Part 127 (1/2)

Back to Cliff Villa he returned, his step heavy and his heart like lead. In a few brief hours, how great, how terrible, how devastating the changes that had come upon Settlement Cliffs!

Attack, destruction, pestilence and flame had all worked their will there; and many a dream, a plan, a hope now lay in ashes, even like those smoldering cinder-piles across the river--those pyres that marked the death-field of the hateful, venomous, inhuman Horde!

Numb with exhaustion and emotions, he staggered up the path, knocked, and was admitted to his home by the old nurse.

He heard the crying of his son, vigorously protesting against some infant grievance, and his tired heart yearned with strong father-love.

”A hard world, boy!” thought he. ”A hard fight, all the way through.

G.o.d grant, before you come to take the burden and the shock, I may have been able to lighten both for you?”

The old woman touched his arm.

”O, master! Is the fighting past?”

”It is past and done, Gesafam. _That_ enemy, at least, will never come again! But tell me, what causes the boy to cry?”

”He is hungered, master. And I--I do not know the way to milk the strange animal!”

Despite his exhaustion, pain and dour forebodings, Allan had to smile a second.

”That's one thing you've got to learn, old mother!” he exclaimed.

”I'll milk presently. But not just yet!”

For first of all he must see Beatrice again. The boy must cry a bit, till he had seen her!

To the bed he hastened, and beside it fell on his knees. His eager eyes devoured the girl's face; his trembling hand sought her brow.

Then a glad cry broke from his lips.

Her face no longer burned with fever, and her pulse was slower now. A profuse and saving perspiration told him the crisis had been pa.s.sed.

”Thank G.o.d! Thank G.o.d!” he breathed from his inmost soul. In his arms he caught her. He drew her to his breast.

And even in that hour of confusion and distress he knew the greatest joy of life was his.

CHAPTER XXIX

ALLAN'S NARRATIVE

The week that followed was one of terrible labor, vigil and responsibility for Stern. Not yet recovered from his wounds nor fully rested from his flight before the Horde--now forever happily wiped out--the man nevertheless plunged with untiring energy into the stupendous tasks before him.

He was at once the life, the brain, the inspiration of the colony.

Without him all must have perished. In the hollow of his hand he held them, every one; and he alone it was who wrought some measure of reconstruction in the smitten settlement.

Once Beatrice was out of danger, he turned his attention to the others. He administered his treatment and regimen with a strong hand, and allowed no opposition. Under his direction a little cemetery grew in the palisade--a mournful sight for this early stage in the reconstruction of the world.

Here the Folk, according to their own custom, marked the graves with totem emblems as down in the Abyss, and at night they wailed and chanted there under the bright or misty moon; and day by day the number of graves increased till more than twenty crowned the cliff.

The two Anthropoids were not buried, however, but were thrown into the river from the place where they had been shot down while rolling rocks over the edge. They vanished in a tumbling, eddying swirl, misshapen and hideous to the last.