He derived a singular sense of power and exaltation from watching his

settlers at their work.

Strange figures they made in the upper world, descending the cliff at

night, their torches flaring on their pure-white hair bound with gold

ornaments, their nets slung over their brown-clad shoulders.

Strange, too, were the sensations of Beta and Allan as they beheld the

flambeaux gleaming silently along the pool or over the surface when

the Folk put forth on the rude rafts Allan had helped them build.

And as, with the same weird song they had used in the under world, the

heavy-laden Merucaans clambered again up the terraces to their

dwelling in the rock, something drew very powerfully at Allan's heart.

He analyzed it not, being a man of deeds rather than of introspection;

yet it was "the strong man yearning toward his kind," the very love of

his own race within him--the thrill, the inspiration of the master

builder laying the foundations for better things to be.

Allan and the girl had long talks about the character of the future

civilization they meant to raise.

"We must begin right this time at all hazards," he told her. "The

world we used to know just happened; it just grew up, hit-or-miss,

without scientific planning or thought or care. It was partly the

result of chance, partly of ignorance and greed. The kind of human

nature it developed was in essence a beast nature, with 'Grab!' for

its creed.

"We must do better than that! From the very start, now, we must nip

off the evil bud that might later blossom into private property and

wealth, exploitation and misery. There shall be no rich men in our

world now and no slaves. No idlers and no oppressed. 'Service' must be

our watchword, and our motto 'Each for all and all for each!'

"While there are fish within the river and fruit upon the palm, none

shall starve and none shall hoard. Superstition and dogma, fear and

cruelty, shall have no place with us. We understand--you and I; and

what we know we shall teach. And nothing shall survive of the world

that was, save such things as were good. For the old order has passed

away--and the new day shall be a better one."

Thus for hours at a time, by starlight and moonlight on the

rock-terrace or by fire-glow in their cave--now homelike with

rough-hewn furniture and mats of plaited grass--they talked and

dreamed and planned.

And executed, too; for they drew up a few basic, simple laws, and

these they taught their little colony even now, for from the very

beginning they meant the germs of the new society should root in the

hearts of the rescued race.

The third trip was delayed by a tremendous rain that poured with

tropic suddenness and fury over the face of the world, driven on the

breath of a wild-shouting tempest.

For the space of two days heaven and earth were blotted out by the

gray, hurling sheets of wind-driven water, while down the canyon New

Hope River roared and foamed in thunder cadences.

Beta and Allan, warmly and snugly sheltered in their cave, cared

nothing for the storm. It only served to remind them of that other

torrential downpour, soon after they had reached the village of the

Folk; but now how altered the situation! Captives then, they were

masters now; and the dread chasms of the Abyss were now exchanged for

the beauties and the freedom of the upper world.

No wind could shake, no deluge invade, their house among the

everlasting rock-ribs. Bright crackled their fire, and on the broad

divan of cedar he had hewn and covered thick with furs, they two could

lie and talk and dream, and let the storm rage, careless of its

impotent fury.

"There's only one sorrow in my heart," whispered Beta, drawing his

head down on her breast and smoothing his hair with that familiar,

well-loved caress. "Just one, dear--can you guess it?"

"No millinery shops to visit, you mean?" he rallied her.

"Oh, Allan, when I'm so much in earnest, how can you?"

"Well, what's the trouble, sweetheart?"

"When the storm ends you're going to leave me again! I wish--I almost

wish it would rain forever!"

He made no answer, and she, as one who sees strange and sad visions,

gazed into the leaping flames, and in her deep gray eyes lay tears

unshed.

"Sing to me!" he murmured presently.

Stroking his head and brow, she sang as aforetime at the bungalow upon

the Hudson:

Stark wie der Fels,

Tief wie das Meer,

Muss deine Liebe,

Muss deine Liebe sein! ...

The third trip was made in safety, and others after it, and steadily

the colony took shape and growth.

More and more the caves came to be occupied. Stern set the Merucaans

to work excavating the limestone, piercing tunnels and chimneys,

making passageways and preparing for the ever-increasing number of

settlers.

Their native arts and crafts began to flourish. In the gloomy recesses

fires glowed hot. Ores began to be smelted, with primitive bellows and

technique as in the Under-world, and through the night--stillness

sounded the ring and clangor of anvils mightily smitten.

