Darkness and Dawn

by George Allan England

  CHAPTER XXIII

  THE WHITE BARBARIANS

  Warmth, wetness, and a knowledge of great weakness--these,joined with a singular lassitude, oppression of the lungs and stiflingof the breath, were Allan Stern's sensations when conscious lifereturned.

  Pain there was as well. His body felt sorely bruised and shaken. Hisfirst thought, his intense yearning wonder for the girl's welfare andhis sickening fear lest she be dead, mingled with some attempt toanalyze his own suffering; to learn, if possible, what damage he hadtaken in flesh and bone.

  He tried to move, but found he could not. Even lying inert, as he nowfound himself, so great was the exertion to breathe that only by afight could he keep the breath of life in his shaken frame.

  He opened his eyes.

  Light! Could it be? Light in that place?

  Yes, the light was real, and it was shining directly in his face.

  At first all that his disturbed, half-delirious vision could make outwas a confused bluish glare. But in a moment this resolved itself intoa smoking, blazing cresset. Stern could now distinctly see the metalbands of the fire-basket in which it lay, as well as a supportingstaff, about five feet long, that seemed to vanish downward in thegloom.

  And, understanding nothing, filled with vague, half-insanehallucinations and wild wonders, he tried to struggle upward with ababbling cry:

  "Beatrice! Oh, Beatrice--_where are you?_"

  To his intense astonishment, a human hand, bluish in the strangeglare, laid itself upon his breast and pushed him down again.

  Above him he saw a face, wrinkled, bearded and ghastly blue. And as hestruggled still he perceived by the unearthly light that a figure wasbending over him.

  "A man!" he gulped. "Man! _Man!_ Oh, my God! At last--a man!"

  He tried to raise himself upon his elbow, for his whole soul wasflooded with a sudden gratitude and love and joy in presence of thatlong-sought goal. But instantly, as soon as his dazed senses couldconvey the terrible impression to his brain, his joy was curdled intoblank astonishment and fear and grief.

  For to his intense chagrin, strive as he might, he could move neitherhand nor foot!

  During his unconsciousness, which had lasted he could not tell howlong, he had been securely bound. And now, awakening slowly, oncemore, fighting his way up into consciousness, he found himself aprisoner!

  _A prisoner!_ With whom? Among what people--with what purpose? Afterthe long quest, the frightful hardships and the tremendous fall intothe abyss, a prisoner!

  "Merciful God!" groaned Stern, and in his sudden anguish, strainedagainst the bonds, that drawn tight and fast, were already cuttingpainfully into his swollen, water sodden flesh.

  In vain did he struggle. Terrible thoughts that Beatrice, too, mightbe subjected to this peril and humiliation branded themselves upon hisbrain. He shouted wildly, calling her name, with all the force of hisspent lungs; but naught availed. There came no answer but theshrouding fogs.

  The strange man bent above him, peering from beneath wrinkled brows.Stern heard a few words in a singular, guttural tone--words rendereddull by the high compression of the air. What the words might be hecould not tell, yet their general sound seemed strangely familiar andtheir command was indubitable.

  But, still half-delirious, Stern tried again to stretch up his arms,to greet this singular being, even as a sick man recovering frometherization raves and half sees the nurses and doctors, yet dreamswild visions in the midst of pain.

  The man, however, only shook his head, and with a broad, firm hand,again held the engineer from trying to sit up. Stern, understandingnothing clearly, relapsed to quietude. To him the thought came: "Thisis only another delusion after all!" And then a vast and poignant woepossessed him--a wonder where the girl might be. But under thecompulsion of that powerful hand, he lay quite still.

  Half consciously he seemed to realize that he was lying prone in thebottom of some strange kind of boat, rude and clumsy, strangely formedof singular materials, yet safe and dry and ample.

  To his laboring nostrils penetrated a rank and pungent odor of fish,with another the like of which he never had known--an odor notunpleasant, yet keenly penetrant and all-pervading. Wet through, theengineer lay reeking in heat and steam, wrapped in his suit of heavyfurs. Then he heard a ripple of water and felt the motion of the craftas it was driven forward.

  Another voice spoke now and the strange man answered briefly. Againthe engineer half seemed to comprehend the meaning, though no word wasintelligible.

  "Where's the girl, you?" he shouted with all his might. "What have youdone with her? If you hurt her, damn you, you'll be sorry!_Where--where is she?_"

  No answer. It was evident that English speech conveyed no meaning tohis captors. Stern relapsed with a groan of anguish and sheer pain.

  The boat rocked. Another man came creeping forward, holding to thegunwale to steady himself. Stern saw him vaguely through the driftingvapor by the blue-green light of the cresset at the bow.

  He was clad in a coarse kind of brownish stuff, like the first,roughly and loosely woven. His long hair, pure white, was twisted upin a kind of topknot and fastened there by pins of dull gold. Beardedhe was, but not one hair upon his head or chin was other than silverywhite--a color common to all these folk, as Stern was soon to know.

