“But it isn't, not by a jugful!” exclaimed the engineer joyously, and stood up in the dim-lit little room. “No,sir!She and I, we're going to change the face of things considerably! How? Never mind just yet. But let's have a look at the old volume, father. Gad! That must be some relic, eh? Imagine a book carried about for a thousand years and read by at least thirty generations of men! The book, father! The book!”
Already the patriarch had arisen and now he gestured at the heavy bench of stone.
“Can you move this, my son?” asked he. “The place of the book lies beneath.”
“Under there, eh? All right!” And, needing no other invitation, he set his strength against the massive block of gneiss.
It yielded at the second effort and, sliding ponderously to one side, revealed a cavity in the stone floor some two feet long by about eighteen inches in breadth.
Over this the old man stooped.
“Help me, son,” bade he. “Once I could lift it with ease, but now the weight passes my strength.”
“What? The weight of a book? But--where is it? In this packet, here?”
He touched a large and close-wrapped bundle lying in the little crypt, dimly seen by the flicker of the oily wick.
“Yea. Raise it out that I may show you!” answered the patriarch. His hands trembled with eagerness; in his blind eyes a sudden fever seemed to burn. For here was his dearest, his most sacred treasure, all that remained to him of the long-worshipped outer world--the world of the vague past and of his distant ancestors--the world that Stern and Beatrice had really known and seen, yet which to him was only “all a wonder and a wild desire.”
“Lay the book upon the bench,” he ordered. “I will unwrap it!”
Complex the knots were, but his warped and palsied fingers deftly undid them as though long familiar with each turn and twist. Then off came many a layer of the rough brown seaweed fabric and afterward certain coverings of tough shark-skin neatly sewn.
“The book!” cried the patriarch. “Now behold it!”
“That?” exclaimed Beatrice. “I never saw a book of that shape!”
“Each page is separately preserved, wherefore it is so very thick,” explained the old man. “See here?”
He turned the leaves reverently. Stern, peering closely by the dim light, saw that they were loosely hung together by loops of heavy gold wire. Each page was held between two large plates of mica, and these plates were securely sealed around the edges by some black substance like varnish or bitumen.
“Only thus,” explained the patriarch, “could we hope to save this precious thing. It was done many hundreds of years ago, and even then the book was almost lost by age and use.”
“I should say so!” ejaculated Stern. Even sealed in its air-tight covering, he saw that every leaf was yellow, broken, rotten, till the merest breath would have disintegrated it to powder. A sense of the infinitudes of time bridged by this volume overwhelmed him; he drew a deep breath, reached out his hand and touched the wondrous relic of the world that was.
“Long ago,” continued the old man, “when the book began to crumble, one of my ancestors copied it on gold plates, word by word, letter by letter, every point and line. And our family used only that book of gold and put away the other. But in my grandfather's time the Lanskaarn raided our village and the gold plates went for loot to make them trinkets, so they were lost.
“My father meant to begin the task again, but was killed in a raid. I, too, in my fighting youth, had plans for the work; but blindness struck me before I could find peace to labor in. So now all that remains of the mother tongue here is my own knowledge and these tattered scraps. And, if you save us not, soon all, all will be lost forever!”
Much moved, the engineer made no reply, yet thoughts came crowding to his brain. Here visibly before him he beheld the final link that tied these lost Folk to the other time, the last and breaking thread. What history could this book have told? What vast catastrophes, famines, pestilences, wars, horrors had it passed through? In what unwritten cataclysms, in what anguish and despair and long degeneration had the human mind still clung to it and cherished it?
No one could tell; yet Stern felt the essence of its unknown story. An infinite pathos haloed the ancient volume. And reverently he touched its pages once again; he bent and by the guttering light tried to make out a few words here or there upon the crackled, all but perished leaves.
He came upon a crude old woodcut, vague and dim; then a line of text caught his eye.
“By Gad! ‘Pilgrim's Progress’!” he exclaimed. “Look, Beatrice--‘Pilgrim's Progress,’ of all books! No wonder he says ‘Verily’ and talks archaic stuff and doesn't catch more than half we say. Well, I'll be--”
“Is this then not the English of your time?” asked the patriarch.
“Hardly! It was centuries old at the epoch of the catastrophe. Say, father, the quicker you forget this and take a few lessons in the up-to-date language of the real world that perished, the better! I see now why you don't get on to the idea of steamships and railroads, telephones and wireless and all the rest of it. God! but you've got a lot to learn!”
The old man closed up the precious volume and once more began wrapping it in its many coverings.
“Not for me, all this, I fear,” he answered with deep melancholy. “It is too late, too late--I cannot understand.”
“Oh, yes, you can, and will!” the engineer assured him. “Buck up, father! Once I get my biplane to humming again you'll learn a few things, never fear!”
He stepped to the door of the hut and peered out.
“Rain's letting up a bit,” he announced. “How about it? Do the signs say it's ready to quit for keeps? If so--all aboard for the dredging expedition!”
Thestorm, in fact, was now almost at an end, and when the engineer awoke next morning he found the rain had wholly ceased. Though the sea was still giving forth white vapors, yet these had not yet reached their usual density. From the fortifications he could see, by the reflected lights of the village and of the great flame, a considerable distance out across the dim, mysterious sea. He knew the time was come to try for the recovery of the machine, if ever.
“If I don't make a go of it to-day,” said he, “I might as well quit for good. There'll never be a better opportunity. And if it's left down there very much longer, Heaven only knows what kind of shape it'll be in. I make good to-day or it's all off.”
Beatrice eagerly seconded his plans. The old man, too, was impatient as a child to learn more of this wonder of the upper world. And, translating to the Folk the directions that Stern gave him, he soon had a great throng on the beach, where lay not only the Folk's canoes, but also many left by the slaughtered and dispersed Lanskaarn.
Two hours after the crude meal that must be called breakfast for want of a better name, the expedition was ready to start.
Twenty-five of the largest boats, some holding twelve men, set out, to the accompaniment of shouting and singing much like that when the captives had been brought in. Stern, Beatrice and the patriarch all sat in one canoe with eight paddlers. In the bottom lay Stern's heavy grapple with the ten long ropes, now twisted into a single cable, securely knotted to its ring.
To Stern it seemed impossible that any means existed for locating, even approximately, the spot where the machine had fallen. As the shore faded away and the village lights disappeared in the gloom and mist, all landmarks vanished. Everywhere about them the dim, oily sea stretched black and gloomy, with here and there the torches of the little fleet casting strange blue-green lights that wavered like ghostly will-o'-the-wisps over the water.
The boatman's song wailed high, sank low, trembled and ceased; and for a while came silence, save for the dipping of the paddles, the purling of the waters at the bow of the canoe. The engineer, despite his hard-headed practicality, shuddered a little and drew his mantle closer round him.
Beatrice, too, felt the eerie mystery of the scene. Stern put an arm about her; she slid her hand into his, and thus in silence they sat thinking while the boats drew on and on.
