Authors: George England
But the meaning of the words mattered little. For the column on the
hillside, understanding, had stopped short in its tracks.
Then suddenly, with yells, it dissolved into confusion of its
component parts; and at a run the People of the Abyss swarmed to the
greeting of their kinsmen and their own, the colonists.
Barbarians as the folk still were, they met with a vociferous
affection. A regular tangi, or joy-wailing, followed, and all
crowded vociferously about Stern, with hails of "Kromno! Long live
our Kromno, our great chief!" in their own speech.
But Allan, dumfounded by this incredible happening, broke the ceremony
as short as possible. The sight of these unexpected reenforcements
dazed him. He managed to keep some coherence of thought, however, and
flung rapid questions, to which he got scant answers.
Amazed, he stared at the newcomers, now shouting with their relatives
from the colony in wild abandon. To his vast astonishment he saw that
they had contrived eye-shields similar to those of his own party, and
that they had likewise painted their faces.
They had supplies as well-dried fish, seaweed, crated waterfowl, and
even fresh game. Allan's astonishment knew no bounds.
He laid a compelling hand on the shoulder of one, Rigvin, whom he
remembered as a mighty caster of the nets on the Great Sunken Sea.
"Oh, Rigvin!" he commanded. "Come aside with me. I must have speech at
once!"
"I come, O Kromno. Speak, and I make answer!"
"How came ye here without the flying boat? How did ye escape from the
Abyss? Whither went ye? Tell me all!"
"We waited, Kromno, but you came not. Did you forget your people in
the darkness?"
"No, Rigvin. There has been great distress in Settlement Cliffs. The
flying boat is lost. Even now we seek it. Enemies attacked. We
destroyed them, but had to sweep the world with fire, as ye see. Many
things have happened to keep me from my people. But how came ye here?
How have ye done this strange thing, always deemed impossible?"
"Harken, master, that I may tell it in few words! Later, when we reach
the colony whereof you have spoken, we can make all things clear; but
now is no time for a great talking."
"Go on quickly!"
"Yea, I speak. We waited for you many days, O Kromno; but you came not
again. Days on days we waited, as you measure time. Sleepings and
wakings we waited eagerly, but no sign of you was seen. Then
uneasiness and fear and sorrow fell upon us all."
"What then?"
"We held a great charweg there at the Place of Bones, near the
Blazing Well, to take thought what was best to do. For you were our
chief; and our very ancient law commands that if any chief be in
distress, or deemed lost, the Folk must risk all, even life, to save
and bring him once more to his own.
"For many hours our wisest men spoke. Some declared you had deserted
us, but them the Folk cried down; and barely they escaped the boiling
vat. We agreed some calamity had befallen. Then we swore to go to
rescue you!"
"Ye did?" exclaimed Stern, much moved. "Gods, what devotion! But—how
did ye ever get out of the Abyss? How find your way so straight toward
Settlement Cliffs?"
"That is a strange story, and very long, O Kromno! All our elders took
thought of what ye had told us so often, and they made a picture of
the way. We fashioned protections for the eyes and skin, as ye had
said.
"Then the wise men recalled all the ancient traditions, which we had
long deemed myths. They looked, also, upon certain records graven in
the rock beyond the walls, past the place of burial. They decided the
way might still be open past the Great Vortex and through the long
cleft, whereby our distant fathers came.
"But they said it might mean death to try to pass the Vortex. They
forced none to go. Only such as would need try."
"A volunteer expedition, eh?" thought Allan. "And look at the size of
it, will you? These people are without even the slightest
understanding of fear!"
"Thus it was arranged, master," continued Rigvin. "Eight score and
more of us offered to go. All things were quickly made ready, and much
food was packed, and many weapons. In fifteen long canoes we started,
after a great singing. Men went in each canoe to bring back the
boats—"
"They didn't even wait for you? But if ye had been lost, and sought to
return, what then?"
"There was to be no return, master. All swore either to find you or
die!"
"Go on!" exclaimed Allan, deeply moved.
