her head.
“No; but you might if I disappointed you now.”
“Impossible! Of course, the world's work demands a chief, a head, a leader, to come after me and take up the reins when they fall from my hands, but--”
“Even if it's a girl--only a girl--you'll love me just the same?”
His answer was a pressure of her hand, which he brought to his lips and held there a long minute. She smiled again and in the following silence their souls spoke together though their lips were mute.
But Beta had her work to do those days as well as Allan.
While he planned the public works of the colony and directed their construction at night, or made his routine weekly trip into the Abyss for more and ever more of the Folk--a greatly shortened trip, now that he knew the way so well and needed stop below ground only long enough to rest a bit and take on oil and fuel--she was busy with her teaching of the people.
They had carefully discussed this matter, and had decided to impose English bodily and arbitrarily upon the colonists. Every evening Beatrice gathered a class of the younger men and women, always including the children, and for an hour or two drilled them in simple words and sentences.
She used their familiar occupations, and taught them to speak of fishing, metal-working, weaving, dyeing, and the preparation of food.
And always after they had learned a certain thing, in speaking to them she used English for that thing. The Folk, keen-witted and retentive of memory as barbarians often are, made astonishing strides in this new language.
They realized fully now that it was the speech of their remote and superior ancestors, and that it far surpassed their own crude and limited tongue.
Thus they learned with enthusiasm; and before long, among them in their own daily lives and labors, you could hear words, phrases, and bits of song in English. And at sound of this both Allan and the girl thrilled with pride and joy.
Allan felt confident of ultimate success along this line.
“We must teach the children, above all,” he said to her one day. “English must come to be a secondary tongue to them, familiar as Merucaan. The next generation will speak English from birth and gradually the other language will decay and perish--save as we record it for the sake of history.
“It can't be otherwise, Beatrice. The superior tongue is always bound to replace the inferior. All the science and technical work I teach these people must be explained in English.
“They have no words for all these things. Bridges, flying-machines, engines, water-pipes for the new aqueduct we're putting in to supply the colony from the big spring up back there, tools, processes, everything of importance, will enforce English. The very trend of their whole evolution will drive them to it, even if they were unwilling, which they aren't.”
“Yes, of course,” she answered. “Yet, after all, we're only two--”
“We'll be three soon.”
She blushed.
“Three, then, if you say so. So few among so many--it will be a hard fight, after all.”
“I know, but we shall win. Old man Adams and one or two others, at the time of the mutiny of the ‘Bounty’ taught English to all their one or two score wives and numerous children on Pitcairn.
“The Tahitan was soon forgotten, and the brown half-breeds all spoke good English right up to the time of the catastrophe, when, of course, they were all wiped out. So you see, history proves the thing can be done--and will be.”
Came an evening toward the beginning of spring again--an evening of surpassing loveliness, soft, warm, perfumed with the first crimson blossoms of the season--when Bremilu ran swiftly up the path to the cliff-top and sought Allan in the palisaded enclosure, working with his men on the new aqueduct.
“Come, master, for they seek you now!” he panted.
“Who?”
“The mistress and old Gesafam, the aged woman, skilled in all maladies! Come swiftly, O Kromno!”
Allan started, dropped his lantern, and turned very white.
“You mean--”
“Yea, master! Come!”
He found Beatrice in bed, the bronze lamp shining on her face, pale as his own.
“Come, boy!” she whispered. “Let me kiss you just once before--before--”
He knelt, and on her brow his lips seemed to burn. She kissed him, then with a smile of happiness in all her pain said:
“Go, dearest! You must go now!”
And, as he lingered, old Gesafam, chattering shrilly, seized him by the arm and pushed him toward the doorway.
Dazed and in silence he submitted. But when the door had closed behind him, and he stood alone there in the moonlight above the rushing river, a sudden exaltation thrilled him.
He knelt again by the rough sill and kissed the doorway of the house of pain, the house of life; and his soul flamed into prayer to whatsoever Principle or Power wrought the mysteries of the ever-changing universe.
And for hours, keeping all far away, he held his vigil; and the stars watched above him, too, mysterious and far.
But with the coming of the dawn, hark! a cry within! The cry--the thrilling, never-to-be-forgotten, heart-wringing cry of the first-born!
“Oh, God!” breathed Allan, while down his cheeks hot tears gushed unrestrained.
The door opened. Gesafam beckoned.
Trembling, weak as a child, the man faltered in. Still burned the lamp upon the table. He saw the heavy masses of Beta's hair upon the pillow of deerskin, and something in his heart yearned toward her as never until now.
“Allan!”
Choking, unable to formulate a word, shaking, he sank beside the bed, buried his face upon it, and with his hand sought hers.
“Allan, behold your son!”
Into his quivering arms she laid a tiny bundle wrapped in the finest cloth the Folk could weave of soft palm-fibers.
His son!
Against his face he held the child, sobbing. One hand sheltered it; the other pressed the weak and trembling hand of Beatrice.
And as the knowledge and the joy and pain of realization, of full achievement, of fatherhood, surged through him, the strong man's tears baptized the future master of the race!
Thatevening, the evening of the same day, Allan presented the man-child to his assembled Folk.
Eager, silent, awed, the white barbarians gathered on the terrace, all up and down the slope of it, before the door of their Kromno's house, waiting to behold the son of him they all obeyed, of him who was their law.
Allan took the child and bore it to the doorway; and in the presence of all he held it up, and in the yellow moonlight dedicated it to their service and the service of the world.
“Listen, O folk of the Merucaans!” he cried. “I show you and I give you, now, into your keeping and protection forever, this first-born child of ours!