“They really know where they're going, father?” the engineer asked at length. “It all looks alike to me. How can they tell?”
“Verily, I cannot explain that to you,” the old man made answer. “We know, that is all.”
“But--”
“Had I been always blind you could not expound sight to me. A deaf man cannot understand sound.”
“You mean you've developed some new sense, some knowledge of direction and location thatwehaven't got?”
“Yea, it must be so. In all these many centuries among the dark mists we have to know. And this gloom, this night, are the same to us as you have told me a lake on the surface would be to you in the brightness of that sun which none of use have ever yet beheld.”
“Is that so? Well, hanged if I get it! However, no matter about that just so they locate the place. Can they find the exact spot, father?”
“Perhaps not so. But they will come near to it, my son. Only have patience; you shall see!”
Stern and the girl relapsed into silence again, and for perhaps a quarter-hour the boats moved steadily forward through the vapors in a kind of crescent, the tips of which were hidden by the mist.
Then all at once a sharp cry rang from a boat off to the right, a cry taken up and echoed all along the line. The paddles ceased to ply; the canoes now drifted idly forward, their wakes trailing out behind in long “slicks” of greasy blackness flecked with sparkles from the reflected light of all those many torches.
Another word of command; the boatmen slowed their craft.
“Drop the iron here, son, and drag the bottom,” said the patriarch.
“Good!” answered Stern, thrilled with excitement and wonder.
He pitched the dredge into the jetty sea. It sank silently as he payed out the cable. At a depth he estimated--from the amount of cable still left in the boat--as about thirty fathoms, it struck bottom.
He let out another five fathoms.
“All right, father!” he exclaimed sharply. “Tell our boatmen to give way!”
The old man translated the order: “Ghaa vrouaad, m'yaun!” (Go forward, men.) The paddles dipped again and Stern's canoe moved silently over the inky surface.
Every sense alert, the engineer at the gunwale held the cable. For a few seconds he felt nothing as the slack was taken up; then he perceived a tug and knew the grapple was dragging.
Now intense silence reigned, broken only by the sputter of the smoking torches. The canoes, spaced over the foggy sea, seemed floating in a void of nothingness; each reflected light quivered and danced with weird and tremulous patterns.
Stern played the cable as though it were a fish-line. All his senses centered on interpreting the message it conveyed. Now he felt that it was dragging over sand; now came rocks--and once it caught, held, then jerked free. His heart leaped wildly. Oh, had it only been the aeroplane!
The tension grew. Out, far out from the drifting line of boats the canoe went forward; it turned at a word from the patriarch and dragged along the front of the line. It criss-crossed on its path; Stern had to admire the skill and thoroughness with which the boatmen covered the area where their mysterious sixth sense of location told them the machine must lie.
All at once a tug, different from all others, yielding, yet firm, set his pulses hammering again.
“Got it!” he shouted, for he knew the truth. “Hold fast, there--she's hooked!”
“You've got it, Allan? Really got it?” cried the girl, starting up. “Oh--”
“Feel this!” he answered. “Grab hold and pull!”
She obeyed, trembling with eagerness.
“It's caught through one of the ailerons, or some yielding part, I think,” he said. “Here, help me hold it tight, now; we mustn't let the hook slip out again!” To the patriarch he added: “Tell 'em to back up, there--easy--easy!”
The canoe backed, while Stern took up the slack again. When the pull from below was vertical he ordered the boat stopped.
“Now get nine other boats close in here,” commanded he.
The old man gave the order. And presently nine canoes stood in near at hand, while all the rest lay irregularly grouped about them.
Now Stern's plan of the tenfold cable developed itself. Already he was untwisting the thick rope. One by one he passed the separate cords to men in the other boats. And in a few minutes he and nine other men held the ropes, which, all attached to the big iron ring below, spread upward like the ribs of an inverted umbrella.
The engineer's scheme was working to perfection. Well he had realized that no one boat could have sufficed to lift the great weight of the machine. Even the largest canoe would have been capsized and sunk long before a single portion of the Pauillac and its engine had been so much as stirred from the sandy bottom.
But with the buoyant power of ten canoes and twenty or thirty men all applied simultaneously, Stern figured he had a reasonable chance of raising the sunken aeroplane. The fact that it was submerged, together with the diminished gravitation of the Abyss, also worked in his favor. And as he saw the Folk-men grip the cords with muscular hands, awaiting his command, he thrilled with pride and with the sense of real achievement.
“Come, now, boys!” he cried. “Pull! Heave-ho, there! Altogether, lift her!Pull!”
He strained at the rope which he and two others held; the rest--each rope now held by three or four men--bent their back to the labor. As the ropes drew tense, the canoes crowded and jostled together. Those men who were not at the ropes, worked with the paddles to keep the boats apart, so that the ropes should not foul or bind. And in an irregular ring, all round the active canoes, the others drew. Lighted by so many torches, the misty waters glittered as broken waves, thrown out by the agitation of the canoes, radiated in all directions.
“Pull, boys, pull!” shouted the engineer again. “Up she comes! Now, all together!”
Came a jerk, a long and dragging resistance, then a terrific straining on the many cords. The score and a half of men breathed hard; on their naked arms the veins and muscles swelled; the torchlight gleamed blue on their sweating faces and bodies.
And spontaneously, as at all times of great endeavor among the Folk, a wailing song arose; it echoed through the gloom; it grew, taken up by the outlying boats; and in the eternal dark of the Abyss it rose, uncanny, soul-shaking, weird beyond all telling.
Stern felt the shuddering chills chase each other up and down his spine, playing a nervous accompaniment to their chant.
“Gad!” he muttered, shivering, “what a situation for a hard-headed, practical man like me! It's more like a scene from some weird pipe-dream magazine story of the remote past than solid reality!”
Again the Folk strained at the ropes, Stern with them; and now the great weight below was surely rising, inch by inch, up, up, toward the black and gleaming surface of the abysmal sea.
Stern's heart was pounding wildly. If only--incredible as it seemed--the Pauillac really were there at the end of the converging ropes; and if it were still in condition to be repaired again! If only the hook and the hard-taxed ropes held!
“Up, boys! Heave 'er!” he shouted, pulling till his muscles hardened like steel, and the canoe--balanced, though it was by five oarsmen and the patriarch all at the other gunwale--tipped crazily. “Pull!Pull!”
Beatrice sprang to the rope. Unable to restrain herself, she, too, laid hold on the taut, dripping cord; and her white hands, firm, muscular, shapely, gripped with a strength one could never have guessed lay in them.
And now the ropes were sliding up out of the water, faster, ever faster; and higher rose the song of all those laboring Folk and all who watched from the outlying ring of boats.
“Up with it, men!Up!” panted the engineer.
Even as he spoke the waters beneath them began to boil and bubble strangely, as though with the rising of a monstrous fish; and all at once, with a heave, a sloshing splatter, a huge, weed-covered, winglike object, sluicing brine, wallowed sharply out into the torchlight.
