Darkness and Dawn

by George Allan England

  CHAPTER XXIV

  THE BOY IS GONE!

  The man, weak, wounded, racked with exhaustion from theterrible ordeal of the past days, felt fresh vigor leap through hisspent veins at sight of her distress, afar.

  He broke into a strange, limping run across the slight and shakingbridge; and as he ran he called to her, words of cheer and greeting,words of encouragement and love.

  But when, having penetrated the palisaded area and stumbled down theterraces, he reached her side, he stopped short, shaking, speechless,with wide and terror-stricken eyes.

  "Beatrice! Beta! My God, what's--_what's happened here?_" hestammered, kneeling beside her, raising her in his weakened arms,covering her pallid face with kisses, chafing her throat, her temples,her hands.

  The girl gave no sign of returning consciousness. Allan stared abouthim, sensing a great and devastating change since his departure, butas yet unable to comprehend its nature.

  Giddy himself with loss of blood and terrible fatigues, he hardly morethan half saw what lay before him; yet he knew catastrophe hadbefallen Settlement Cliffs.

  The river now foamed through strange new obstructions. A whole sectionof the cliff was gone. No sign of life at all was to be seen anywheredown the terraces or paths.

  None of the Folk, their blinking eyes shielded by their mica glassesfrom the morning sun, were drying fish or fruit at the frames.

  The nets hung brown, and stiff, and dry; they should, at this hour,have been limp and wet, from the night's fishing. The life of thecolony, he knew, had suddenly and for some incomprehensible reasonstopped, as a watch stops when the spring is broken.

  And, worse than all, here Beatrice now lay in his arms, stricken bysome strange malady. He could not know the cause--the sleeplessnights, the terrible toil, the shattering nervous strain ofcatastrophe, of nursing, of the swift rebellion.

  But he saw plainly now, the girl was burning with fever. And, raisinghis face to heaven, he uttered a cry, half a groan, half a sob--thecry of a soul racked too long upon the torture-wheel of fate.

  "But--but where's the boy?" he asked himself, striving to recover hisself-control; trying to understand, to act, to save. "What's happenedhere? God knows! An earthquake? Disaster, at any rate! Beatrice! Oh,my Beta! Speak to me!"

  Unable to solve any of the terrible problems now beating in upon him,he raised her still higher in his arms.

  Loudly he shouted for help down the terrace, calling on his Folk toshow themselves; to come to him and to obey.

  But though the shattered cliff rang with his commands, no oneappeared. In all seeming as deserted and as void of human life as onthe first day he and Beta had set foot there, the canyon brooded underthe morning sun, and for all answer rose only the foaming tumult ofthe rapids far below.

  "Merciful Heavens, I've got to do _something!_" cried Allan,forgetting his own lacerations and his pain, in this supreme crisis."She--she's sick! She's got a fever! I've got to put her to bedanyhow! After that we'll see!"

  With a strength he knew not lay now in his wasted arms, he lifted herbodily and carried her to the door of Cliff Villa, their home amongthe massive buttresses of rock.

  But, to his vast astonishment and terror, he found the door refused toopen. It was fast barred inside.

  Even from his own house he found himself shut out, an exile and astranger!

  Loudly he shouted for admission, savagely beat upon the planks, all tono purpose. There came no sound from within, no answering word orsign.

  Eagerly listening for perhaps the cry of his child, he heard nothing.A tomblike silence brooded there, as in all the stricken colony.

  Then Allan, fired with a burning fury, laid the girl down again, andseizing a great boulder from the top of the parapet that guarded theterraced walk, dashed it against the door. The planks groaned andquivered, but held.

  Recoiling, exhausted by even this single effort, the disheveled,wounded man stared with haggard eyes at the barrier.

  The very strength he had put into that door to guard his treasures,his wife and his son, now defied him. And a curse, bitter as death,burst from his trembling lips.

  But now he heard a sound, a word, a phrase or two of incoherentspeech.