“This is the first American, the first of the ancient race that once was, the same race whence you, too, have descended, to be born in the upper world! His name shall be my name--Allan. To him shall be taught all good and useful things of body and of mind. He shall be your master, but more than master; he shall be your friend, your teacher, your strength, your guide in the days yet to come! To you his life is given. Not for himself shall he live, not for power or oppression, but for service in the good of all!
“To you and your children is he given, to those who shall come after, to the new and better time. When we, his parents, and when you, too, shall all be gone from here, this man-child shall carry on the work with your descendants. His race shall be your race, his love and care all for your welfare, his every thought and labor for the common good!
“Thus do I consecrate and give him to you, O my Folk! And from this hour of his naming I give you, too, a name. No longer shall you beMerucaans, but nowAmericansagain. The ancient name shall live once more. He, an American, salutes you, Americans! You are his elder brothers, and between you the bond shall never loosen till the end.
“I have spoken unto you. This is the Law!”
In silence they received it, in silence made obeisance; and, as Allan once more carried the child back to its mother, silently they all departed to their homes and labors.
From that moment Allan believed his rule established now by stronger bonds of love than any force could be. And through all the intoxication of success and consummated power he felt a love for Beatrice, who had rendered all this possible, such as no human words could ever say.
Allan, Junior, grew lustily, waxed strong, and filled the colony with joy. A new spirit pervaded Settlement Cliffs. The vital fact of new life born there, an augury of strength and increase and world-dominance once more, cemented all the social bonds.
Anesprit de corps, an admirable and powerful cooperative sense developed, and the work of reconstruction, of learning, of progress went on more rapidly than ever.
Beatrice, seated at the door of Cliff Villa with the child upon her knee, made a veritable heart and center for all thought and labor. She and Allan, Junior, became objects almost of worship for the simple Folk.
It was heart-touching to see the eager interest, the love and veneration of the people, the hesitant yet fascinated way in which they contemplated this strange boy, blue-eyed and with yellow hair beginning to grow already; this, the first child they had ever seen to show them what the children of their one-time ancestors had been.
The hunters, now growing very expert in the use of firearms, fairly overloaded the larder of the villa with rare game-birds and venison. The fishers outdid themselves to catch choice fish for their master's family. And every morning fruits and flowers were piled at the doorway for their rulers' pleasure.
Even then, when so much still remained to do, it seemed as though the Golden Age of Allan's dreams already was beginning to take form. These were by far the happiest days Beta and he had ever lived. Love, work, hopes and plans filled their waking hours.
Put far away were all discouragements and fears. All dangers seemed forever to have vanished. Even the portent of the signal-fires, from time to time seen on the northern or eastern horizons, were ignored. And for a while all was peace and joy.
How little they foresaw the future; how little realized the terrible, the inevitable events now already closing down about them!
Allan made no further trips into the Abyss for about two months and a half. Before bringing any more of the people to the surface, he preferred to put all things in readiness for their reception.
He now had a working force of fifty-four men and twelve women. Including his own son, there were some seven children at Settlement Cliffs. The labor of civilization waxed apace.
With large plans in view, he dammed the rapids and set up a small mill and power-plant, the precursor of a far larger one in the future. Various short flights to the ruins of neighboring towns put him in possession, bit by bit, of machinery which he could adapt into needful forms.
In a year or two he knew he would have to clear land and make preparations for agriculture. A grist-mill would soon be essential. He could not always depend upon the woods and streams for food for the colony.
There must be cultivation of fruits and grains; the taming of wild fowl, cattle, horses, sheep and goats--but no swine; and a regular evolution up through the stages again by which the society of the past had reached its climax.
And to his ears the whirring of his turbine as the waters of New Hope River swirled through the penstocks, the spinning of the wheels, the slapping of the deerskin belting, made music only second to the voices of Beatrice and his son.
Allan brought piecemeal and fitted up a small dynamo from some extensive ruins to southeastward. He brought wiring and several still intact incandescent lights. Before long Cliff Villa shone resplendent, to the awe and marvel of the Folk.
But Allan made no mystery of it. He explained it all to Zangamon, Bremilu and H'yemba, the smith; and when they seemed to understand, bade them tell the rest.
Thus every day some new improvement was installed, or some fresh knowledge spread among the colonists.
June had drawn on again, and the hot weather had become oppressive, before Allan thought once more of still further trips into the Abyss. Beatrice tried to dissuade him. Her heart shrank from further separation, risk and fear.
“Listen, dearest,” she entreated as they sat by young Allan's bedside, one sultry, breathless night. “I think you've risked enough; really I do. You've got a boy now to keep you here, even if I can't! Please don't go! Follow out the plan you spoke to me about yesterday, but don't go yourself!”
“The plan?”
“Yes,youknow. Your idea of training three or four of the most intelligent men to fly, and perhaps building one or two more planes--that is, establishing a regular service to and from the Abyss. That would be so much wiser, Allan! Think how deadly imprudent it is for you, you personally, to take this risk every time! Why, if anything should happen--”
“But it won't! It can't!”
“--What would become of the colony? We haven't got anything like enough of a start to go ahead with, lacking you! I speak now without sentiment or foolish, womanly fears, but just on a common-sense, practical basis. Viewed at that angle, ought you to take the risk again?”
“There's no time now, darling, to build more planes! No time to teach flying! We've got to recruit the colony as fast as possible, in case of emergencies. Why, I haven't made a trip since--since God knows when! It's time I was off now!”
“Allan!”
“Well?”
“Suppose youneverwent again? With the population we now have, and the natural increase, wouldn't civilization reestablish itself in time?”
“Undoubtedly. But think how long it would take! Every additional person imported puts us ahead tremendously. I may never be able to bring all the Folk, all the Lanskaarn, and those other mysterious yellow-haired people they talk about from beyond the Great Vortex. But I can do my share, anyhow. Our boy here may have to complete the process. It may take a lifetime to accomplish the rescue, but it must be done!”