A great triumphal howl rose from the waiting Folk--a howl that drowned Stern's cheer and that of Beatrice, and for a moment all was confusion. The wing rose, fell, slid back; into the water and again dipped upward. The canoes canted; some took water; all were thrown against each other in the central group; and cries, shouts, orders and a wild fencing off with paddles followed.
Stern yelled in vain orders that the old man could not even hear to translate; orders which would not, even though heard, have been obeyed. But after a moment or two comparative order was restored, and the engineer, veins standing out on his temples, eyes ablaze, bellowed:
“Hold fast, you! No more, nor more--don't pull up any more, damn you! Hey, stop that--you'll rip the hook clean out and lose it again!
“You, father--here--tell 'em to let it down a little, now--about six feet, so. Easy--does it--easy!”
Now the Pauillac, sodden with water, hanging thickly with the luxuriant weed clusters which even in a fortnight had grown in that warm sea, was suspended at the end of the ten cords about six or eight feet below the keels of the canoes.
“Tell 'em to let it stay that way now,” continued the engineer. “Tell 'em all to hold fast, those that have the ropes. The others paddle for the shore as fast as they can--and damn the man that loafsnow!”
The patriarch conveyed the essence of these instructions to the oarsmen, and now, convoyed by the outlying boats, the ten canoes moved very slowly toward the village.
Retarded by the vast, birdlike bulk that trailed below, they seemed hardly to make any progress at all. Stern ordered the free boats to hitch on and help by towing. Lines were passed, and after a while all twenty-five canoes, driven by the power of two hundred and fifty pairs of sinewy arms, were dragging the Pauillac shoreward.
Stern's excitement--now that the machine was really almost in his grasp again--far from diminishing, was every minute growing keener.
The delay until he could examine it and see its condition and its chances of repair, seemed interminable. Continually he urged the patriarch--himself profoundly moved--to force the rowers to still greater exertion. At a paddle he labored, throwing every ounce of strength into the toil. Each moment seemed an hour.
“Gad! If it's only possible to make it fly again!” thought he.
Half an hour passed, and now at length the dim and clustered lights of the village began to show vaguely through the mist.
“Come on, boys; now for it!” shouted Stern. “Land her for me and I'll show you wonders you never even dreamed of!”
They drew near the shore. Already Stern was formulating his plans for landing the machine without injuring it, when out from the beach a long and swift canoe put rapidly, driven by twenty men.
At sight of it the rowing in Stern's boats weakened, then stopped. Confused cries arose, altercations and strange shouts; then a hush of expectancy, of fear, seemed to possess the boat crews.
And ever nearer, larger, drew the long canoe, a two-pronged, blazing cresset at its bows.
Across the waters drifted a word.
“Go on, you! Row!” cried Stern. “Land the machine, I tell you! Say, father, what's the matternow?What are my men on strike for all of a sudden? Why don't they finish the job?”
The old man, perplexed, listened intently.
Between the group of canoes and the shore the single boat had stopped. A man was standing upright in it. Now came a clear hail, and now two or three sentences, peremptory, angry, harsh.
At sound of them consternation seized certain of the men. A number dropped the ropes, while others reached for the slings and spears that always lay in the bottoms of the canoes.
“What the devilnow?” shouted Stern. “You all gone crazy, or what?”
He turned appealingly to the old man.
“For Heaven's sake, what's up?” he cried. “Tell me, can't you, before the idiots drop my machine and ruin the whole thing? What--”
“Misfortune, O my son!” cried the patriarch in a strange, trembling voice. “The worst that could befall! In our absencehehas come back--he, Kamrou! And under pain of death he bids all men abandon every task and haste to homage.Kamrou the Terrible is here!”
Fora moment Stern stared, speechless with amazement, at the old man, as though to determine whether or not he had gone mad. But the commotion, the mingled fear and anger of the boat crews convinced him the danger, though unknown, was very real.
And, flaring into sudden rage at this untimely interruption just in the very moment of success, he jerked his pistol from its holster, and stood up in the boat.
“I'll have no butting in here!” he cried in a loud, harsh voice. “Who the devil is Kamrou, I'd like to know? Go on,on, to shore!”
“My son--”
“You order these men to grab those ropes again and go ashore or I warn you there's going to be a whole big heap of trouble!”
Over the waters drifted another hail, and the strange long boat, under the urge of vigorous arms, now began to move toward Stern's fleet. At the same time, mingled cries arose on shore. Stern could see lights moving back and forth; some confusion was under way there, though what, he could not imagine.
“Well,” he cried, “are you going to order these men to go forward? Or shall I--withthis?”
And menacingly he raised the grim and ugly gun.
“Oh my son!” exclaimed the patriarch, his lips twitching, his hands outstretched--while in the boats a babel of conflicting voices rose--“O my son, if I have sinned in keeping this from you, now let me die! I hid it from your knowledge, verily, to save my people--to keep you with us till this thing should be accomplished! My reckoning was that Kamrou and his men would stay beyond the Great Vortex, at their labor, until after--”
“Kamrou?” shouted Stern again. “What the deuce do I care about him? Whoishe, anyhow? A Lanskaarn, or--”
The girl seized Allan's hand.
“Oh, listen, listen!” she implored. “I--”
“Did you know about this? And never told me?”
“Allan, he said our work could all be done before they--”
“So youdidknow, eh?”
“He said I must not tell you. Otherwise--”
“Oh, hang that! See here, Beatrice, what's the matter, anyhow? These people have all gone crazy, just in a second, the old man and all! If you know anything about it, for God's sake tell me! I can't stand much more!
“I've got to get this machine to land before they go entirely nutty and drop it, and we lose all our work for nothing. What's up? Who's this Kamrou they're talking about? For Heaven's sake, tell me!”
“He's their chief. Allan--their chief! He's been gone a long time, he and his men. And--”
“Well, what do we care forhim?We're running this village now, aren't we?”
“Listen. The old man says--”
“He's a hard nut, eh? And won't stand for us--is that it?” He turned to the patriarch. “This Kamrou you're talking about doesn't want us, or our new ideas, or anything? Well, see here. There's no use beating around the bush, now.This thing's going through, this plan of ours!And if Kamrou or anybody else gets in the way of it--good-by for him!”
“You mean war?”
“War!And I know who'll win, at that! And now, father, you get these men here to work again, or there'll be some sudden deaths round here!”
“Hearken, O my son! Already the feast of welcome to Kamrou is beginning, around the flame. See now, the boat of his messenger is close at hand, bidding all those in this party to hasten in, for homage. Kamrou will not endure divided power. Trust me now and I can save you yet. For the present, yield to him, or seem to, and--”
“Yield nothing!” fairly roared the engineer, angrier than he had ever been in his whole life. “This is my affair now! Nobody else butts in on it at all! To shore with these boats, you hear? or I begin shooting again! And if I do--”
“Allan!” cried the girl.
“Not a word! Only get your gun ready, that's all. We've got to handle this situation sharp, or it's all off! Come, father,” he delivered his ultimatum to the patriarch; “come, order them ashore!”
