CHAPTER XI
"HAIL TO THE MASTER!"
Eleven hours of incessant labor, care, watchfulness andfatigue, three hours of flight and eight of coasting into the terrificdepths, brought Allan once more through the fogs, the dark, the heat,to sight of the vast sunken sea, five hundred miles below the surface.
Throughout the whole stupendous labor he thanked Heaven the girl wassafely left behind, nor forced to share this travail and exhaustion.Myriad anxieties and fears assailed him--fears he had taken good carenot to let her know or dream of.
Always existed the chance that something might go wrong about themachine and it be hurled, with him, into that black and steaming sea;the possibility of landing not among the Folk, but in some settlementof the Lanskaarn on the rumored islands he had never seen; the menaceof the Great Vortex, of which he knew nothing save the little that thepatriarch had told him.
All these and many other perils sought to force themselves upon hismind. But Allan put them resolutely back and, guided by hisinstruments, his reason, and that marvelous sixth sense of locationwhich his long months of battling with the wilderness had brought tobirth in him, swiftly yet carefully slid in vast spirals down thepurple, then the black and terrifying void that yawned interminablybelow.
The beam of his underslung searchlight, shifting at his will, shot itswhite ray in a long, fading pencil downward as he coasted. And hourafter hour it found nothing whereon to rest. It, too, seemed lostforever in the welter of uprushing, choking vapors from the pit.
"Ah! _At last!_"
The cry, dull in that compressed air, burst triumphantly from his lipsas the light-ray, suddenly piercing a rift of cloud, sparkled dimly ona surface shiny-black as newly cleft anthracite.
Allan threw in the motor once more and quickly got the Pauillac undercontrol. In a long downward slant he rushed, like some vast swallowskimming a pool, over the mysterious plain of steaming waters. Andever, peering eagerly ahead, he sought a twinkle of the fishermen'soil-flares wimpling across the sunken sea.
Moment by moment he consulted his instruments and the chart he hadstretched before him under the gleam of the hooded bulbs.
"Inside of half an hour now," said he, "I ought to sight the firstflash of the flares upon the parapet--the glow of the flaming well!"
And a singular eagerness all at once possessed him, a strange yearningto behold once more the strange, fog-shrouded, reeking City of theLost People, almost as though it had been home, as though these whitebarbarians had been his own people.
Men! To see men once more! The idea leaped up and gripped him with apowerful fascination.
So it was that when in reality the first faint twinkle of thefishing-boats peeped through the mist--and beyond, a tiny necklace ofgleaming points that he knew marked the walls of the town--his heartthrobbed hotly and a cry of eager greeting welled from his soul.
Quickly the Pauillac swept him onward. Manoeuvering cautiously,jockeying the great machine with that consummate skill he had acquiredfrom long practice, he soon beheld the dim outlines of the vast cliff,the long walls, the dull reflections of the fire-plume, the slantingslope of beach.
And with keen exultation, thrilled with his triumph and his greetingto the Folk he came to rescue, he landed with a whir upon the reekingslope.
To him, even before he had been able to free his cramped body fromthe saddle, came swarming the people, with loud cries of welcome andrejoicing. Powerfully the automatics he and Beatrice had used in theBattle of the Walls had impressed their simple minds with almostsuperstitious reverence. More powerfully still his terrible fight withKamrou, ending with the death of that great chief in the boiling vat.And now, acknowledging him their overlord and ruler, whom they hadfeared to lose forever, they trooped in wild, disordered throngs todo him reverence.
In from the sea, summoned by waving flares, the fishing-boats cameplowing mightily, driven by many paddles in the hands of the strange,white-haired men.
Along the beach the townsfolk thronged, and down the causeway, beneaththe vast monolithic plinth of the fortified gate, jostled and pushedan ever-growing multitude.
Cries of "Kromno h'viat! Tai Kromno!" reechoed--"The chief has comeback! The great master!"--and the confusion swelled to a mighty roar,close-pent under the heavy mists blued by the naphtha-torches.
But Stern noticed, and rejoiced to see it, that none prostratedthemselves. None fell to earth or groveled in his presence. Disorderlyand wild the greeting was, but it was the greeting of men, not slaves.
"Thank God, I've got a race of real men to deal with here!" thoughthe, surveying the pressing throng. "Hard they may be to rule, and eventurbulent, but they're not servile. Rude, brave, bold--what betterstock could I have hoped for in this great adventuring?"
For a while even thoughts of Beatrice were crowded back by theexcitement of the arrival. In all his wonderful experience neverbefore had he sensed a feeling such as this.
To be returning, master and lord of a race of long-buried people, hisown people, after all--to be acknowledged chieftain--to hold theirdestinies within his hand for good or evil--the magnitude of thesituation, the tremendous difficulties and responsibilities, almostoverwhelmed him.
He felt a need to rest, and think, and plan, to recuperate from thelong journey and to recover poise and strength.
And with relief, as he raised his hand for silence, he perceived thewrinkled face of one Vreenya, head councillor of Kamrou, hispredecessor.
Him he summoned to come close, and to him gave his orders. With somedegree of fluency--for in the months Beatrice and he had spent in theAbyss they had acquired much of the Merucaan tongue--he said:
"I greet you, Vreenya. I greet my people, all. Harken. I have made along journey to return to you. I am tired and would rest. There bemany things to tell you, but not now. I would sleep and eat. Is myhouse in readiness?"