Palm-fibers yielded cordage for more nets or finer thread for the

looms that now began to clack--for at last some few women had arrived,

and even a couple of the strong, pale children, who had traveled

stowed in crates like the water-fowl.

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.

CHAPTER XIX

THE MASTER OF HIS RACE

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 canyon, 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 canyon, 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!

CHAPTER XX

DISASTER!

That evening, 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 be

_Merucaans_, but now _Americans_ again. 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.

An esprit 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, _you_ know. 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 you _never_ went 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? Leave _me?_"

"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.

CHAPTER XXI

ALLAN RETURNS NOT

Five days 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 the via dolorosa of 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 our Kromno is 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 the ronyilu weed, 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 the ronyilu,

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.

CHAPTER XXII

THE TREASON OF H'YEMBA

Not yet 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, debris, 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 canyon, 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 debris 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! _This_ is 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, till _ye_ fell 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 abandoned _you_ as 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, while _we_ die 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 canyon 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.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE RETURN OF THE MASTER

Suddenly finding 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 Yulcia noa!"

"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-he! 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.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE BOY IS GONE!

The man, 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 canyon 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 do _something!_" 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.

He advanced to the door, and putting the muzzle of his automatic

almost on the lock, shattered it with six heavy bullets.

Again he dashed the boulder against the door. It groaned and gave.

Reloading ere he ventured in, he now set his shoulder to the door and

forced it slowly open, with the pistol always ready in his right hand.

Keenly his eyes sought out the darkened corners of the room. Here,

there they pierced, striving to determine whether any ambushed foe

were lying there in wait for him.

"Surrender!" he cried loudly in the Merucaan tongue. "If there be any

here who war with me, surrender! _At the first sign of fight, you

die!_"

No answer.

Still leaving the girl beside the broken door till he should feel

positive there was no peril--and always filled with a vast wonder how

the door could have been locked from within--Allan advanced slowly,

cautiously, into their home.

He was cool now--cool and strong again. The frightful perils and

exposures of the week past seemed to have fallen from him like an

outworn mantle.

He ignored his pain and weakness as though such things were not. And,

with index on trigger, eyes watchful and keen, he scouted down the

cave-dwelling.

Suddenly he stopped.

"Who's there?" he challenged loudly.

At the left of the room, not far from the big fireplace, he had

perceived a dim, vague figure, prone upon the floor.

"_Answer, or I shoot!_"

But the figure remained motionless. Allan realized there was no fight

in it. Still cautiously, however, he advanced.

Now he touched the figure with his foot, now bent above it and peered

down.

"Old Gesafam! Heaven above! Wounded! What does this mean?"

Starting back, he stared in horror at the old woman, stunned and

motionless, with the blood coagulating along an ugly cut on her

forehead.

Then, as though a prescience had swept his being, he sprang to the

bed.

"My son! My boy! Where are you?" he shouted hoarsely.

With a shaking hand he flung down the bedclothes of finely woven palm

fiber.

"My boy! My boy!"

The bed was empty. His son had disappeared.

CHAPTER XXV

THE FALL OF H'YEMBA

Blinded with staggering grief and terror, stunned, stricken,

all but annihilated, the man recoiled.

Then, with a cry, he sprang to the bed again, and now in a very

passion of eagerness explored it. His trembling hands dragged all the

bedding off and threw it broadcast. By the dim light he peered with

wide and terror-smitten eyes.

"My boy!" he choked. "_My boy!_"

But beyond all manner of doubt the boy had been stolen.

Unable to understand, or think, or plan, Allan stood there, his face

ghastly, his heart quivering within him.

What could have happened? How and why? If the door had been securely

locked and the old nurse been with the child, how could the kidnapper

have borne him away?

What? How? Why?

More, ever more, questions crowded the man's brain, all equally

without answer.

But now, he dimly realized, was no time for solving problems. The

minute demanded swift and drastic action. He must find, must save, his

son! After that other riddles could he unraveled.

"H'yemba!" he cried hoarsely. "This is H'yemba's work! Revenge and

hate have driven him to rebel again. To try to seize Beatrice! To

steal my son! At this time of peril and affliction, above all others!

H'yemba! The smith must die!"