The old man, anguished and tremulous, spoke a few words. Answers arose, here, there. He called something to the standing figure in the despatch-boat, which slackened stopped, turned and headed for the distant beach.
With some confusion the oarsmen of the fleet took up their task again. And now, in a grim silence, more disconcerting even than the previous uproar, the boats made way toward land.
Ten minutes later--minutes during which the two Americans kept their revolvers ready for instant action--the aeroplane began to drag on the bottom. Despite the crowd now gathered on the beach, very near at hand and ominously silent, Stern would not let the machine lie even here, in shallow water, where it could easily have been recovered at any time. Like a bulldog with its jaws set on an object, he clung to his original plan of landing the Pauillac at once.
And, standing up in the boat with his pistol leveled, he commanded them, through the mediumship of the patriarch, to shorten the ropes and paddle in still closer. When the beach was only a few rods distant he gave orders that all should land, carrying the ropes with them. He himself was one of the first to wade ashore, with Beatrice.
Ignoring the silent, expectant crowd and the tall figure of Kamrou's messenger--who now stood, arms crossed, amazed, indignant, almost at the water's edge--he gave quick commands:
“Now, clear these boats away on both sides! Make a free space, here--wider--so, that's right. Now, all you men get hold of the ropes--all of you, here, take hold, you! Ready, now? Give way, then! Out she comes! Out with her!”
The patriarch, standing in fear and keen anxiety beside him, transmitted the orders. Truly the old man's plight was hard, torn as he was between loyalty to the newcomers and terror of the implacable Kamrou. But Stern had no time to think of aught but the machine and his work.
For now already the great ungainly wings of the machine were wallowing up, up, out of the jetty waters; and now the body, now the engine showed, weed-festooned, smeared with mud and slime, a strange and awesome apparition in that blue and ghastly torch-flare, as the toiling men hauled it slowly, foot by foot, up the long slope of the beach.
Dense silence held the waiting throng; silence and awe, in face of this incomprehensible, tremendous thing.
Even the messenger spoke not a word. He had lost somewhat of his assurance, his pride and overbearing haughtiness. Perhaps he had already heard some tales of these interlopers' terrible weapons.
Stern saw the man's eyes follow the revolver, as he gestured with it; the high-lights gleaming along the barrel seemed to fascinate the tall barbarian. But still he drew no step backward. Still in silence, with crossed arms, he waited, watched and took counsel only with himself.
“Thank God, it's out at last!” exclaimed the engineer, and heaved a sigh of genuine, heartfelt relief. “See, Beatrice, there s our old machine again--and except for that broken rudder, this wing, here, bent, and the rent where the grapple tore the leather covering of the starboard plane I can't see that it's taken any damage. Provided the engine's intact, the rest will be easy. Plenty of chance for metalwork, here, and--”
“Going to take it right up to the village, now?” queried she, anxiously glancing at the crowd of white and silent faces, all eagerly staring--staring like so many wraiths in a strange dream.
He shrugged his shoulders.
“That depends,” he answered. He seemed already to have forgotten Kamrou and the threatening peril in the village, near the great flame. Even the sound of distant chanting and the thudding of dull drums stirred him not. Fascinated, he was walking all round the great mechanical bird, which now lay wounded, weed-covered, sodden and dripping, yet eloquent of infinite possibilities, there on that black, unearthly beach.
All at once he spoke.
“Up to the village with it!” he commanded, waving his pistol-hand toward the causeway and the fortified gates. “I can't risk leaving it here. Come, father, speak to them! It's got to go into the village right now!”
Then Kamrou's messenger, grasping the sense if not the words of the command, strode forward--a tall, lithe figure of a man, well-knit and hard of face. Under the torchlight the dilated pupils of his pinkish eyes seemed to shine as phosphorescent as a cat's.
Crying out something unintelligible to Stern, he blocked the way. Stern heard the name “Kamrou! Kamrou!”
“Well, what do you want now?” shouted the engineer, a huge and sudden anger seizing him. Already super-excited by the labors of the day and by the nervous strain of having recovered the sunken biplane, all this talk of Kamrou, all this persistent opposition just at the most inauspicious moment worked powerfully upon his irritated nerves.
Cool reason would have dictated diplomacy, parley, and, if possible, truce. But Stern could not believe the Folk, for so long apparently loyal to him and dominated by his influence, could work against their vital interest and his own by deserting him now.
And, all his saner judgment failing him, heeding nothing of the patriarch's entreaties or of the girl's remonstrance as she caught his arm and tried to hold him back, he faced this cooly insolent barbarian.
“You, damn you, whatd'youwant?” he cried again, his finger itching on the trigger of the automatic. “Think I'm going to quit for you, or Kamrou, or anybody? Quit,now?”
“Think a civilized white man, sweating his heart out to save your people here, is going to knuckle under to any savage that happens to blow in and try to boss this job? If so, you've got another guess coming! Stand back, you, or you'll get cold lead in just one minute!”
Quick words passed from the old man to the messenger and back again. The patriarch cried again to him, and for a moment Stern saw the barbarian's eyes flicker uneasily toward the revolver. But the calm and cruel face never changed, nor did the savage take one step backward.
“All right, then!” shouted Stern, “seeing red” in his overpowering rage. “You want it--you'll get it--take it, so!”
Up he jerked the automatic, fair at the big barbarian's heart--a splendid target by the torch-light, not ten feet distant; a sure shot.
But before he could pull trigger the strange two-pronged torch was tossed on high by somebody behind the messenger, and through the dull and foggy gloom a wild, fierce, penetrant cry wailed piercingly.
Came a shooting, numbing pain in Stern's right elbow. The arm dropped, helpless. The boulder which, flung with accurate aim, had destroyed his aim, rolled at his feet. The pistol clattered over the wet, shining stones.
Stern, cursing madly, leaped and snatched for it with the other hand.
Before he could even reach it a swift foot tripped him powerfully. Headlong he fell. And in a second one of the very ropes that had been used to drag the Pauillac from the depths was lashed about his wrists, his ankles, his struggling, fighting body.
“Beatrice! Shoot! Kill!” he shouted. “Help here!Help!The machine--they'll wreck it! Everything--lost!Help!”
His speech died in a choking mumble, stifled by the wet and sodden gag they forced into his mouth.
About him the mob seethed. Through his brain a quick anguish thrilled, the thought of Beatrice unaided and alone. Then came a wonder when the death-stroke would fall--a frightful, sick despair that on the very eve of triumph, of salvation for this Folk and for the world as well as for Beatrice and himself, this unforeseen catastrophe should have befallen.
He struggled still to catch some glimpse of Beatrice, to cry aloud to her, to shield her; but, alone against five hundred, he was powerless.
Nowhere could he catch even a glimpse of the girl. In that shoving, pushing, shouting horde, nothing could be made out. He knew not even whether civil war had blazed or whether all alike had owned the rule of Kamrou the Terrible.