"It is in readiness--the house of the Kromno. Your word is our law.It shall be as you have spoken."
"That is good. Now it is my will that this air-boat on which I rideshould be carried close up to the walls and carefully covered withmantles, especially this part," and he gestured at the engines. "Afterthat I rest."
"So it shall be," Vreenya made answer, while the Folk listened. "But,master, where is the woman? Where is the ancient man, J'hungaav, whosailed with you in the air-boat to those upper regions we know notof?"
"The woman is well. She awaits in a place we have prepared for you."
"It is well. And the ancient man?"
Stern thought quickly. To confess the patriarch's death wouldcertainly be fatal to the undertaking. These simple minds would judgefrom it that certain destruction must be the portion of any who shoulddare venture into those mysterious upper regions which to them werebut a myth, a strange tradition--almost a terror.
And though the truth was dear to him, yet under stress of the greatergood he uttered falsehood by implication.
"The ancient man awaits you, too. He is resting in the far places. Hewould desire you to come to him."
"He is at peace? He found the upper world good?"
"He found it good, Vreenya. And he is at peace."
"It is well. Now the commands of Tai Kromno shall be done. His houseis ready!"
While Stern clambered out of the machine and stretched hishalf-paralyzed limbs, the news ran, a murmur of many voices, throughthe massed Folk. Stern's heart swelled with pride at the success sofar of his mission. If all should go as well from now on, his mightyobject could and would be accomplished. But if not--
He shuddered slightly despite himself, for to his mind arose theever-present possibility of the Folk's custom of trial by combat--thechance that some rebellious one might challenge him--that the outcomemight another time turn against him.
He remembered still the scream of Kamrou as the deposed chieftain hadplunged into the boiling pool. What if this fate should some time yetbe _his?_ And once more thoughts of Beatrice obtruded; and, despitehimself, he felt the clutch of terror at his hear
t.
He put it resolutely away, however, for he realized that all dependednow on maintaining good courage and a bold, commanding air. Theslightest weakness might at any time prove fatal.
He understood enough of the barbarian psychology to know the value ofdominance. And with a command to Vreenya: "Make way for me, yourmaster!" he advanced through the lane which the crowding Folk made forhim.
As, followed by the councillor and the elders, he climbed the slipperycauseway and passed through the labyrinthine passes of the great gate,strange emotions stirred him.
The scene was still the same as when he first had witnessed it. Stillflared the torches in the hands of the populace and along the walls,where, perched on the very ledge of the one-time battle with theLanskaarn, the strange waterfowl still blinked their ghostly eyes.
No change was to be witnessed in the enclosure, the huts, the wideplaza, stretching away to the cliff, to the fire-pit, and the Dungeonof Skeletons. But still how different was it all!
Only too clearly he remembered the first time he and Beatrice had beenthrust into this weird community, bound and captive; with only toovivid distinctness he recalled the frightful indignities, perils andhardships inflicted on them.
The absence of the kindly patriarch saddened him; and, too, the factthat now no Beatrice was with him there.
Slowly, wearily, he moved along the slippery rock-floor toward hiswaiting house, unutterably lonesome even in this pushing throng thatnow acclaimed him, yet thanking God that the girl, at least, was farfrom the buried town of such hard ways and latent perils.
At the door of the round, conical stone hut that had been Kamrou's andnow was his--so long as he could hold the chieftainship by sheer forceof will and power--he paused a moment and faced the eager throng.
"Peace to you, my people!" he exclaimed, once more raising his hand onhigh. "Soon I shall tell you many wonders and things strange tohear--many things of great import and good tidings.
"When I have slept I shall speak with you. Now I go to rest. Await me,for the day of your deliverance is at hand!"
A face caught his attention, a sinister and, brutal face, doublyominous in the flaring cresset-glare. He knew the man--H'yemba, thecunning ironsmith, one who in other days had before now crossed hiswill and, dog-like, snarled as much as he had dared. Now a peculiarlymalevolent expression lay upon the evil countenance. The dead-whiteskin wrinkled evilly; the pink eyes gleamed with disconcerting malice.
But Stern, dead tired, only glanced at H'yemba for a second, then withVreenya entered the hut and bade the door be closed.
All dressed as he was, he flung himself upon the rude bed of seaweedcovered with the coarse brown stuff woven by the Folk.
"Sleep, master," Vreenya said. "I will sit here and watch. But beforeyou sleep loosen the terrible fire-bow that shoots the bolts of leadand lay it near at hand."
"You mean--there may be trouble here?"
"Sleep!" was all the councillor would answer. "When you have restedthere will be many things to ask and tell."
Spent beyond the power of any further effort, Stern laid his automatichandy and disposed himself to rest.
As his weary eyelids closed and the first outposts of consciousnessbegan to fall before the attacking power of slumber, his thoughts, hislove, his enduring passion, reverted to the girl, the wife, now soinfinitely far away in the cavern beside the brawling canyon-stream.Yearning and tenderness unspeakable flooded his soul.
But once or twice her face faded from his mental vision and in itsstead he seemed to see again the surly stare, the evil eyes, andvenomously sinister expression of H'yemba, the resourceful man of fireand of steel.
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