"We sailed across the Sunken Sea, O Kromno, and reached the islands of
the Lanskaarn. There we had to fight and thirty were killed. But we
kept on, and in two days, watching for the quiet time between the
great tempests, entered the Vortex."
"You all got through?"
"No master. There was not time. Many were lost; but still we kept on.
Then on the fourth day we reached the great cleft, even as our
traditions said. And here we camped, and sang again, and once more
swore to find you. Then the boats all returned, and we pushed forward,
upward, through the cleft."
"And then?"
Rigvin shook his head and sighed.
"O Kromno," he answered, "the story is too long! We be weary, and
would reach the place whereof ye have told us. Later there will be
time for talk. But now we cannot tell it all!"
"Ye speak truth, Rigvin!" he exclaimed. "I, too, have many things to
tell. It cannot be this day. We will lead ye to the colony. We, too,
need rest. My men are in sore straits, as ye see!"
He gestured at the groups gathered along the edge of the ravine. A
great noise of talking rose against the heated air; and food and
water, too, were being given to the Settlement men by the newcomers.
Stern knew the day was saved. Deep gratitude upwelled in his heart.
"Nothing that I can ever do will repay men like these!" thought he.
Then, all at once, a sudden hope thrilled him, and he cried:
"Oh, Rigvin, one thing more! Tell me, in your long journey from the
brink, have ye chanced to see a cleft mountain with two peaks on
either hand?"
"You mean, master—"
"A mountain; a high jut of land, with two tops, side by side—like two
grave-mounds?"
Rigvin stood a moment in thought, his soot-smeared brows wrinkled with
the effort of trying to remember. Then all at once he looked up
quickly with a smile.
"Yea, master!" he cried. "We saw such!"
"Where, where? For God's sake, where was it?" ejaculated Stern,
gripping him by the arm with a hand that shook with sudden keen
emotion.
"Where was it, master? Thus one day's marching."
Rigvin wheeled and pointed to northwestward.
"And ye can find it again?"
"Truly, yes. Why, master?"
"There, near that mountain, lies the wreck of the vlyn b'hotu, the
flying boat, Rigvin! Lead us thither! We must find it. And then
Settlement Cliffs!"
Through all his exhaustion and his pain he knew that now the goal was
close at hand. And beyond toil, suffering and hardship once more
beckoned prosperity and peace and love.
Long before daybreak that morning, the thriving village of
Settlement Cliffs, capital and market-town of the New Hope Colony, was
awake and astir.
For the great festival day was at hand, the fifth anniversary of the
founding of the colony, to be celebrated by the arrival of the last
Merucaans from the depths of the Abyss.
The old caves, now abandoned save for grain, fruit and fish
storehouses were closed and silent. No labor was going forward there.
The nets hung dry. From the forges, smithies and work-shops along the
river-bank at the rapids arose no sounds of the accustomed industry.
The road and bridge-builders were idle; and from the farms now dotting
the rich brule across the river—each snug stone house, tiled
with red or green, standing among its crops and growing orchards—the
Folk were coming in to town for the feast-day.
The broad wooden trestle-bridge across the New Hope echoed with hollow
verberations beneath the measured tread of two and four-ox teams
hauling creaking wains heaped high with meats, fruits, casks of cider,
generous wines, and all the richness of that virgin soil.
On the summer morning air rose laughter from the youths and maidens
coming in afoot. Sounded the cries of the teamsters, the barking of
dogs, the mingled murmur of speech—English speech again; and the
fresh wind, bearing away a fine, golden dust from the long roads,
swayed the palm-tops and the fern-trees with a gentle and caressing
touch.
All up and down the broad, well-paved street of the village—a street
lined with stone cottages, bordered with luxuriant tropic gardens, and
branching into a dozen smaller thoroughfares—a happy throng was
idling.
Well clad in plain yet substantial weaves from the vine-festooned
work-shops below the cliff, abundantly fed, vigorous and strong, not
one showed sickness or deformity, such as had scourged the human race
in the old, evil days of long ago.
Loose-belted garb, sandals and a complete absence of hats all had
their part in this abounding health. Open-air life and rational food
completed the work.