Like buoys tossing upon the surface of a raging sea, the flaring torches pitched and danced, rose, fell. And from a multitude of throats, from beach and causeway, walls and town, strange shouts rang up into the all-embracing, vague, enshrouding vapor.
Still striving to fight, bound as he was, he felt a great force driving him along, on, on, up the beach and toward the village.
Mute, desperate, stark mad, he knew the Folk were half carrying, half dragging him up the causeway.
As in a dark dream, he vaguely saw the great fortified gate with its huge, torch-lighted monolithic lintel. Even upon this some of the Folk were crowded now to watch the strange, incredible spectacle of the man who had once turned the tide of battle against the Lanskaarn and had saved all their lives, now haled like a criminal back into the community he had rescued in its hour of sorest need.
His mind leaped to their first entry into the village--it seemed months ago--also as prisoners. In a flash he recalled all that had happened since and bitterly he mocked himself for having dared to dream that their influence had really altered these strange, barbarous souls, or uplifted them, or taught them anything at all.
“Now, now just as the rescue of these people was at hand, just as the machine might have carried us and them back into the world, slowly, one by one--now comes defeat and death!”
An exceeding great bitterness filled his soul once more at this harsh, cynic turn of fate. But most of all he yearned toward Beatrice. That he should die mattered nothing; but the thought of this girl perishing at their hands there in the lost Abyss was dreadful as the pangs of all the fabled hells.
Again he fought to hold back, to try for some sight, even a fleeting glimpse of Beatrice; but the Folk with harsh cries drove him roughly forward.
He could not even see the patriarch. All was confusion, glare, smoke, noise, as he was thrust through the fortified gate, out into the thronged plaza.
Everywhere rose cries, shouts, vociferations, among which he could distinguish only one a thousand times repeated: “Kamrou!Kamrou!”
And through all his rage and bitter bafflement and pain, a sudden great desire welled up in him to see this chief of the Folk, at last--to lay eyes on this formidable, this terrible one--to stand face to face with him in whose hand now lay everything, Kamrou!
Across the dim, fog-covered expanse of the plaza he saw the blue-green shimmer of the great flame.
Thither, toward that strange, eternal fire and the ghastly circle of the headless skeletons the Folk were drifting now. Thither his captors were dragging him.
And there, he knew, Kamrou awaited Beatrice and him. There doom was to be dealt out to them. There, and at once!
Thicker the press became. The flame was very near now, its droning roar almost drowning the great and growing babel of cries.
On, on the Folk bore him. All at once he saw again that two-pronged torch raised before him, going ahead; and a way cleared through the press.
Along this way he was carried, no longer struggling, but eager now to know the end, to meet it bravely and with calm philosophy, “as fits a man.”
And quite at once he found himself in sight of the many dangling skeletons. Now the quivering jet of the flame grew visible. Now, suddenly, he was thrust forward into a smooth and open space. Silence fell.
Before him he saw Kamrou, Kamrou the Terrible, at last.
Thechief of the People of the Abyss was seated at his ease in a large stone chair, over which heavy layers of weed-fabric had been thrown. He was flanked on either side by spearsmen and by drummers, who still held their iron sticks poised above their copper drums with shark-skin heads.
Stern saw at a glance that he was a man well over six feet tall, with whipcord muscles and a keen, eager, domineering air. Unlike any of the other Folk, his hair (snow-white) was not twisted into a fantastic knot and fastened with gold pins, but hung loose and was cut square off at about the level of his shoulders, forming a tremendous, bristly mass that reminded one of a lion's mane.
Across his left temple, and involving his left eye with a ghastly mutilation, ran a long, jagged, bright red scar, that stood out vividly against the milk-white skin. In his hands he held no mace, no symbol of power; they rested loosely on his powerful knees; and in their half-crooked fingers, large and long, Stern knew there lay a formidable, an all but irresistible strength.
At sight of the captives--for Beatrice, too, now suddenly appeared, thrust forward through another lane among the Folk--Kamrou's keenly cruel face grew hard. His lips curled with a sneer of scorn and hate. His pinkish eyes glittered with anticipation. Full on his face the flare of the great flame fell; Stern could see every line and wrinkle, and he knew that to beg mercy from this huge barbarian (even though he would have begged), were a task wholly vain and futile.
He glanced along the circle of expectant faces that ringed the chief at a distance of some fifteen feet. Surely, thought he, some of the many Folk that he and the girl had saved from butchery, some to whom they had taught the rudiments of the world's lost arts, would now show pity on them--would stand by them now!
But no; not one face of all that multitude--now that Kamrou had returned--evinced other than eager interest to see the end of everything. To Stern flashed the thought that here, despite their seeming half-civilization in the use of metals, fire, dwellings, fabrics and all the rest, dwelt within them a savagery even below that of the ancient, long-extinct American Indians.
And well he knew that if both he and Beatrice were not to die the death this day, only upon themselves they must depend!
Yes, one face showed pity. But only one--the patriarch's.
Stern suddenly caught sight of him, standing in the front rank of the circled crowd, about twenty feet away to the left, just beyond the girl. Tears gleamed in the old man's sightless eyes; his lips quivered; the engineer saw his hands tremble as he twisted the feeble, impotent fingers together in anguish.
And though he could catch no sound in that rising, falling, ever-roaring tumult of the flame, he knew the patriarch, with some vague and distant remnant of the old-time and vanished religion of the world, was striving to pray.
Stern's eyes met the girl's. Neither could speak, for she, too, was gagged with a rough band of fabric which cruelly cut her beautiful, her tender mouth. At sight of her humiliation and her pain, the man's heart leaped hotly; he strained against his bonds till the veins swelled, and with eyes of terrible rage and hate stared at Kamrou.
But the chief's gaze was now fixed insolently upon Beatrice. She, as she stood there, stripped even of her revolver and cartridge-belt, hands bound behind her, hair disheveled, had caught his barbarous fancy. And now in his look Stern saw the kindling of a savage passion so ardent, so consuming, that the man's heart turned sick within him.
“Ten thousand times better she should die!” thought he, racked at the thought of what might be. “Oh, God! If I only had my revolver for a single minute now! One shot for Kamrou--one for Beatrice--and after that, nothing would matter; nothing!”
Came a disturbance in the Folk. Heads craned; a murmur of voices rose.
The patriarch, no longer trembling, but with his head held proudly up, both hands outstretched, had stepped into the circle. And now, advancing toward Kamrou, he spoke in quick and eager sentences--he gestured at the engineer, raised his hand on high, bowed and stepped back.
And all at once a wild, harsh, swelling chorus of cries arose; every face turned toward Stern; the engineer, amazed, knew not what all this meant, but to the ultimate drop in the arteries he pledged his fighting-blood to one last, bitter struggle.
Silence again.
Kamrou had not stirred. Still his great hands rested on his knees; but a thin, venomous smile lengthened his lips. He, too, looked at the engineer, who gave the stare back with redoubled hate. Tense grew the expectation of the Folk.
“What the devil now?” thought Stern, tautening event muscle for the expected attack.