But first he realized he must get Beatrice into safety.

In haste he ran to the door, picked up the girl and carried her to the

bed. Here he disposed her at ease, covered her with the bedding, and

bathed her face and hands with water from the cooling-jar.

The old nurse he laid upon the broad couch by the fire and likewise

tended. He saw now she had been struck with a stone ax, a glancing

blow, severe, but not necessarily fatal.

"Probably trying to defend the boy!" thought he. "Brave heart!

Faithful even unto death--if death be your reward!"

Leaving her, he returned to his wife.

Now, he well understood, he had no time for emotion. There must be no

false move. Even at the expense of a little time, he must plan the

campaign with skill and execute it with relentless energy.

He alone now stood for power, rule, order, law, in this disintegrated

community--this colony racked with disaster, anarchy and death.

Upon him alone now depended its whole fate and future, and, with it,

the fate and future of the world.

"Merciful Lord, what a situation!" he whispered. "At home, disruption

and savagery. Outside, the Horde--the Horde now pressing onward after

me!"

He sat down beside the bed and forced himself to think. Weak as he was

and wounded with a spear-thrust in the lower leg as well as a jagged

cut across the breast, he felt that he might still keep strength

enough for a few hours more of toil.

Of a sudden he realized an over-powering thirst. Till now he had not

felt it. He arose, drank deeply from the jar, then--something cooler

and more calm--once more returned to Beatrice.

"The first thing is to help her," he said. "No use in losing my wits

and rushing out unprepared to find the boy. If H'yemba has stolen him

it's certain the boy is hidden beyond my present power in some far

recess of the inter-communicating rabbit-warren of caves below there

in the cliff.

"I feel positive no bodily harm will be done the child. H'yemba will

hold him for power over me. He will try to exact terms--even to

leadership in the colony, even to possession of Beatrice. And the

penalty of refusal may be the boy's death--"

He shuddered profoundly, and with both wasted hands covered his face.

For a moment madness sought to possess him.

He felt a wild desire to shout imprecations, to rush out, fling

himself against the cave-door of H'yemba and riddle it with

bullets--but presently calm returned again. For in Stern's nature lay

nothing of hysteria. Reason and calm judgment dominated. And before he

acted he always reckoned every pro and con.

"It must be a battle of wits as well as force," thought he. "A little

time will decide all that. For now Beatrice demands my first care and

thought!"

Now he examined the girl once more. Closing the door and lighting the

bronze lamp, he carefully studied the sick woman, noting her symptoms,

pulse and respiration.

"What to do?" he asked himself. "What means to tale?"

He arose and rummaged the stores for drugs. Above all, he must break

the fever. He therefore prepared and administered a powerful

febrifuge, covered the girl with all the available bedding, and

determined, if possible, to make her sweat. This done, he found no

further means at hand and now turned his attention once more to

Gesafam.

Her wound he bathed and bandaged and, having given her a stiff drink

of brandy, poured between resisting teeth which he had to separate

with his knife-blade, he presently perceived some signs of returning

consciousness.

But, though he questioned the old woman and tried desperately to make

her answer, he could get no coherent information.

Only the name of H'yemba and some few disconnected mutterings of

terror rewarded him. He knew now, however, with positive certainty

that the smith was responsible for the kidnapping of his son.

"And that," said he, "means I must seek him out at once. All I ask is

just one sight of him. One sight, one bullet--and the score is paid!"

He arose and, again making sure his automatic was in complete

readiness, stood for a second in thought. Whatever he was now to do

must be done quickly.

In a few hours, at the outside, he knew the vanguard of the pursuing

Horde would enter the last valley on the other side of the canyon. By

afternoon another battle might be on.

"Whatever happens, I must get my grip on the colony again at once!" he

realized. "Such of the Folk as are still sound must be rallied.

Otherwise nothing but annihilation awaits us all!"

But, even as he faced the exit of Cliff Villa, all at once the door

was hurled violently open and a harsh, discordant cry of hatred and

defiance burst into the cave.

Stern saw the detested figure of H'yemba standing there, loose-hung,

powerful, barbaric, his eyes blinking evilly behind the mica screens

that Allan himself had made for him.

With a cry Allan started forward.

"My son!" he gasped.

