Authors: George England
Writing on his fish-skin tablets, with his bone stylus, dipped in his
little stone jar of cuttle-fish ink, he carefully recorded the
geographical location. Then he went back to Beatrice, who still sat in
the midmorning sunlight by the fire, very beautiful and dear to him.
"If we can find those records, we'll have made a long step toward
solving the problem of how to handle the Folk. They aren't exactly
what one would call an amenable tribe, at best. We need their history,
even the little of it that the records must contain, for surely there
must be names and events in them of great value in our work of trying
to bring these people to the surface and recivilize them."
"Well, what's to hinder our getting the records now?" she asked
seriously, with wonder in her gray and level gaze.
"
That
, for one thing!"
He gestured at the Abyss.
"It's a good six or seven hundred miles wide, and we already know how
deep it is. I don't think we want to risk trying to cross it again and
running out of fuel en route! Volplaning down to the village is
quite a different proposition from a straight-away flight across!"
She sat pensive a moment.
"There must be some way around," said she at last. "Otherwise a party
of survivors couldn't have set out for Storm King on the Hudson to
deposit a set of records there!"
"That's so, too. But—remember? 'Never returned.' I figure it this
way: A party of the survivors probably started for New York,
exploring. The big, concrete cathedral on Storm King—it was new in
1916, you remember—was known the country over as the most massive
piece of architecture this side of the pyramids. They must have
planned to leave one set of records there, in case the east, too, was
devastated. Well—"
"Do you suppose they succeeded?"
"No telling. At any rate, there's a chance of it. And as for this
Rocky Mountain cache, that's manifestly out of the question, for now."
"So then?" she queried eagerly.
"So then our job is to strike for Storm King. Incidentally we can
revisit Hope Villa, our bungalow on the banks of the Hudson. It's been
a year since we left it, almost—ten months, at any rate. Gad! What
marvels and miracles have happened since then, Beta—what perils, what
escapes! Wouldn't you like to see our little nest again? We could rest
up and plan and strengthen ourselves for the greater tasks ahead. And
then—"
He paused, a change upon his face, his eyes lighting with a sudden
glow. She saw and understood; and her breast rose with sudden keen
emotion.
"You mean," whispered she, "in our own home?"
"Where better?"
She paled as, kneeling beside her, he flung a powerful arm about her,
and pulled her to him, breathing heavily.
"Don't! Don't!" she forbade. "No, no, Allan—there's so much work to
do—you mustn't!"
To her a vision rose of dream-children—strong sons and daughters yet
unborn. Their eyes seemed smiling, their fingers closing on hers.
Cloudlike, yet very real, they beckoned her, and in her stirred the
call of motherhood—of life to be. Her heart-strings echoed to that
harmony; it seemed already as though a tiny head, downy—soft, was
nestling in her bosom, while eager lips quested, quested.
"No, Allan! No!"
Almost fiercely she flung him back and stood up.
"Come!" said she. "Let us start at once. Nothing remains for us to do
here. Let us go—home!"
An hour later the Pauillac spiralled far aloft, above the edge of the
Abyss, then swept into its eastward tangent, and in swift, droning
flight rushed toward the longed-for place of dreams, of rest, of love.
Before them stretched infinities of labor and tremendous struggle; but
for a little space they knew they now were free for this, the
consummation of their dreams, of all their hopes, their happiness,
their joy.
Toward five o'clock next afternoon, from the swooping back of
the air-dragon they sighted a far blue ribbon winding among wooded
heights, and knew Hudson once more lay before them.
The girl's heart leaped for joy at thought of once again seeing Hope
Villa, the beach, the garden, the sun-dial—all the thousand and one
little happy and pleasant things that, made by them in the heart of
the vast wilderness, had brought them such intimate and unforgetable
delight.
"There it is, Allan!" cried she, pointing. "There's the river again.
We'll soon be home now—home again!"
He smiled and nodded, watchful at the wheel, and swung the biplane a
little to southward, in the direction where he judged the bungalow
must lie.