But attack there came none. Instead the patriarch asked a question of those who stood near him; and hands now guided the old man toward the place where Stern was standing, bound.
“O friend; O son!” exclaimed the old man when he had come close. “Now hearken! For, verily, this is the only way!
“It is an ancient custom of the Merucaans that any man captive or free, can ever challenge our chief, whosoever he be, to the death-combat. If the chief wins, he remains chief. If he loses, the victor takes his place. Many hundreds of years, I know not how long, this has been our way. And many terrible combats have been seen here among our people.
“Kamrou has said that you must die, the girl must be his prize. Only one way remains to save her and yourself--you must struggle with Kamrou. I have delivered to him your challenge already. Let fate decide the issue!”
Everything seemed to whirl before Stern's eyes, and for a moment all grew black. In his ears sounded a great roaring, louder than the roar of the huge flame. Quick questions flashed through his mind. Fight Kamrou? But how? A duel with revolvers? Spears? Maces?
He knew not. Only he knew that in whatever way the ancient combats must be held he was ready!
“You affirm the challenge I have given in your behalf?” demanded the patriarch. “If you accept it, nod.”
Stern nodded with all the vigor of his terrible rage. Kamrou's eyes narrowed; his smile grew fixed and hard, but in it Stern perceived the easy contempt of a bully toward any chance weakling. And through him thrilled a passion of hate such as he had never dreamed in all his life.
Came a quick word from the patriarch. Somebody was slashing the engineer's bonds. All at once the ropes gave way. Free and unfettered, he stepped forward, stretching his arms, opening and closing his cramped, numbed hands, out into the ring toward Kamrou, the chief.
Off came the gag. Stern could speak at last.
His first word was to the girl.
“Beatrice!” he called to her, “there's one chance left! I'm to fight this ruffian here. If I beat him we're free--we own this tribe, body and soul! If not--”
He broke off short. Even the possibility was not to be considered.
She looked at him and understood his secret thought. Well the man knew that Beatrice would die by her own hand before Kamrou should have his way with her.
The patriarch spoke again.
“My son,” said he, “there is but one way for all these combats. It has been so these many centuries. By the smooth edge of the great boiling pit the fights are held. Man against man it is. Verily, you two with only your hands must fight! He who loses--”
“Goes into the pit?”
The old man nodded.
“There is no other way,” he answered. “The new, terrible weapons you cannot use. The arrows, slings and spears are all forbidden by ancient custom. It is the naked grasp of the hands, the strong muscles of two men against each other! So we decide our chief!
“I, alas, can help you in nothing. I am powerless, weak, old. Were I to interfere now and try to change this way, my own body would only go to the pit, and my old bones hang, headless, in the place of captives and criminals. All lies in your hands, my son!
“All; everything! Our whole future, and the future of the world! If you lose, the wonderful machine will be destroyed and all its metal forged into spears and battle axes. Barbarism will conquer; darkness will continue, and war, and death. All will be forever lost!
“The last ray of hope, of light, from the great past of the upper world, will vanish forever! Your own death, my son, and the fate of the girl, will be as nothing beside the terrible catastrophe, if you are beaten.
“For, verily, it will be the death of the world!
“And now, my son, now go to battle--to battle for this woman, for yourself, for us, for the future of our race, for everything!
“Kamrou is ready. The pit is boiling.
“Go now! Fight--and--and--”
His voice was lost in a great tumult of cries, yells, shouts. Spears brandished. Came a sound of shields struck with clubs and axes. The copper drums again began to throb and clang.
Kamrou had risen from his seat.
Stern knew the supreme moment of his life was at hand.
Kamrouflung off his long and heavy cloak. He stood there in the flamelight, broad-chested, beautifully muscled, lean of hip, the perfect picture of a fighting man. Naked he was, save for his loin-cloth. And still he smiled.
Stern likewise stripped away his own cloak. Clad only like the chief, he faced him.
“Well, now,” said he, “here goes! And may the best man win!”
Kamrou waved the circle back at one side. It opened, revealing the great pit to southward of the flame. Stern saw the vapors rising, bluish in that strange light, from the perpetual boiling of the black waters in its depths. Oddly enough, even at that moment a stray bit of scientific thought nicked into his consciousness--the memory that under compressed air water boils only at very high temperatures. Down here, in this great pressure, the water must easily be over three hundred degrees to seethe like that.
He, too, smiled.
“So much the better,” thought he. “The hotter, the sooner it's all over for the man who goes!”
Up rose numbers of the two-pronged torches. Stern got confused glimpses of the Folk--he saw the terrible, barbaric eagerness with which they now anticipated this inevitable tragedy of at least one human death in its most awful form.
Beatrice he no longer saw. Where was she? He knew not. But in a long, last cry of farewell he raised his voice. Then, with Kamrou, he strode toward the steaming, boiling pit in the smooth rock floor.
Two tall men broke through the tensely eager throng. In their hands they bore each a golden jar, curiously shaped and chiseled, and bearing a whimsical resemblance to a coffee-urn.
“What the devil now?” wondered Stern, eager to be at work. He saw at once the meaning of the jars. One of the bearers approached Kamrou. The other came to him. They raised the vessels, and over the antagonists' bare bodies poured a thin, warm stream of some rank-smelling oil. All over the skin they rubbed it, till the bodies glistened strangely in the flamelight. Then, with muttered words he could not catch, they withdrew.
All seemed confused and vague to Stern as in a painful dream. Images and pictures seemed to present themselves to his brain. The light, the fog and heat, the rising stream, the roaring of the flame, and over all thethrob-throb-throbof those infernal copper drums worked powerfully on his senses.
Already he seemed to feel the grip of Kamrou, the pangs of the hard struggle, the sudden plunge into the vat of scalding death.
With a strong effort he flung off these fancies and faced his sneering foe, who now--his red-wealed face puckered into a malicious grin--stood waiting.
Stern all at once saw the patriarch once more.
“Go, son!” cried the old man. “Now is the moment! When the drums cease, lay hold of him!”
Even as he spoke, the great drums slowed their beat, then stopped.
Stern, with a final thought of Beatrice, advanced.
All the advantage lay with Kamrou. Familiar with the place was he, and with the rules of this incredible contest. Everywhere about him stood crowding hundreds of his Foll; owing him their allegiance, hostile to the newcomer, the man from another world. Out of all that multitude only two hearts' beat in sympathy and hope for him; only two human beings gave him their thoughts and their support--a helpless girl; a feeble, blind old man.
Kamrou stood taller, too, than Stern, and certainly bulked heavier. He was in perfect condition, while Stern had not yet fully recovered from the fight in the Abyss, from the great change in living conditions there in the depths, and--more important still--from the harsh blow of the rock that had numbed his elbow on the beach.
His arms and hands, too, still felt the cramping of the cords that had bound him. He needed a few hours yet to work them into suppleness and perfect strength. But respite there was none.
He must fight now at once under all handicaps, or die--and in his death yield Beatrice to the barbaric passions of the chief.