“So you're determined to go again?”
“I am! I must!”
She seized his hand imploringly.
“And leave us? Leave your boy? Leaveme?”
“Only to return soon, darling! Very soon!”
“But after this one trip, will you promise to train somebody else to go in your place?”
“I'll see, dearest!”
“No, no! Not that! Promise!”
She had drawn his head down, and now her face close to his, was trembling in her eagerness.
“Promise! Promise me, Allan! You must!”
Suddenly moved by her entreaty, he yielded.
“I promise, Beta!” he exclaimed. “Gad, I didn't know you were so deadly afraid of my little expeditions! If I'd understood, I might have been arranging otherwise already. But I certainly will change matters when I get back. Only let me go once more, darling--that'll be the last time, I swear it to you!”
She gave a great sigh of relief unspeakable and kept silence. But in her eyes he saw the shine of sudden tears.
Allan had been gone more than four days and a half before Beatrice allowed herself to realize or to acknowledge the sick terror that for some hours had been growing in her soul.
His usual time of return had hitherto been just a little over three days. Sometimes, with favorable winds to the brink of the Abyss, and unusually strong rising currents of vapors from the sunken sea--from the Vortex, perhaps?--he had been able to make the round trip in sixty hours.
But now over a hundred and eight hours had lagged by since Beatrice, carrying the boy, had accompanied him up the steep path to the hangar in the palisaded clearing.
How light-hearted, confident, strong he had been, filled with great dreams and hopes and visions! No thought of peril, accident, or possible failure had clouded his mind.
She recalled his farewell kiss given to the child and to herself, his careful inspection of the machine, his short and vigorous orders, and the supreme skill with which he had leaped aloft upon its back and gone whirring up the sky till distance far to the northwestward had swallowed him.
And since that hour no sign of return. No speck against the blue. No welcome chatter of the engine far aloft, no hum of huge blades beating the summer air! Nothing!
Nothing save ever-growing fear and anguish, vain hopes, fruitless peerings toward the dim horizon, agonizing expectations always frustrated, a vast and swiftly growing terror.
Beatrice cringed from her own thoughts. She dared not face the truth.
For that way, she felt instinctively, lay madness.
Fivedays dragged past, then six, then seven, and still no sign of Allan came to lighten the terrible and growing anguish of the woman.
All day long now she would watch for him--save at such times as the care and nursing of her child mercifully distracted her attention a little while from the intolerable grief and woe consuming her.
She would stand for hours on the rock terrace, peering into the northwest; she would climb the steep path a dozen times a day, and in distraction pace the cliff-top inside the palisaded area, where now some few wild sheep and goats were penned in process of domestication.
Here she would walk, calling in vain his name to the uncaring winds of heaven. With the telescope she would untiringly sweep the far reaches of the horizon, hoping, ever hoping, that at each moment a vague and distant speck might spring to view, wing its swift way southeastward, resolve itself into that one and only blessed sight her whole soul craved and burned for--the Pauillac and her husband!
And so, till night fell, and her strained eyes could no longer distinguish anything but swimming mists and vapors, she would watch, her every thought a prayer, her every hope a torment--for each hope was destined only to end in disappointment bitterer far than death.
And when the shrouding dark had robbed her of all possibility for further watching she would descend with slow and halting steps, grief-broken, dazed, half-maddened, to the home-cavern--empty now, in spite of her child's presence there--empty, and terrible, and drear!
Then would begin the long night vigil. Daylight gave some simulacrum of relief in action, some slight deadening of pain in the very searching of the sky, the strong, determined hope against what had now become an inner conviction of defeat and utter loss. But night--
Night! Nothing, then, but to sit and think, and think, and think, to madness! Sleep was impossible. At most, exhausted nature snatched only a few brief spells of semi-consciousness.
Even the sight of the boy, lying there sunk in his deep and healthy slumber, only kindled fresh fires of woe. For he was Allan's child--he spoke to her by his mere presence of the absent, the lost, perhaps the dead man.
And at thought that now she might be already widowed and her boy fatherless, she would pace the rock-floor in terrible, writhen crises of agony, hands clenched till the nails pierced the delicate flesh, eyes staring, face waxen, only for the sake of the child suppressing the sobs and heart-torn cries that sought to burst from her overburdened soul.
“Oh, Allan! Allan!” she would entreat, as though he could know and hear. “Oh, come back to me! What has happened? Where are you? Come back, come back to your boy--to me!”
Then, betimes, she would catch up the child and strain it to her breast, even though it awakened. Its cries would mingle with her anguished weeping; and in the firelit gloom of the cave they two--she who knew, and he who knew not--would in some measure comfort one another.
On the eighth day she sustained a terrible shock, a sudden joy followed by so poignant a despair that for a moment it seemed to her human nature could endure no more and she must die.
For, eagerly watching the cloud-patched sky with the telescope, from the cliff-top--while on the terrace old Gesafam tended the child--she thought suddenly to behold a distant vision of the aeroplane!
A tiny spot in the heavens, truly, was moving across the field of vision!
With a cry, a sudden flushing of her face, now so wan and colorless, she seemed to throw all her senses into one sense, the power of sight. And though her hand began to shake so terribly that she could only with a great effort hold the glass, she steadied it against a fern-tree and thus managed to find again and hold the moving speck.
The Pauillac! Was it indeed the Pauillac and Allan?
“Merciful Heaven!” she stammered. “Bring him back--to me!”
Again she watched, her whole soul aflame with hope and eagerness and tremulous joy, ready to burst into a blaze of happiness--and then came disillusion and despair, blacker than ever and more terrible.
For suddenly the moving speck turned, wheeled and rose. One second she caught sight of wings. She knew now it was only some huge, tropic bird, afar on the horizon--some condor, vulture, or other creature of the air.