No drugs, save three or four essential ones, and no poisons, ever had
crept in to menace life. Wine there was, rich and unfermented; but the
curse of alcohol existed not. And in the Law it was forever banned.
On the broad porch of their home, a boulder-built cottage facing the
broad plaza where palms shaded the graveled paths, and purple, yellow
and scarlet blooms lured humming-birds and butterflies, stood Beatrice
and Allan.
Both were smiling in the clear June sunlight of that early morning. A
cradle rocked by Gesafam—a little older and more bent, yet still
hardy—gave glimpses of another olive-branch, this one a girl.
The piazza was littered at its farthest end with serviceable,
home-made playthings; but Allan, Junior, had no use for them to-day.
Out there on the lawn of the plaza he was rolling and running with a
troop of other children—many, many children, indeed.
As Beatrice and Allan watched the play they smiled; and through the
man's arm crept the woman's hand, and with the confidence of perfect
trust she leaned her head against his shoulder.
"Whoever could have thought," said he at last, "that all this really
could come true? In those dark hours when the Horde had all but
swallowed us, when we fell into the Abyss, when those terrible
adventures racked our souls down beside the Sunken Sea, and later,
here, when everything seemed lost—who could have foreseen
this?
"
"You could and did!" she answered. "From the beginning you planned
everything, Allan. It was all foreseen and nothing ever stopped you,
just as the future beyond this time is all foreseen by you and must
and shall be as you plan it!"
"Shall be, with your help!" he murmured, and silence came again.
Together they watched the holiday crowd gradually congregating in the
vast plaza where once the palisade had been. Now the old wooden
stockade had long vanished. Cleared land and farms extended far beyond
even Newport Heights, where the Pauillac had first come to earth at
New Hope.
Well-kept roads connected them all with the settlement. And for some
miles to southward the primeval forests had been vanquished by the
ever-extending hand of this new, swiftly growing race.
"With my help and theirs!" she rejoined presently. "Never forget,
dear, how wonderfully they've taken hold, how they've labored,
developed and grown in every way. You'd be surprised—really you
would—if you came in contact with them as I do in the schools, to see
the marvelous way they learn—old and young alike. It's a miracle,
that's all!"
"No, not exactly," he explained. "It's atavism. These people of ours
were really civilized in essence, despite all the overlying ages of
barbarism. Civilization was latent in them, that's all. Just as all
the children born here under normal conditions have reverted to
pigmented skin and hair and eyes, so even the grown-ups have thrown
back to civilization. Two or three years at the outside have put back
the coloring matter in every newcomer's iris and epidermis. Just so—"
A sudden and quickly-growing tumult in the plaza and down the long,
broad street interrupted him. He saw a waving of hands, a general
craning of necks, a drift toward the north side of the square, the
river side.
The shouts and cheers increased and cries of "
They come! They come!
"
rose on the morning air.
"Already?" exclaimed Allan in surprise. "These new machines certainly
do surprise me with their speed and power. In the old days the
Pauillac wouldn't have been here before noon from the Abyss!"
Together, Beatrice and he walked round the wide piazza to the rear of
the bungalow. The home estate sloped gently down toward the cement and
boulder wall edging the cliff. In its broad garden stood the stable,
where half a dozen horses—caught on the northern savannas and
carefully tamed—disputed their master's favor with the touring car he
had built up from half a dozen partly ruined machines in Atlanta and
other cities.
Up the cliff still roared the thunder of the rapids, to-day untamed by
the many turbines and power-plants along the shore. But louder than
the river rose the tumult of the rejoicing throng: "They come! They
come!"
"Where?" questioned Beta. "See them, boy?"
"There! Look! How swift! My trained men can outfly
me
now—more luck
to them!"
He pointed far to northwestward, over the wide and rolling sea of
green, farm-dotted, that had sprung up with marvelous fecundity in the
wake of the great fire.
Looking now out over the very same country where, five years and a
month before, she had strained her tear-blinded eyes for some sign of
Allan's return, Beatrice suddenly beheld three high, swift little
specks skimming up the heavens with incredible velocity.