Oddly enough there recurred to his mind, as he drew near the waiting, sneering Kamrou, that brave old war-cry of the Greeks of Xenophon as they hurled themselves against the vastly greater army of the Persians--“Zeus Sotor kaì Niké!--Zeus Savior and victory!”
The shout burst from his lips. Forward he ran, on to the battle where either he or the barbarian must perish in the boiling pit--forward,to what? To victory--to death?
Kamrou stood fast till Stern's right hand had almost gripped his throat--for Stern, the challenger, had to deliver the first attack.
But suddenly he slipped aside; and as Stern swerved for him, made a quick leap.
With an agility, a strength and skill tiger-like and marvelous, he caught Stern round the waist, whirled him and would have dashed him toward the pit. But already the engineer's right arm was under Kamrou's left; the right hand had him by the throat, and Kamrou's head went sharply back till the vertebrae strained hard.
Eel-like, elusive, oiled, the chief broke the hold, even as he flung a leg about one of Stern's.
A moment they swayed, tugging, straining, panting. In the old days Stern would not for one moment have been a match for this barbaric athlete, but the long months of life close to nature had hardened him and toughened every fiber. And now a stab of joy thrilled through him as he realized that in his muscles lay at least a force to balk the savage for a little while.
To Stern came back his wrestling lore of the very long ago, the days of Harvard, in the dim, vanished past. He freed his left arm from the gorilla-like grip of Kamrou, and, quick as lightning, got ajiu-jitsustranglehold.
The savage choked, gurgled, writhed; his face grew purple with stagnant blood. Then he leaped, dragging the engineer with him; they fell, rolled, twisted--and Stern's hold was broken.
A great shout rose as Kamrou struggled up and once more seized the American. He raised him like a child, and took a step, two, three, toward the infernal caldron in the rock floor.
Stern, desperate, wrenched his oiled arms clear. A second later they had closed again about the chief's throat--the one point of attack that Stern had chosen for his best.
The barbarian faltered. Grunting, panting, he shook the engineer as a dog shakes a rat, but the hold was secure. Kamrou's great arms wrapped themselves in a formidable “body-scissors” grip; Stern felt the breath squeezed from his body.
Then suddenly the chief's oily heel slipped on the smooth-worn rock, not ten feet from the lip of the bubbling vat--and for the second time both fell.
This time Stern was atop. Over they rolled, once, twice, straining with madness. Stern's thumbs were sunk deep in the throat of the barbarian at either side. As he gouged harder, deeper, he felt the terrific pounding of the chief's jugular. Hot on his own neck panted the choking breath of Kamrou. Oh, could he only hold that grip a minute longer--even a half-minute!
But already his own breath was gone. A buzzing filled his ears; sparkling lights danced, quivering before his eyes. The blood seemed bursting his brain; far off and vague he heard the droning of the flame, the shouts and cries of the great horde of watchers.
A whiff of steam--hot, damp, terrifying--passed across his face, in which the veins were starting from the oily skin. His eyes, half closed, bulged from the sockets. He knew the pit was very close now; dully he heard its steady bubbling.
“If I go--he goes, too!” the engineer swore to himself. “He'll never have--Beatrice--anyway!”
Over and over they rolled, their grips tight-locked as steel. Now Kamrou was on top, now Stern. But the chief's muscles were still strong as ever; Stern's already had begun to weaken.
Strive as he might, he could not get another hold, nor could he throw another ounce of power into that he already had. Up, up, slowly up slipped the chief's arms; Stern knew the savage meant to throttle him; and once those long, prehensile fingers reached his throat, good-by!
Then it seemed to him a voice, very far and small, was speaking to him, coolly, impersonally, in a matter-of-fact way as though suggesting an experiment.
Dazed as he was, he recognized that voice--it was the voice of Dr. Harbutt, who once had taught him many a wily trick upon the mat; Harbutt, dead and gone these thousand years or more.
“Why not try thesatsu-da, Stern?” the voice was saying. “Excellent, at times.”
Though Stern's face was black and swollen, eyes shut and mouth all twisted awry in this titanic struggle with the ape-hold of the huge chief, yet the soul within him calmly smiled.
Thesatsu-da--yes, he remembered it now, strongest and best of all thejiu-jitsufeats.
And, suddenly loosening his hands from the chief's throat, he clenched his right fist, hard as steel.
A second later the “killing-blow” had fallen on the barbarian's neck, just where the swelling protuberance behind the ear marked the vital spot.
Terrible was the force of that blow, struck for his own life, for the honor of Beatrice, the salvation of the world.
Kamrou gave a strange grunt. His head fell backward. Both eyes closed; the mouth lolled open and a glairy froth began to trickle down.
The frightful grip of the long, hairy arms relaxed. Exhausted, Stern fell prone right on the slippery edge of the boiling pit.
He felt a sudden scalding dash of water, steam and boiling spray; he heard a sudden splash, then a wild, barbarous, long-drawn howling of the massed Folk.
Lying there, spent, gasping, all but dead in the thick steam-drift of the vat, he opened his eyes.
Kamrou was nowhere to be seen.
Seemingly very distant, he heard the copper drums begin to beat once more with feverish haste.
A great, compelling lassitude enveloped him. He knew no more.
“Whataltitude now? Can you make-out, Allan?”
“No. The aneroid's only good up to five miles. We must have made two hundred, vertically, since this morning. The way the propeller takes hold and the planes climb in this condensed air is just a miracle!”
“Two passengers at that!” Beatrice answered, leaning back in her seat again. She turned to the patriarch, who, sitting in an extra place in the thoroughly overhauled and newly equipped Pauillac, was holding with nervous hands to the wire stays in front of him.
“Patience, father,” she cheered him. “Two hours more--not over three, at the outside--and you shall breathe the upper air again! For the first time the sunlight shall fall upon your face!”
“The sun! The sun! Oh, is it possible?” murmured the aged man. “Verily, I had never thought to live until this day!The sun!”
Came silence between these three for a time, while the strong heart of the machine beat steadily; and the engineer, with deft and skilful hand, guided it in wide-swept spirals upward, ever up, up, up, back toward the realms of day, of life, once more; up through the fogs and clouds, away from heat and dark and mystery, toward the clear, pure, refreshing air of heaven again.
At last Stern spoke.
“Well, father,” said he, “I never would have thought it; but you were right, after all! They're like so much clay in the potter's hand now, for me. I see I can do with them whatever I will.
“I was afraid some of them might object, after all, to any such proposition. It's one thing for them to accept me as boss down there, and quite another for them to consent to wholesale transplanting, such as we've got under way. But I can't see any possible reason why--with plenty of time and patience--the thing can't be accomplished all right. The main difficulty was their consent; and now we've got that, the rest is mere detail and routine work.”
“Time and patience,” repeated the girl. “Those are our watchwords now, boy. And we've got lots of both, haven't we?”