Weary they both were, yet full of life and strength. The trip from the
chasm had been tedious, merely a long succession of hours in the
rushing air, with unbroken forest, hills, lakes, rivers, and ever more
forest steadily rolling away to westward like a vast carpet a thousand
feet below.
No sign of man, no life, no gap in nature's all-embracing sway. Even
the occasional heap of ruins marking the grave of some forgotten city
served only to intensify the old half-terror they had felt, when
flying for the first time, at thought of the tremendous desolation of
the world.
The shining plain of Lake Erie had served the first day as a landmark
to keep them true to their course.
That night they had stopped at the ruins of Buffalo, where they had
camped in the open, and where next morning Stern had fully replenished
his fuel-tanks with the usual supplies of alcohol from the debris of
two or three large drug-stores.
From Buffalo eastward, over almost the same course along which the
hurricane of ten months ago had driven them, battling at random with
the gale, they steered by the compass. Toward mid-morning they saw a
thin line of smoke arising in the far north, answered by still another
on the hills beyond, but to these signs they gave no heed.
Already they had seen and scorned them during their first stay at the
bungalow. They felt that nothing more was to be seriously feared from
such survivors of the Horde as had escaped the great Battle of the
Tower—a year and a half previously.
"Those chaps won't bother us again; I'm sure of that!" said Allan,
nodding toward the smoke-columns that rose, lazily blue, on the
horizon. "The scare we threw into them in Madison Forest will last
them
one
while!"
Still in this confident, defiant mood it was that they sighted the
river again and watched it rapidly broaden as the Pauillac, in a long
series of flat arcs, spurned the June air and whirled them onward
toward their goal.
Nearer the Hudson drew, and nearer still; and now its untroubled
azure, calm save for a few cat's-paws of breeze that idled on the
surface, stretched almost beneath them in their rapid flight.
"We're still a little too far north, I see," the man judged, and swept
the biplane round to southward.
The ruins of Newburgh lay presently upon their right. Soon after the
crumbled walls of West Point's pride slid past in silence, save for
the chatter of the engines, the whirling roar of the propeller-blades'
vast energy.
No boat now vexed the flood. Upon its bosom neither steam nor sail now
plowed a furrow. Along the banks no speeding train flung its
smoke-pennant to the wind. Primeval silence, universal calm, wrapped
all things.
Beatrice shuddered slightly. Now that they were nearing "home" the
desolation seemed more appalling.
"Oh, Allan, is it possible all this will ever be peopled
again—
alive?
"
"Certain to be! Once we get those records and begin transplanting the
Merucaans, the rest will be only a matter of time!"
She made no answer, but in her eyes shone pride that he could know
such visions, have such faith.
Already they recognized the ruins of Nyack, and beyond them the point
in the river behind which, they knew, lay Hope Villa, nestling in its
gardens, its little sphere of cultivation hewn from the very heart of
the dense wilderness.
Allan slackened speed, crossed to the eastern bank, and jockeyed for a
safe landing.
The point slipped backward and away. There, right ahead, they caught a
glimpse of the long white beach where they had fished and bathed and
built their boat-house, and whence in their little yawl they had ten
months before started on their trip of exploration—a trip destined to
end so strangely in the Abyss.
"Home! Home!" cried Beta, the quick tears starting to her lids. "Oh,
home again!"
Already the great plane was swooping downward toward the beach, hardly
a mile away, when a harsh shout escaped the man.
"Look! Canoes! My God—
what
—"
As the drive of the Pauillac opened up the concave of the sand and
brought its whole length to view, Stern and the girl suddenly became
aware of trouble.
There, strung along the beach irregularly, they all at once made out
ten, twenty, thirty boats. Still afar, they could see these were the
same rough bancas such as they had seen after the battle—bancas in
one of which they two had escaped up-river!
"Boats! The Horde again!"
Even as he shouted a tiny, black, misshapen little figure ran
crouching out onto the sand. Another followed and a third, and now a
dozen showed there, very distinct and hideous, upon the white
crescent.