Then, as with a quick swoop, the vulture slid away and vanished behind a blue hill-shoulder, the woman dropped her glass, sank to earth, and--half-fainting--burst into a terrible, dry, sobbing plaint. Her tears, long since exhausted, would not flow. Grief could pass no further limits.
After a time she grew calmer, arose and thought of her child once more. Slowly she returned down thevia dolorosaof the terrace-path, the walk where she and Allan had so often and so gaily trodden; the path now so barren, so hateful, so solitary.
To her little son she returned, and in her arms she cherished him--in her trembling arms--and the tears came at last, welcome and heart-stilling.
Old Gesafam, gazing compassionately with troubled eyes that blinked behind their mica shields, laid a comforting hand on the girl's shoulder.
“Do not weep, O Yulcia, mistress!” she exclaimed in her own tongue. “Weep not, for there is still hope. See, all things are going on, as before, in the colony!” She gestured toward the lower caves, whence the sounds of smithy-work and other toil drifted upward. “All is yet well with us. Only ourKromnois away. And he will yet come! He will come back to us--to the child, to you, to all who love and obey him!”
Beatrice seized the old woman's hand and kissed it in a burst of gratitude.
“Oh--if I could only believe you!” she sobbed.
“It will be so! What could happen to him, so strong, so brave? He must come back! He will!”
“What could happen? A hundred things, Gesafam! One tiny break in the flying boat and he might be hurled to earth or down the Abyss, to death! Or, among your Folk, he may have been defeated, for many of the Folk are still savage and very cruel! Or, the Horde--”
“The Horde? But the Horde, of which you have so often spoken, is now afar.”
“No, Gesafam. Even to-day I saw their signal-fires on the horizon.”
The old woman drew an arm about the girl. All barbarian that she was, the eternal, universal spirit of the feminine, pervading her, made her akin with the sorrowing wife.
“Go rest,” she whispered. “I understand. I, too have wept and mourned, though that was very long ago in the Abyss. My man, my Nausaak, a very brave and strong catcher of fish, fought with the Lanskaarn--and he died. I understand, Yulcia! You must think no more of this now. The child needs your strength. You must rest. Go!”
Gently, yet with firmness that was not to be disputed, she forced Beatrice into the cave, made her lie down, and prepared a drink for her.
Though Beta knew it not, the wise old woman had steeped therein a few leaves of theronyiluweed, brought from the Abyss, a powerful soporific. And presently a certain calm and peace began to win possession of her soul.
For a time, however, distressing visions still continued to float before her disordered mind. Now she seemed to behold the Pauillac, flaming and shattered, whirling down, over and over, meteor-swift, into the purple mists and vapors of the Abyss.
Now the scene changed; and she saw it, crushed and broken, lying on some far rock-ledge, amid impenetrable forests, while from beneath a formless tangle of wreckage protruded a hand--his hand--and a thin, dripping stream of red.
Gasping, she sought to struggle up and stare about her; but the drugged draft was too potent, and she could not move. Yet still the visions came again--and now it seemed that Allan lay there, in the woods, somewhere afar, transfixed with an envenomed spear, while in a crowding, hideous, jabbering swarm the distorted, beast-like anthropoids jostled triumphantly all about him, hacked at him with flints and knives, flayed and dismembered him, inflicted unimaginable mutilations--
She knew no more. Thanks to the wondrous beneficence of theronyilu, she slept a deep and dreamless slumber. Even the child being laid on her breast by the old woman--who smiled, though in her eyes stood tears--even this did not arouse her.
She slept. And for a few blessed hours she had respite from woe and pain unspeakable.
At last her dreams grew troubled. She seemed caught in a thunder-storm, an earthquake. She heard the smashing of the lightning bolts, the roaring shock of the reverberation, then the crash of shattered buildings.
A sudden shock awoke her. She thought a falling block of stone had struck her arm. But it was only old Gesafam shaking her in terror.
“Oh, Yulcia, noa!” the nurse was crying in terror. “Up! Waken! The cliff falls! Awake, awake!”
Beatrice sat up in bed, conscious through all the daze of dreams quick broken, that some calamity--some vast and unknown peril--had smitten the colony at Settlement Cliffs.
Notyet even fully awake, Beatrice was conscious of a sudden, vast responsibility laid on her shoulders. She felt the thrill of leadership and command, for in her hands alone now rested the fate of the community.
Out of bed she sprang, her grief for the moment crushed aside, aquiver now with the spirit of defense against all ills that might menace the colony and her child.
“The cliff falls?” she cried, starting for the doorway.
“Yea, mistress! Hark!”
Both women heard a grating, crushing sound. The whole fabric of the cavern trembled again, as though shuddering; then, far below, a grinding crash reechoed--and now rose shouts, cries, wails of pain.
Already Beatrice was out of the door and running down the terrace.
“Yulcia! Yulcia!” the old woman stood screaming after her. “You must not go!”
She answered nothing, but ran the faster. Already she could see dust rising from the river-brink; and louder now the cries blended in an anguished chorus as she sped down the terrace.
What could have happened? How great was the catastrophe? What might the death-roll be?
Her terrors about Allan had at last been thrown into the background of her mind. She forgot the boy, herself, everything save the crushing fact of some stupendous calamity.
All at once she stopped with a gasp of terror.
She had reached the turn in the path whence now all the further reach of the cliff was visible. But, where the crag had towered, now appeared only a great and jagged rent in the limestone, through which the sky peered down.
An indescribable chaos of fragments, blocks, débris, detritus of all kinds half choked the river below; and the swift current, suddenly blocked, now foamed and chafed with lathering fury through the newly fallen obstacle.
Broken short off, the path stopped not a hundred yards in front of her.