“Two passengers each trip,” the engineer continued, more practical than she, “and three trips a week, at the most, makes six of the Folk landed on the surface weekly. In other words, it'll take--”
“No matter about that now!” interrupted Beatrice. “We've got all the time there is! Even if it takes five years, what of that? What are months or even years in the life-history of the world?”
Stern kept silence again. In his mind he was revolving a hundred vital questions of shelter, feeding, acclimatization for these men, now to be transported from a place of dark and damp and heat to the strange outer regions of the surface-world.
Plainly he saw it would be a task of unparalleled skill, delicacy, and difficult accomplishment; but his spirits rose only the higher as he faced its actual details. After all that he and Beatrice had been through since their wakening in the tower, he feared no failure to solve any questions that now might rise. By care, by keeping the Folk at first in caves, then gradually accustoming them to stronger and brighter light, more air, more cold, he knew he could bridge the gap of centuries in a few years.
Ever adaptable, the human body would respond to changed environments. Patience and time--these would solve all!
And as for this Folk's barbarism, it mattered not. Much better such stock to rebuild from than some mild, supine race of far higher culture. To fight the rough battles of life and re-establishment still ahead, the bold and warlike Merucaans were all that he could wish.
“Imaginemeas a school-teacher,” suddenly exclaimed the girl, laughing: “giving the children A B C and making them read: ‘I see the cat’--when therearen'tany cats nowadays--no tame ones, anyhow! Imagine--”
“Sh-h-h!” cautioned Stern. “Don't waste your energies imagining things just yet. There's more than enough real work, food-getting, house-building in caves, and all that, before we ever get to schools. That's years ahead yet, education is!”
Silence again, save for the strong and ceaseless chatter of the engine, that, noisy as a score of mowing machines, flung its indomitable challenge to gravitation out into the fathomless void on every hand.
“Allan! Allan! Oh, a star! Look, look!A star!”
The girl was first to see that blest and wondrous thing. Hours had passed, long, weary hours; steadily the air-pressure had sunk, the vapors thinned; but light had not yet filtered through the mists. And Allan's mind had been sore troubled thereat. He had not thought of the simple reason that they were reaching the surface at night.
But now he knew, and as she cried to him “A star!” he, too, looked and saw it, and as though he had been a little child he felt the sudden tears start to his weary eyes.
“A star!” he answered. “Oh, thank God--a star!”
It faded almost at once, as vapors shrouded it; but soon it came again, and others, many more; and now the first breath of the cool and blessed outer air was wafted to them.
Used as they had been, all these long months--for now the year had turned again and early spring was coming up the world--used to the closed and stifling atmosphere of the Abyss, its chemicalized fogs and mists, the first effect of the pure surface-air was almost intoxicating as they mounted higher, higher, toward the lip of the titanic gulf.
The patriarch, trembling with eagerness and with exhaustion--for he was very old and now his vital forces were all but spent--breathed it only with difficulty. Rapid was his respiration; on either pallid cheek a strange and vivid patch of color showed.
Suddenly he spoke.
“Stars? You see them--really see them?” faltered he. “Oh, for my sight again! Oh, that I might see them once, only once, those wonderful things of ancient story! Then, verily, I should be glad to die!”
Midnight.
Hard-driven now for many hours, heated, yet still running true, the Pauillac had at length made a safe landing on the western verge of the Abyss. Again the voyagers felt solid earth beneath their feet. By the clear starlight Stern had brought the machine to earth on a little plateau, wooded in part, partly bare sand. Numb and stiff, he had alighted from the driver's seat, and had helped both passengers alight,
The girl, radiant with joy, had kissed him full upon the lips; the patriarch had fallen on his knees, and, gathering a handful of the sand--the precious surface of the earth, long fabled among his Folk, long worshipped in his deepest reveries--had clasped it to his thin and heaving breast.
If he had known how to pray he would have worshipped there. But even though his lips were silent, his attitude, his soul were all one vast and heartfelt prayer--prayer to the mother-earth, the unseen stars, the night, the wind upon his brow, the sweet and subtle airs of heaven that enfolded him like a caress.
Stern wrapped the old man in a spare mantle, for the night was chill, then made a crackling fire on the sands. Worn out, they rested, all. Little they said. The beauty and majesty of night now--seen again after long absence--a hundred times more solemn than they had ever known it, kept the two Americans from speech. And the old man, buried in his own thoughts, sat by the fire, burning with a fever of impatient longings for the dawn.
Five o'clock.
Now all across the eastern sky, shrouded as it was with the slow, silent mist-wreaths rising ghostly from the Abyss, delicate pink and pearl-gray tints were spreading, shading above to light blues and to purples of exquisite depth and clarity.
No cloud flecked the sky, the wondrous sky of early spring. Dawn, pure as on the primal day, was climbing from the eastern depths. And, thrilled by that eternal miracle, the man and woman, hand in hand, awaited the full coming of the light.
The patriarch spoke.
“Is the sun nigh arisen now?” he queried in a strange, awed voice, trembling with eagerness and deep emotion. “Is it coming, at last--the sun?”
“It'll be here now before long, father,” answered Stern.
“From which direction does it come? Am I facing it?” he asked, with pitiful anxiety.
“You're facing it. The first rays will fall on you. Only be patient. I promise you it shall not fail!”
A pause. Then the aged man spoke again.
“Remember, oh, my children,” said he, with terrible earnestness, “all that I have told you, all that you must know. Remember how to deal with my people. They are as children in your hands. Be very patient, very firm and wise; all will be well.
“Remember my warnings of the Great Vortex, so very far below our sea, the Lanskaarn, and all those other perils of the Abyss whereof I have spoken. Remember, too, all the traditions of the Cave of Records. Some day, when all else is accomplished, you may find that cave. I have told you everything I know of its location. Seek it some day, and find the history of the dead, buried past, from the time of the great catastrophe to the final migration when my ancestors sought the lower sea.”
Another silence. All three were too deeply moved for any speech. And ever mounting higher, brighter and more clear, dawn flung its glories wide across the sky.
“Help me that I may stand, to greet the day!” at last the patriarch said. “I cannot rise, alone.”
Stern and the girl, each taking an arm, got him to his feet. He stood there facing the east, priestlike in venerable and solemn worship of the coming sun.
“Give me each a hand, my children,” he commanded. In Stern's hand, strong, corded, toil-worn, he laid the girl's.
“Thus do I give you each to each,” said he. “Thus do I make you one!”
Stern drew Beatrice into his arms. Blind though the old man was, he sensed the act, and smiled. A great and holy peace had shrouded him.
“Only that I may feel the sun upon my face!” breathed he.
All at once a thinning cloud-haze let the light glow through.
Beatrice looked at Stern. He shook his head.
“Not yet,” he answered.
Swiftly uprose the sun. The morning wind dispelled the shrouding vapors.
“Oh, what is this warmth?” exclaimed the patriarch, trembling violently. “What is this warmth, this glow upon my face? This life, this--”
Out toward the east he stretched both hands. Instinctively the priestlike worship of the sun, old when the world was still in infancy, surged back to him again after the long, lost centuries of darkness and oblivion.