Stern's heart went sick within him A terrible rage welled up—a hate
such as he had never believed possible to feel.
Wild imprecations struggled to be voiced. He snapped his lips together
in a thin line, his eyes narrowed, and his face went gray.
"The infernal little beasts!" he gritted. "Tried to trap us in the
tower—cut our boat loose afterward—and now invading us! Don't know
when they're licked, the swine!"
Beatrice had lost her color now. Milk-white her face was; her eyes
grew wide with terror; she strove to speak, but could not.
Her hand went out in a wild, repelling gesture, as though by the very
power of her love for home she could protect it now against the
incursion of these foul, distorted, inhuman little monsters.
Stern acted quickly. He had been about to cut off power and coast for
the beach; but now he veered suddenly to eastward again, rotated the
rising-plane, and brought the Pauillac up at a sharp tilt. Banking, he
advanced the spark a notch; the engine shrilled a half-tone higher,
and with increased speed the aero lifted them bravely in a long and
rising swoop.
He snatched his automatic from its holster on his hip and as the plane
swept past the beach, down-stream, let fly a spatter of steel jacketed
souvenirs at the fast-thickening pack on the sand.
Far up to the girl and him, half heard through the clatter of the
motors, they sensed a thin, defiant, barbarous yell—a yapping chorus,
bestial and horrible.
Again Stern fired.
He could see quick spurts of water jet up along the edge of the sand,
and one of the creatures fell, but this was only a chance shot.
At that distance, firing from a swift-skimming plane, he knew he could
do no execution, and with a curse slid the pistol back again into its
place.
"Oh, for a dirigible and a few Pulverite bombs, same as we had in the
tower!" he wished. "I'd clean the blighters out mighty quick!"
But now Beatrice was pointing, with a cry of dismay, down, away at the
bungalow itself, which had for a moment become visible at the far end
of the clearing as the Pauillac scudded past.
Even as Stern thought: "Odd, but they're not afraid of us—a
flying-machine means nothing to them, does not terrify them as it
would human savages. They're too debased even to feel fear!"—even as
this thought crossed his brain he, too, saw the terrible thing that
the girl had cried out at sight of.
"My God!" he shouted. "This—this is too much!"
All about the bungalow, their home, the scene of such happy hours, so
many dreams and hopes, such heart-enthralling labors, hundreds of the
Horde were swarming.
Like vicious parasites attacking prey, they overran the garden, the
grounds, even the house itself.
As in a flash, Stern knew all his work of months must be undone—the
fruit-trees he had rescued from the forest be cut down or broken, the
bulbs and roots in the garden uptorn, even the hedges and fences
trampled flat.
Worse still, the bungalow was being destroyed! Rather, its contents,
since the concrete walls defied the venomous troop.
They knew, at any rate, the use of fire, and not so swiftly skimmed
the Pauillac as to prevent both Stern and Beatrice seeing a thin but
ominous thread of smoke out-curling on the June air from one of the
living-room windows.
With an imprecation of unutterable hate and rage, yet impotent to stay
the ravishment of Hope Villa, Stern brought the machine round in a
long spiral.
For a moment the wild, suicidal idea possessed him to land on the
beach, after all, and charge the little slate-blue devils who had
evidently piled all the furnishings together in the bungalow and were
now burning them.
He longed for slaughter now; he lusted blood—the blood of the
Anthropoid pack which from the beginning had hung upon his flank and
been as a thorn unto his flesh.
He seemed to feel the joy of rushing them, an automatic in each hand
spitting death, just as he had mown down the Lanskaarn in the Battle
of the Wall, down below in the Abyss. Even though he knew the
inevitable ends poisoned spear-thrust, a wound with one of those
terribly envenomed arrows—he felt no fear.
Revenge! If he could only feel its sweetness, death had no terrors.
Common sense instantly sobered him and dispelled these vain ideas. The
bungalow, after all, was not vital to his future or the girl's.
Barring the set of encyclopedias on metal plates, everything else
could be replaced with sufficient labor. Only a madman would risk a
fight with such a Horde in company with a woman.