As she stood there, dazed and dumb, harkening the terrible cries that rose from those still not dead in the ruins, she perceived some of the Folk gathered along the brink of the new chasm. More and more kept coming from the scant half of the caves still left. And all, dazed and numbed like herself, stood there peering down with vacant looks.
Beatrice first recovered wit. Dimly she understood the truth. The cavern digging of the Folk, the burrowing and honeycombing through the cliff, must have sprung some keystone, started some “fault,” or broken down some vital rib of the structure.
With irresistible might it had torn loose, slid, crashed, leaped into the cañon, carrying with it how many lives she knew not.
All she knew now was that rescues must be made of such as still lived, and that the bodies of the dead must be recovered.
So with fresh strength, utterly forgetful of self, she ran once more down the steep terrace, calling to her folk:
“Men! My people! Down to the river, quickly! Take hammers, bars, tools--go swiftly! Save the wounded! Go!”
There was no sleep for any in the colony that day, that night, or the next day. The vast pile of débris rang with the sledge blows, louder than ever anvil rang, and the torches flared and sparkled over the jumble of broken rock, beneath which now lay buried many dead--none knew how many--nevermore to be seen of man. Great iron bars bent double with the prying of strong arms.
Beatrice herself, flambeau in hand, directed the labor. And as, one by one, the wounded and the broken were released, she ordered them borne to the great cave of Bremilu, the Strong.
Bremilu had been in the house of one Jukkos at the time of the catastrophe. His body was one of the first to be found. Beta transformed his cave into a hospital.
And there, working with the help of three or four women, hampered in every way for lack of proper materials, she labored hour after hour dressing wounds, setting broken bones, watching no few die, even despite the best that she could do.
Old Gesafam came to seek her there with news that the child cried of hunger. Dazed, Beta went to nurse it; and then returned, in spite of the old woman's pleadings; and so a long time passed--how long she never knew.
Disaster! This was her one clear realization through all those hours of dark and labor, anguish and despair. For the first time the girl felt beaten.
Till now, through every peril, exposure and hardship, she had kept hope and courage. Allan had always been beside her--wise, and very strong to counsel and to act.
But now, alone there--all alone in face of this sudden devastation--she felt at the end of her resources. She had to struggle to hold her reason, to use her native judgment, common sense and skill.
The work of rescue came to an end at last. All were saved who could be. All the bodies that could be reached had been carried into still another cave, not far from the path of the disaster. All the wounds and injuries had been dressed, and now Beatrice knew her force was at an end. She could do no more.
Drained of energy, spent, broken, she dragged herself up the path again. In front of the cave of H'yemba, the smith, a group of survivors had gathered.
Dimly she sensed that the ugly fellow was haranguing them with loud and bitter words. As she came past, the speech died; but many lowering and evil looks were cast on her, and a low murmur--sullen and ominous--followed her on up the terrace.
Too exhausted even to note it or to care, she staggered back to Cliff Villa, flung herself on the bed, and slept.
How long? She could not tell when she awoke again. Only she knew that a dim light, as of evening, was glimmering in at the doorway, and that her child was in the bed beside her.
“Gesafam!” she called, for she heard some one moving in the cave. “Bring me water!”
There came no answer. Beta repeated the command. A curious, sneering mockery startled her. Still clad in her loose brown cloak, belted at the waist--for she had thrown herself upon the bed fully clad--she sat up, peering by the light of the fireplace into the half dark of the room.
A third time she called the old woman.
“It is useless!” cried a voice. “She will not come to help you. See, I have bound her--and now she lies in that further chamber of the cave, helpless. For it is not with her I would speak, but with you. And you shall hear me.”
“H'yemba!” cried Beatrice, startled, suddenly recognizing the squat and brutal figure that now, a threat in every gesture, approached the bed. “Out! Out of here, I say! How dare you enter my house? You shall pay heavily for this great insult when the master comes. Out and away!”
The ugly fellow only laughed menacingly.
“No, I shall not go, and there will be no payment,” he retorted in his own speech. “And you must hear me, for now I, and not he, shall be the master here.”
Beta sprang from the bed and faced him.
“Go, or I shoot you down like a dog!” she threatened.
He sneered.
“There will be no shooting,” he answered coolly. “But there will be speech for you to hear. Now listen!Thisis what ye brought us here to? The man and you?This?To death and woe? To accidents and perishings?
“Ye brought us to hardship and to battle, not to peace! With lies, deceptions and false promises ye enticed us! We were safe and happy in our homes in the Abyss beside the sunless sea, tillyefell thither in your air-boat from these cursed regions. We--”
“For this speech ye shall surely die when the master comes!” cried she. “This is treason, and the penalty of it is death!”
He continued, paying no heed:
“We had no need of you, your ways, or your place. But the man Allan would rule or he would ruin. He overthrew and killed our chief, the great Kamrou himself--Kamrou the Terrible! To us he brought dissensions. From us he bore the patriarch away and slew him, and then made us a great falsehood in that matter.
“So he enticed us all. And ye behold the great disaster and the death! The man Allan has deserted us all to perish here. Coward in his heart, he has abandonedyouas well! Gone once more to safety and ease, below in the Abyss, there to rule the rest of the Folk, there to take wives according to our law, whilewedie here!”
Menacingly he advanced toward the dumb-stricken woman, his face ablaze with evil passion.
“Gremnya!” (coward) he shouted. “Weakling at heart. Great boaster, doer of little deeds! Even you, who would be our mistress, he has abandoned--even his own son he has forsaken. A rotten breed, truly! And we die!
“But listen now. This shall not be! I, H'yemba, the smith, the strongest of all, will not permit it. I will be ruler here, if any live to be ruled! And you shall be my serving-maid--your son my slave!”
Aghast, struck dumb by this wild tempest of rebellion, Beatrice recoiled. His face showed like a white blur in the gloom.