There, clutched in the smith's left arm, lay the boy!

Allan heard his child crying as in pain, and rage swept every caution

to the winds.

He sprang toward H'yemba, cursing; but the smith, with a beast-laugh,

raised his right hand.

"Master!" he mocked. "No nearer or ye die!"

Allan, aghast, saw the flicker of sunlight on a pistol-barrel. With

only too true an aim, H'yemba had him covered.

Came a little pause, tense as steel wire. Somewhere down the terrace

sounded a murmur of voices. Allan seemed to sense that the rebel had

now gathered his forces and that a general attack was imminent.

Time! At all hazards he must gain a moment's time!

"H'yemba!" cried he. "What is your speech with me, your master?"

"Master?" sneered the smith again. "My slave! Power has passed from

you to me. From you, who speak the false, who entrap us here to suffer

and die, who slay and ruin us, to me, who will yet lead the people

back to their far home, to safety and to life!"

"You lie, hound!"

The smith laughed bitterly.

"That shall be seen--who lies!" he gibed. "But now power is mine. I

have your son in my hand. Move only and I fling him from the cliff!"

Allan felt his brain whirl; all things seemed to turn about him. But

he fought off his faintness, and in a shaken voice once more demanded:

"What terms, H'yemba?"

"Slavery for you and yours! Your son shall be my serf; your woman my

chattel! Ha, that woman! She has already fought me, like one of these

strange woods-beasts you have made us kill! See! My hair is burned and

my flesh blistered with her fire-beating! But when I hold her in these

hands then she shall pay for all, the vuedma!"

Stern's hand twitched, with the automatic gripped in the fingers, but

the blacksmith cried a warning.

"Raise not that hand, slave!" he ordered. "You cannot shoot without

the danger of killing this vile spawn of yours! And remember, too, the

river lies far below, and very sharp are the waiting rocks!

"Fool that you are, that think yourself so wise! To leave this place

with me! With me, skilled in all labors of metal and stone, strong to

cut passage-ways--"

"You devil! You hewed a way into my house?"

H'yemba laughed brutally.

"Silently, steadily, I labored!" he boasted. "And behold the reward!

Power for me; eternal slavery for you and all your blood--if any

live!"

Insane with rage and hate, Allan nevertheless realized that now all

depended on keeping his thought and nerve.

One single premature move and his son would inevitably be hurled over

the parapet, down two hundred and fifty feet to the river-bed below.

At all hazards, he must keep cool!

The smith, after all only a barbarian and of limited intelligence, had

not even thought of the obvious command to make Stern drop his pistol

on the floor.

Upon this oversight now hung all Allan's hopes.

Even though the man's retainers might rush the cave and slaughter all,

yet in Allan's heart burned a clear and steady flame of hot desire to

compass H'yemba's death.

And as the smith now loudly boasted, insulted, vilified, in the true

manner of the savage, imperceptibly, inch by inch, Allan was turning

his pistol-barrel upward.

Higher, higher, bit by bit it crept toward the horizontal.

Unaccustomed to shoot from the hip, Allan realized that right before

him lay a supreme test of nerve and marksmanship and skill.

To shoot and kill his boy--the thought was too hideous even to be

considered. His father-heart yearned toward the frightened, crying

child there in the traitor's grip.

The unconscious form of Beatrice fever-burned and panting on the bed,

seemed calling aloud to him: "Aim true, Allan! _Aim true!_"

For one false shot inevitably sealed the child's death. To wound

H'yemba and not kill him meant the catastrophe. If the bullet failed

to enter brain or heart, H'yemba--though mortally hurt--would of a

surety, with his last quiver of strength, sling the boy outward over

the dizzying parapet.

Allan prayed; yet his prayer was wordless, formless and unconscious.

He dared not glance down at the automatic. His eyes must hold the

smith's. And he must speak, must parley, at all hazards must still

gain another moment's respite.

What Allan said in those last terrible, eternal seconds he could never

afterward recall.

He only knew he was treating with the enemy, making terms, listening,

answering--all with mechanical sub-consciousness.

His real personality, his true ego, was absolutely absorbed in the one

vital, all-deciding problem of that stiffening pistol-hand.

Suddenly something seemed to cry in his ear:

"You have it now! Fire!"