  Whirling, he saw the girl's mouth move. In her delirium she wasspeaking.

  He knelt again beside her, cradled her in his arms, kissed andcherished her--and he heard broken, disjointed words--words thatfilled him with passionate rage and overpowering woe.

  "So many dead--so many!--And so many dying.--_You_, H'yemba! Youbeast! Let me go!--Oh, when the master comes!"

  Allan understood at last. His mind, now clear, despite the maddeningtorments of the past week, grasped the situation in a kind ofsupersensitive clairvoyance.

  As by a lightning-flash on a dark night, so now the blackness of hiswonder, of this mystery, all stood instantly illumined. He understood.

  "What incredible fiendishness!" he exclaimed, quite slowly, as thoughunable to imagine it in human bounds. "At a time of disaster and ofdeath, such as has smitten the colony--what hellish villainy!"

  He said no more, but in his eyes burned the fire that meant death,instant and without reprieve.

  First he looked to his automatic; but, alas, not one cartridgeremained either in its magazine or in the pouches of his belt. Thefouled and blackened barrel told something of the terrible story ofthe past few days.

  "Gone, all gone," he muttered; but, with sudden inspiration, bent overthe girl.

  "Ah! Ammunition again!"

  Quickly he reloaded from her belts. One belt he buckled round hiswaist. Then, pistol in hand, he thought swiftly.

  Thus his mind ran: "The first thing to do is look out for Beatrice,and make her comfortable--find out what the matter is with her, andgive treatment. I need fresh water, but I daren't go down to the riverfor it and leave her here. At any minute H'yemba may appear. And whenhe does, I must see him first.

  "Evidently the thing most necessary is to gain access to our home. Howcan it be locked, inside, when Beatrice is here? Heaven only knows!There may be enemies in there at this minute. H'yemba may be there--"

  Anguish pierced his soul at thought of his son now possibly in thesmith's power.

  "By God!" he cried, "something has got to be done, and quick!"

  His rage was growing by leaps and bounds.

  He advanced to the door, and putting the muzzle of his automaticalmost on the lock, shattered it with six heavy bullets.

  Again he dashed the boulder against the door. It groaned and gave.

  Reloading ere he ventured in, he now set his shoulder to the door andforced it slowly open, with the pistol always ready in his right hand.

  Keenly his eyes sought out the darkened corners of the room. Here,there they pierced, striving to determine whether any ambushed foewere lying there in wait for him.

  "Surrender!" he cried loudly in the Merucaan tongue. "If there be anyhere who war with me, surrender! _At the first sign of fight, youdie!_"

  No answer.

  Still leaving the girl beside the broken door till he should feelpositive there was no peril--and always filled with a vast wonder howthe door could have been locked from within--Allan advanced slowly,cautiously, into their home.

  He was cool now--cool and strong again. The frightful perils andexposures of the week past seemed to have fallen from him like anoutworn mantle.

  He ignored his pain and weakness as though such things were not. And,with index on trigger, eyes watchful and keen, he scouted down thecave-dwelling.

  Suddenly he stopped.

  "Who's there?" he challenged loudly.

  At the left of the room, not far from the big fireplace, he hadperceived a dim, vague figure, prone upon the floor.

  "_Answer, or I shoot!_"

  But the figure remained motionless. Allan realized there was no fightin it. Still cautiously, however, he advanced.

  Now he touched the figure with his foot, now bent above it and peereddown.

  "Old Gesafam! H
eaven above! Wounded! What does this mean?"

  Starting back, he stared in horror at the old woman, stunned andmotionless, with the blood coagulating along an ugly cut on herforehead.

  Then, as though a prescience had swept his being, he sprang to thebed.

  "My son! My boy! Where are you?" he shouted hoarsely.

  With a shaking hand he flung down the bedclothes of finely woven palmfiber.

  "My boy! My boy!"

  The bed was empty. His son had disappeared.