“Allan!” she gasped. “My Allan--”
The huge smith laughed a venomous laugh that echoed through the cave.
“Ha! Ye call on the coward?” he mocked, advancing on her. “On the coward who cannot hear, and would not save you if he could? Behold now ye shall kneel to me and call me master! And my words from now ye shall obey!”
She snatched for her pistol. It was not there. In the excitement of the past hours she had forgotten to buckle it on. She was unarmed.
H'yemba already grasped for her, to force her down upon the floor, kneeling to him--to make her call him master.
Already his strong and hairy fingers had all but seized her robe.
But she, lithe and agile, evaded the grip. To the fire she sprang. She caught up a flaming stick that lay upon the hearth. With a cry she dashed it full into his glaring eyes.
So sudden was the attack that H'yemba had no time even to ward it off with his hands. Fair in the face the scorching flame struck home.
Howling, blinded, stricken, he staggered back; beat the air with vain blows and retreated toward the door.
As he went he poured upon her a torrent of the most hideous imprecations known to their speech--and they were many.
But she, undaunted now, feeling her power and her strength again, followed close. And like blows of a flail, the sputtering, flaring flame beat down upon his head, neck, shoulders.
His hair was blazing now; a smell of scorched flesh diffused itself through the cavern.
“Go!Go, dog!” she shouted, maddened and furious, in consuming rage and hate. “Coward! Slanderer and liar! Go, ere I kill you now!”
In panic-stricken fright, unable to see, trying in vain to ward off the devastating, torturing whip of flame and to extinguish the fire ravaging his hair, the brute half ran, half fell out of the cave.
Down the steep path he staggered, yelling curses; down, away, anywhere--away from this pursuing fury.
But the woman, outraged in all her inmost sacred tendernesses, her love for child and husband, still drove him with the blazing scourge--drove, till the torch was beaten to extinction--drove, till the smith took refuge in his own cave.
There, being spent and weary, she let him lie and howl. Exhausted, terribly shaken in body and soul, yet her eyes triumphant, she once more climbed the precipitous path to her own dwelling. The torch she flung away, down the cañon into the river.
She ran to the far recess of the cave, found Gesafam indeed bound and helpless, and quickly freed her.
The old woman was shaking like a leaf, and could give no coherent account of what had happened. Beta made her lie down on the couch, and herself prepared a bowl of hot broth for the faithful nurse.
Then she bethought herself of the pistol Allan had given her.
“I must never take that off again, whatever happens,” said she. “But--where is it now?”
In vain she hunted for it on the table, the floor, the shelves, and in the closets Allan had built. In vain she ransacked the whole cave.
The pistol, belt, and cartridges--all were gone.
Suddenlyfinding herself very much alarmed and shaken, Beatrice sat down in the low chair beside her bed, and covering her face with both hands tried to think.
The old woman, somewhat recovered, moved about with words of pity and indignation, and sought to make speech with her, but she paid no heed. Now, if ever, she had need of self-searching--of courage and enterprise. And all at once she found that, despite everything, she was only a woman.
Her passion spent, she felt a desperate need of a man's strength, advice, support. In disarray she sat there, striving to collect her reason.
Her robe was torn, and her loosened hair, escaping from its golden pins, cascaded all about her shoulders. Loudly her heart throbbed; a certain shivering had taken possession of her, and all at once she noticed that her brow was burning.
Resolutely she tried to put her weakness from her, and marshalled her thoughts. In the bed her son still slept quietly, his fat fist protruding from the clothes, his ruddy, healthy little face half buried in the pillow.
A great, overpowering wave of mother-love swept her heart. She leaned forward, and through lids now tear-dimmed, with eyes no longer angry, peered at the child--her child and Allan's.
“For your sake--for yours if not for mine,” she whispered, “I must be strong!”
She thought.
“Evidently some great conspiracy is going on here. Beyond and apart from the calamity of the landslide, some other and even greater peril menaces the colony!”
She reflected on the incident of her pistol and ammunition being stolen.
“There can be no doubt that H'yemba did that,” she decided. “In the confusion of the catastrophe he has disarmed me. That means well-planned rebellion--and at this time it will be fatal! Now, above all else, we must work in harmony, stand fast, close up the ranks! This must not be!”
Yet she could see no way clear to crush the danger. What could she do against so many--nearly all provided with firearms? Why had H'yemba even taken the trouble to steal her weapon?
“Coward!” she exclaimed. “Afraid for his own life--afraid even to face me, so long as I had a pistol! As I live, and heaven is above me, in case of civil war he shall be the first to die!”
She summoned Gesafam.
“Go, now!” she commanded; “go among the remaining Folk and secretly find me a pistol, with ammunition. Steal them if you must. Say nothing, and return as quickly as you can. There be many guns among the Folk. I must have one. Go!”
“O, Yulcia, will there be fighting again?”
“I know not. Ask no questions, but obey!”
Trembling--shaking her head and muttering strange things, the old woman departed.
She returned in a quarter-hour with not only one, but two pistols and several ammunition-belts cleverly concealed beneath her robe. Beta seized them gladly with a sudden return of confidence.
But the old woman, though she said no word, eyed her mistress in a strange, disquieting manner. What had she heard, or seen, down in the caves? Beatrice had now neither time nor inclination to ask.
“Listen, old mother,” she commanded. “I am now going to leave you and my son here together. After I am gone lock the door. Let no one in. I alone shall enter. My signal shall be two knocks on the door, then a pause, then three. Do not open till you hear that signal. You understand me?”
“I understand and I obey, O Yulcianoa!”
“It is well. Guard my son as your life. Now I go to see the wounded and the sick again!”
The old woman let her out and carefully barred the door behind her. Beatrice, unafraid, with both her weapons lying loose in their holsters, belted under her robe, advanced alone down the terrace path.