His hand leaped back with the crashing discharge, loud-echoing in the

cave.

H'yemba did not even yell. But at the second when he seemed to crumple

all together, falling as an empty sack falls, some involuntary jerk of

his finger sent a bullet zooming into the cave.

It shattered beyond Allan in a little shower of steel and lead

fragments, mingled with rock-dust.

Before these had even fallen Allan was upon him.

Neglecting for an instant the bruised and screaming child, who lay

there struggling on the terrace-path, Allan seized the still-twitching

body of the monstrous traitor.

With passionate strength he dragged it to the parapet.

Below, down the path, he caught a swift glimpse of grouped Folk,

wondering, staring, aghast.

To them he gave no heed.

He lifted the body, dripping bright blood.

Silent, indomitable, disheveled, he raised it on high.

Then, with a cry: "See, ye people, how I answer traitors!" he

whirled it outward into the void.

Over and over it gyrated through vacant space. Then, with an echoing

splash, the river took it, and the swift current, white-foaming,

boisterous, wild, rolled it and tumbled it away, away forever, into

the unknown.

With harsh cries and a wild spatter of bullets aimed high above them,

Allan drove the cowed and beaten partizans of H'yemba jostling,

fleeing, howling for mercy, down the terrace-path between the cliff

and parapet.

Only then, when he knew victory was secure and his own dominance once

more sealed on them, did he run swiftly back to his boy.

Snatching up the child, he retreated into the home cave again; and now

for the first time he realized his wan and sunken cheeks were wet with

tears.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE COMING OF THE HORDE

Now that, for an hour or two at least, he felt himself free and

master of the situation, Allan devoted himself with energy to the

immediate situation in Cliff Villa.

Though still weak and dazed, old Gesafam had now recovered strength

and wit enough to soothe and care for the child.

Allan heard from her, in a few disjointed words, all she knew of the

kidnapping. H'yemba, she said, had suddenly appeared to her, from the

remote end of the cave, and had tried to snatch the child.

She had fought, but one blow of his ax had stunned her. Beyond this,

she remembered nothing.

Allan sought and quickly found the aperture made by the smith through

the limestone.

"Evidently he'd been planning this coup for a long time," thought he.

"The great catastrophe of the land-slide broke the last bonds of order

and restraint, and gave him his opportunity. Well, it's his last

villainy! I'll have this passageway cemented up. That's all the

monument he'll ever get. It's more than he deserves!"

He returned to Beatrice. The girl still lay there, moaning a little in

her fevered sleep. Allan watched her in anguish.

"Oh, if she should die--if she should die!" thought he, and felt the

sweat start on his forehead. "She must not! She can't! I won't let

her!"

A touch on his arm aroused him from his vigil. Turning, he saw

Gesafam.

"The child, O Kromno, hungers. It is crying for food!" Allan thought.

He saw at once the impossibility of letting the boy come near its

mother. Some other arrangement must be made.

"Ah!" thought he. "I have it!"

He gestured toward the door.

"Go," he commanded. "Go up the path, to the palisaded place. Take this

rope. Bring back, with you a she-goat. Thus shall the child be fed!"

The old woman obeyed. In a quarter-hour she had returned, dragging a

wild goat that bleated in terror.

Then, while she watched with amazement, Allan succeeded in milking the

creature; though he had to lash securely all four feet and throw it to

the cave-floor before it would submit.

He modified the milk with water and bade the old woman administer it

by means of a bit of soft cloth. Allan, Junior, protested with yells,

but had to make the best of hard necessity; and, after a long and

painful process, was surfeited and dozed off. Gesafam put him to bed

on the divan by the fire.

"A poor substitute," thought Allan, "but it will sustain life. He's

healthy; he can stand it--he's _got_ to. Thank God for that goat!

Without it he might easily have starved."

He tied the animal at the rear of the cave, and had Gesafam fetch a

good supply of grass. Thus for the present one problem at least was

solved.

Beatrice's condition remained unchanged. Now and then she called for

water, which he gave her plentifully. Once he thought she recognized

him, but he could not be certain.

And day wore on; and now the hour of noon was at hand. Allan knew that

other duties called him. He must go down among the Folk and save them,

too, if possible.

Eating a little at random and making sure as always that his pistols

were well loaded, he consigned Beatrice and the child into the old

woman's keeping and left the cave.

