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 débris 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 cañon 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.
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