Her hair had once more been bound up. She had recovered something of her poise and strength. The realization of her mission inspired her to any sacrifice.
“It's all for your sake, Allan,” she whispered as she went. “All for yours--and our boy's!”
Far beneath her New Hope River purled and sparkled in the morning sun. Beyond, the far and vivid tropic forest stretched in wild beauty to the hills that marked the world's end--those hills beyond which--
She put away the thought, refusing to admit even the possibility of Allan's failure, or accident, or death.
“He will come back to me!” she said bravely and proudly, for a moment stopping to face the sun. “He will come back from beyond those hills and trackless woods! He will come back--to us!”
Again she turned, and descending some dozen steps in the terrace path, once more reached the doorway of the hospital cave.
Pausing not, hesitating not, she lifted the rude latch and pushed.
The door refused to give.
Again she tried more forcibly.
It still resisted.
Throwing all her strength against the barrier, she fought to thrust it inward. It would not budge.
“Barred!” she exclaimed, aghast.
Only too true. During her absence, though how or by whom she could not know, the door had been impassably closed to keep her out!
Who, now, was working against her will? Could it be that H'yemba, all burned and blinded as he was, could have returned so soon and once more set himself to thwart her? And if not the smith, then who?
“Rebellion!” she exclaimed. “It's spreading--growing--now, at the very minute when I should have help, faith and cooperation!
“Open! Open, in the name of the law that has been given you--our law!” she cried loudly in the Merucaan tongue.
No answer.
She snatched out a pistol, and with the butt loudly smote the planks of palm-wood. Within, the echoes rumbled dully, but no human voice replied.
“Traitors! Cowards!” she defied the opposing power. “I, a woman, your mistress, am come to save you, and you bar me out! Woe on you! Woe!”
Waiting not, but now with greater haste, she ran down along the pathway toward the next door.
That, too, was sealed. And the next, and the fourth, and all, every one, both on the upper and the lower terrace, all--all were barricaded, even to the great gap made by the landslide.
From within no sound, no reply, no slightest sign that any heard or noticed her. Dumb, mute, passive, invincible rebellion!
In vain she called, commanded, pleaded, explained, entreated. No answer. The white barbarians, all banded against her now, had shut themselves up with their wounded and their dying, to wait their destiny alone.
How many were already dead? How many might yet be saved, who would die without her help? She could not tell. The uncertainty maddened her.
“If they den up, that way,” she said, “pestilence may break out among them and all may die! And then what? If I'm left all alone in the wilderness with Gesafam and the boy--what then?”
The thought was too horrible for contemplation. So many blows had crashed home to her soul the past week--even the past few hours--that the girl felt numbed and dazed as in a nightmare.
It was, it must be, all some frightful unreality--Allan's absence, the avalanche, H'yemba's attack, and this widespread, silent defiance of her power.
Only a few days before Allan had been there with her--strong, vigorous, confident.
Authority had been supreme. Labor, content, prosperity had reigned. Health and life and vigor had been everywhere. On the horizon of existence no cloud; none over the sun of progress.
And now, suddenly--annihilation!
With a groan that was a sob, her face drawn and pale, eyes fixed and unseeing, Beatrice turned back up the terrace path, back up the steep, toward the only door still at her command--Hope Villa.
Back toward the only one of these strange Folk still loyal; back toward her child.
Her head felt strangely giddy. The depths at her left hand, below the parapet of stone, seemed to be calling--calling insistently. Before her sight something like a veil was drawn; and yet it was not a veil, but a peculiar haze, now and then intershot with sparkles of pale light.
Through her mind flittered for the first time something like an adequate realization of the vast, abysmal gulf in culture-status still yawning between these barbarians and Allan and herself.
“Civilization,” she stammered in an odd voice; “why that means--generations!”
All at once she wondered if she were going to faint. A sudden pain had stabbed her temples; a humming had attacked her ears.
She put out her hand against the rock wall of the cliff at the right to steady herself. Her mouth felt hot and very dry.
“I--I must get back home,” she said weakly. “I'm not at all well--this morning. Overexertion--”
Painfully she began to climb the stepped path toward the upper level and Cliff Villa. And again it seemed to her the depths were calling; but now she felt positive she heard a voice--a voice she knew but could not exactly place--a hail very far away yet near--all very strange, unreal and terrifying.
“Oh--am I going to be ill?” she panted. “No, no! I mustn't! For the boy's sake, I mustn't! I can't!”
With a tremendous effort, now crawling rather than walking--for her knees were as water--the girl dragged herself up the path almost to her doorway.
Again she heard the call, this time no hallucination, but reality.
“Beatrice!Beatrice!” the voice was shouting. “O-hé! Beatrice!”
His hail! Allan's!
Her heart stopped, a long minute, and then, leaping with joy, a very anguish of revulsion from long pain, thrashed terribly in her breast.
Gasping with emotion, burned with the first sudden onset of a consuming fever, half-blind, shivering, parched and in agony, the girl made a tremendous effort to hear, to see, to understand.
“Allan! Allan!” she shouted wildly. “Where are you?Where?”
“Beatrice! Here! On the bridge!I'm coming!”
She turned her dimming eyes toward the suspension bridge hung high above the swift and lashing rapids of New Hope River--the bridge, a cobweb-strand in space, across the chasm.
There it seemed to her, though now she could be sure of nothing, so strangely did the earth and sky and cliffs, the bridge, the jungle, all dance and interplay--there, it seemed, she saw a moving figure.
Disheveled, torn, almost naked, lame and slow, yet with something still of power and command in its bearing, this figure was advancing over the swaying path of bamboo-rods lashed to the cables of twisted fiber.
Now it halted as in exhaustion and great pain; now, once more, it struggled forward, limping, foot by foot; crawling, hanging fast to the ropes like some great insect meshed in the wind-swung filaments.