On the terrace he stopped a moment, gazing triumphantly at the

bloodmarks now thickly coagulated down the rocks.

Then, out over the canyon and the forest to northward he peered. His

eyes caught the signal-fires he knew must be there now, not ten miles

away; and with a nod he smiled.

"They've certainly trailed me close, the devils!" sneered he. "Since

the minute they first attacked my two men and me, trying to repair the

disabled Pauillac in that infernal valley so far to northward, they

haven't given me an hour's respite! Before night there'll be war!

Well, let them come. The quicker now the better!"

Then he turned, and with a determined step, still clad in his

grotesque rags, descended toward the caves of the Folk, such as still

were left.

Where all had been resistance and defiant surliness before, now all

had become obedience and worship. He understood enough of the

barbarian psychology to know that power, strength and dominance--and

these alone--commanded respect with the Folk.

And among them all, those who had not seen as well as those that had,

the sudden, dramatic, annihilating downfall of H'yemba had again

cemented the bonds of solidarity more closely than ever.

The sight of that arch-rebel's body hurled from the parapet had

effectually tamed them, every one. No longer was there any murmur in

their caves, no thought save of obedience and worship.

"It's not what I want," reflected Allan. "I want intelligent

cooperation, not adulation. I want democracy! But, damn it! if they

can't understand, then I must rule a while. And rule I will--and they

shall obey or die!"

Quickly he got in touch with the situation. From cave to cave he went,

estimating the damage. At the great gap in the terrace he stood and

carefully observed the wreckage in the river-bed below.

He visited the hospital-cave, administered medicines, changed

dressings and labored for his Folk as though no shadow of rebellion

ever had come 'twixt them and him. The news of Bremilu's death moved

him profoundly. Bremilu had been one of his two most competent and

trusted followers, and Allan, too, felt a strong personal affection

for the man who had saved his life that first night at the cliffs.

Beside the body he stood, in the morgue-cave whither it had been

borne. With bowed head the master looked upon the man; and from his

eyes fell tears; and in his heart he felt a vacant place not soon to

be made whole.

With profound emotion he took Bremilu's cold hand in his--the hand

that had so deftly and so powerfully stricken down the gorilla--and

for a while held it, gazing on the dead man's face.

"Good-by," said he at length. "You were a brave heart and a true.

Never shall you be forgotten. Good-by!"

He summoned a huge fellow named Frumuos, now the most intelligent of

the Folk remaining, and together they directed the work of carrying

the bodies up to the cliff-top and there burying them.

By the middle of the afternoon some semblance of order and control had

become organized in the colony. He returned to Cliff Villa, leaving

strict orders for Frumuos to call him in case of need.

Very beautiful the world was that afternoon. In the soft south wind

the fronded palms across the river were bowing and nodding gracefully.

Overhead, dazzling clouds drifted northward.

It seemed to him he could almost hear the rustle of the dry

undergrowth, parched by the past fortnight of exceptionally hot

weather; but, above all, rose the eternal babble of the rapids. High

in air, a vulture wheeled its untiring spirals. At sight of it he

frowned. It reminded him of the Pauillac, now wrecked far beyond the

horizon, where the Horde had trapped him. He shuddered, for the

memories of the past week were infinitely horrible, and he longed only

to forget.

With a last glance at the scene, over which the ominous threads of

smoke now drifted in considerable numbers, he frowned. He reentered

the villa.

"No matter _what_ happens now," he muttered, "I've got to snatch a few

minutes rest. Otherwise, I'm liable to drop in my tracks. And, above

all, I must try to pull through. For on me, and me alone, now

everything depends!"

He sat down by the bed again, too stupefied by the toxins of fatigue

and exhaustion to do more than note that Beatrice was, at any rate, no

worse.

Human effort and emotion had, in fact, reached their extreme climax in

him. He felt numb all over, in body, mind and soul. A weaker man would

have succumbed long ago to but half the hardships he had struggled

through. Now he must rest a bit.

"Bring water, Gesafam!" he commanded. When she had obeyed, he let her

wash his wounds and dress them with leaves and ointment. Then he

himself bandaged them, his head nodding, eyes already drooping shut

from moment to moment.