  This man, evidently seeing with perfect clarity by a light whichpermitted the engineer only partial vision, also examined Stern andmade speech thereto and nodded with satisfaction.

  Then he put half a dozen questions to the prisoner with evidentslowness and an attempt to speak each word distinctly, but nothingcame of this. And with a contemptuous grunt he went back to hispaddle.

  "Hold on, there!" cried Stern. "Can't you understand? There were twoof us, in a--machine, you know! We fell. Fell from the surface of theearth--fell all the way down into this pit of hell, whatever it is.Where's the girl? For God's sake, _tell me!_"

  Neither man paid any heed, but the elder suddenly set hollowed palmsto his lips and hailed; and from across the waters dully driftedanother answering cry.

  He shouted a sentence or two with a volume of noise at which theengineer marveled, for so compressed was the air that Stern's besteffort could hardly throw a sound fifty feet. This characteristic ofthe atmosphere he well recognized from work he had often done inbridge and tunnel caissons. And a wonder possessed him, despite hiskeen anxiety, how any race of men could live and grow and develop theevident physical force of these people under conditions so unnatural.

  Turning his head and wrenching his neck sidewise, he was able to catcha glimpse of the water, over the low gunwale--a gunwale made, like theframework of the boat itself, of thin metallic strips cleverlyriveted.

  There, approaching through the mists, he got sight of another boat,also provided with its cresset that flung an uncanny shaft of blueacross the jetty expanse--a boat now drawing near uncles the urge ofhalf-seen oarsmen. And farther still another torch was visible; andbeyond that a dozen, a score or more, all moving with dim and ghostlyslowness, through the blind abyss of fog and heat and drifting vapors.

  Stern gathered strength for another appeal.

  "Who _are_ you people?" cried he passionately. "What are you going todo with us? Where are we--and what kind of a place are we in? Any wayto get out, out to the world again? And the girl--that girl! Oh, greatGod! _Can't_ you answer something?"

  No reply. Only that same slow, strong paddling, awful in itspurposeful deliberation. Stern questioned in French, Spanish andGerman, but got not even the satisfaction of attracting theirattention. He flung what few phrases of Latin and Esperanto he had atthem. No result. And a huge despair filled his soul, a feeling ofutter and absolute helplessness.

  For the first time in his life--that life which had covered a thousandyears or more--he found himself unable to make himself intelligible.He had not now even recourse to gestures, to sign language. Bound handand foot, trussed like a fowl, ignored by his captors (who, by allrules, should have been his hosts and shown h
im every courtesy), hefelt a profound and terrible anger growing in his heart.

  A sudden rage, unreasoning and insensate, blazed within him. His fistsclenched; once more he tugged, straining at his stout bonds. He calleddown maledictions on those two strange, impassive, wraithlike formshardly more than half seen in the darkness and fog.

  Then, as delirium won again over his tortured senses and disjointedthoughts, he shouted the name of Beatrice time after time out into theechoing dark that brooded over the great waters. All at once he heardher voice, trembling and faint and weak, but still hers!

  From the other boat it came, the boat now drawing very near. And asthe craft loomed up through the vapors that rose incessantly from thatStygian sea, he made a mighty effort, raised himself a little andsuddenly beheld her--dim, vague, uncertain in the shuddering bluishglare, yet still alive!

  She was crouching midships of the canoe and, seemingly, was not bound.At his hail she stretched forth a hand and answered with his name.

  "Oh, Allan! Allan!" Her voice was tremulous and very weak.

  "Beatrice! You're safe? Thank God!"

  "Hurt? Are you hurt?"

  "No--nothing to speak of. These demons haven't done you any damage,have they? If so--"

  "Demons? Why, Allan! They've rescued us, haven't they?"

  "Yes--and now they've got me tied here, hand and foot! I can't morethan just move about two or three inches, blast them! They haven'ttied you, have they?"

  "No," she answered. "Not yet! But--what an outrage! I'll free you,never fear. You and I together--"

  "Can't do anything, now, girl. There may be hundreds of these people.Thousands, perhaps. And we're only two--two captives, and--well--hangit, Beatrice! I don't mean to be pessimistic or anything like that,but it certainly looks bad!"

  "But who are they, boy? Who can they be? And where are we?"

  "Hanged if I know! This certainly beats any dream I ever had. Forsheer outrageous improbability--"

  He broke off short. Beatrice had leaned her head upon her arms, alongthe gunwale of the other canoe which now was running parallel toStern's, and he knew the girl was weeping.

  "There, there!" he cried to her. "Don't you be afraid, little girl!I've got my automatic yet; I can feel it under me, as I lie here inthis infernal boat. They haven't taken yours away?"

  "No!" she answered, raising her head again. "And before they ever do,I'll use it, that's all!"

  "Good girl!" he cheered her, across the space of water. "That's theway to talk! Whatever happens, shoot straight if you have to shoot atall--and remember, at worst, the last cartridge is for yourself!"