She saw it, and she knew the truth at last.
“Allan! Allan--come quick!Help me--help!”
Then she collapsed. At her door she fell. All things blent and swirled, faded, darkened.
She knew no more.
Theman, weak, wounded, racked with exhaustion from the terrible ordeal of the past days, felt fresh vigor leap through his spent veins at sight of her distress, afar.
He broke into a strange, limping run across the slight and shaking bridge; and as he ran he called to her, words of cheer and greeting, words of encouragement and love.
But when, having penetrated the palisaded area and stumbled down the terraces, he reached her side, he stopped short, shaking, speechless, with wide and terror-stricken eyes.
“Beatrice! Beta! My God, what's--what's happened here?” he stammered, kneeling beside her, raising her in his weakened arms, covering her pallid face with kisses, chafing her throat, her temples, her hands.
The girl gave no sign of returning consciousness. Allan stared about him, sensing a great and devastating change since his departure, but as yet unable to comprehend its nature.
Giddy himself with loss of blood and terrible fatigues, he hardly more than half saw what lay before him; yet he knew catastrophe had befallen Settlement Cliffs.
The river now foamed through strange new obstructions. A whole section of the cliff was gone. No sign of life at all was to be seen anywhere down the terraces or paths.
None of the Folk, their blinking eyes shielded by their mica glasses from the morning sun, were drying fish or fruit at the frames.
The nets hung brown, and stiff, and dry; they should, at this hour, have been limp and wet, from the night's fishing. The life of the colony, he knew, had suddenly and for some incomprehensible reason stopped, as a watch stops when the spring is broken.
And, worse than all, here Beatrice now lay in his arms, stricken by some strange malady. He could not know the cause--the sleepless nights, the terrible toil, the shattering nervous strain of catastrophe, of nursing, of the swift rebellion.
But he saw plainly now, the girl was burning with fever. And, raising his face to heaven, he uttered a cry, half a groan, half a sob--the cry of a soul racked too long upon the torture-wheel of fate.
“But--but where's the boy?” he asked himself, striving to recover his self-control; trying to understand, to act, to save. “What's happened here? God knows! An earthquake? Disaster, at any rate! Beatrice! Oh, my Beta! Speak to me!”
Unable to solve any of the terrible problems now beating in upon him, he raised her still higher in his arms.
Loudly he shouted for help down the terrace, calling on his Folk to show themselves; to come to him and to obey.
But though the shattered cliff rang with his commands, no one appeared. In all seeming as deserted and as void of human life as on the first day he and Beta had set foot there, the cañon brooded under the morning sun, and for all answer rose only the foaming tumult of the rapids far below.
“Merciful Heavens, I've got to dosomething!” cried Allan, forgetting his own lacerations and his pain, in this supreme crisis. “She--she's sick! She's got a fever! I've got to put her to bed anyhow! After that we'll see!”
With a strength he knew not lay now in his wasted arms, he lifted her bodily and carried her to the door of Cliff Villa, their home among the massive buttresses of rock.
But, to his vast astonishment and terror, he found the door refused to open. It was fast barred inside.
Even from his own house he found himself shut out, an exile and a stranger!
Loudly he shouted for admission, savagely beat upon the planks, all to no purpose. There came no sound from within, no answering word or sign.
Eagerly listening for perhaps the cry of his child, he heard nothing. A tomblike silence brooded there, as in all the stricken colony.
Then Allan, fired with a burning fury, laid the girl down again, and seizing a great boulder from the top of the parapet that guarded the terraced walk, dashed it against the door. The planks groaned and quivered, but held.
Recoiling, exhausted by even this single effort, the disheveled, wounded man stared with haggard eyes at the barrier.
The very strength he had put into that door to guard his treasures, his wife and his son, now defied him. And a curse, bitter as death, burst from his trembling lips.
But now he heard a sound, a word, a phrase or two of incoherent speech.
Whirling, he saw the girl's mouth move. In her delirium she was speaking.
He knelt again beside her, cradled her in his arms, kissed and cherished her--and he heard broken, disjointed words--words that filled him with passionate rage and overpowering woe.
“So many dead--so many!--And so many dying.--You, H'yemba! You beast! Let me go!--Oh, when the master comes!”
Allan understood at last. His mind, now clear, despite the maddening torments of the past week, grasped the situation in a kind of supersensitive clairvoyance.
As by a lightning-flash on a dark night, so now the blackness of his wonder, of this mystery, all stood instantly illumined. He understood.
“What incredible fiendishness!” he exclaimed, quite slowly, as though unable to imagine it in human bounds. “At a time of disaster and of death, such as has smitten the colony--what hellish villainy!”
He said no more, but in his eyes burned the fire that meant death, instant and without reprieve.
First he looked to his automatic; but, alas, not one cartridge remained either in its magazine or in the pouches of his belt. The fouled and blackened barrel told something of the terrible story of the past few days.
“Gone, all gone,” he muttered; but, with sudden inspiration, bent over the girl.
“Ah! Ammunition again!”
Quickly he reloaded from her belts. One belt he buckled round his waist. Then, pistol in hand, he thought swiftly.
Thus his mind ran: “The first thing to do is look out for Beatrice, and make her comfortable--find out what the matter is with her, and give treatment. I need fresh water, but I daren't go down to the river for it and leave her here. At any minute H'yemba may appear. And when he does, I must see him first.
“Evidently the thing most necessary is to gain access to our home. How can it be locked, inside, when Beatrice is here? Heaven only knows! There may be enemies in there at this minute. H'yemba may be there--”
Anguish pierced his soul at thought of his son now possibly in the smith's power.
“By God!” he cried, “something has got to be done, and quick!”
His rage was growing by leaps and bounds.