His head sank on the bed, and one hand sought the girl's. Despite his

wonderful vitality and strength, Allan was on the verge of collapse.

Vague and confused thoughts wandered through his unsettled brain.

What was the destiny of the colony to be, now that the Pauillac was

lost and so many of the Folk wiped out? Were there any hopes of

ultimate success? And the Horde, what of that? How long a respite

might be counted on before the inevitable, decisive battle?

A score, a hundred questions, more and more illusory, blent and faded

and reformed in his overtaxed mind.

Then, blessed as a balm, sleep took him.

A violent shaking roused him from dead slumber.

Old Gesafam stood there beside him. She had him by the arm.

"Waken, O master!" she was crying. "O Kromno, rouse! For now there is

great need!"

Dazed, he started up.

"What--what is it now? More trouble?"

She pointed toward the door.

"Beyond there, master! Beyond the river there be many moving

creatures! Darts and arrows have begun to fall against the cliff. See,

one has even come into the cave! What shall be done, master?"

Broad awake now, Allan ran to the door and peered out.

Daylight was fading. He must have slept an hour or two; it had seemed

but a second. In the west the sun was burning its way toward the

horizon, through a thick set of haze that cloaked the rim of the

earth.

"Here, master! See!"

Stooping, she picked up a long, slight object and handed it to him.

"One of their poisoned darts, so help me!" he exclaimed. "Cast that

into the fire, Gesafam. And have a care lest it wound you, for the

slightest scratch is death!"

While she, wondering, obeyed, he hastily reconnoitered the situation.

He had felt positive the Horde, after his escape from it by devious

and terrible ways, would track him down.

He had known the army of the hideous little beast-folk, that for a

year now had been slowly gathering from north and east for one final

assault, would eventually find Settlement Cliffs and there make still

another attempt to crush him and his.

But, knowing all this, knowing even that the whole region beyond the

river now swarmed with these ghastly monstrosities, the actuality

appalled him.

Now that the attack was really at hand, he felt a strange and sudden

sense of helplessness.

And with a bitter curse he shook his fist at the dark forest across

the canyon where--even as he looked--he saw a movement of crouching,

furtive things; he heard a dull thump-thump as of clubs beating hollow

logs.

"You devils!" he execrated. "Oh, for a ton of Pulverite to drop among

you!"

"Look, master, look! The bridge! The bridge!"

He turned quickly as old Gesafam pointed up-stream.

There, clearly outlined against the sky, he saw a dozen--a score of

little, crouching figures emerge from the forest on the north bank,

and at a clumsy run defile along the swaying footpath high above the

rapids.

CHAPTER XXVII

WAR!

At sight of the advance-guard of the Horde now already loping,

crouched and ugly, over the narrow bridge to Settlement Cliffs Allan's

first impulse was one of absolute despair.

He had expected an attack ere night, but at least he had hoped an

hour's respite to recover a little of his strength and to muster all

the still valid men of the Folk for resistance. Now, however, he saw

even this was to be denied him. For already the leaders of the Horde

scouts had passed the center of the bridge.

Three or four minutes more and they would be inside the palisade, upon

the cliff!

"God! If they once get in there, we're gone!" cried Allan. "We're cut

off from everything. Our animals will be slaughtered. The boy will

die! They can bombard us with rocks from aloft. It means

annihilation!"

Already he was running up the path toward the palisade. Not one second

was to be lost. There was no time even to call a single man of the

Folk to reenforce him. Single-handed and alone he must meet the

invaders' first attack.

Panting, sweating, stumbling, he scrambled up the steep terrace. And

as he ran his thoughts outdistanced him.

"Fool that I was to have left the bridge!" choked he. "My first act

when I set foot on solid land should have been to cut the ropes and

drop the whole thing into the rapids! I might have known this would

happen--fool that I was!"

The safety, the life, of the whole colony, including his wife and son,

now depended solely on his reaching the southern end of the bridge

before the vanguard of the Horde.

With a heart-racking burst of energy he sprang to the defence, and as

he ran he drew his hunting-knife.

Reeling with exhaustion, spent, winded, yet still in desperation

struggling onward, he won the top of the cliff, swung to the left

along the path that led to the bridge, and--more dead than

alive--rushed onward in a last, supreme effort.