CHAPTER XXIX
ALLAN'S NARRATIVE
The week that followed was one of terrible labor, vigil andresponsibility for Stern. Not yet recovered from his wounds nor fullyrested from his flight before the Horde--now forever happily wipedout--the man nevertheless plunged with untiring energy into thestupendous 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 heldthem, every one; and he alone it was who wrought some measure ofreconstruction in the smitten settlement.
Once Beatrice was out of danger, he turned his attention to theothers. He administered his treatment and regimen with a strong hand,and allowed no opposition. Under his direction a little cemetery grewin the palisade--a mournful sight for this early stage in thereconstruction of the world.
Here the Folk, according to their own custom, marked the graves withtotem emblems as down in the Abyss, and at night they wailed andchanted there under the bright or misty moon; and day by day thenumber of graves increased till more than twenty crowned the cliff.
The two Anthropoids were not buried, however, but were thrown into theriver from the place where they had been shot down while rolling rocksover the edge. They vanished in a tumbling, eddying swirl, misshapenand hideous to the last.
With his accustomed energy he set his men to work repairing the damageas well as possible, rearranging the living quarters, and bringingorder out of chaos. Beta was now able to sit up a little. Allandecided she must have had a touch of brain-fever.
But in his thankfulness at her recovery he took no great thought as tothe nature of the disease.
"Thank God, you're on the road to full recovery now, dear!" he said toher on the tenth day as they sat together in the sun before the homecave. "A mighty close call for you--and for the boy, too! Without thatgood old goat what mightn't have happened? She'll be a privilegedcharacter for life in these diggings."
Beta laughed, and with a thin hand stroked his hair as he bent overher.
"Do you remember those funny goat-pictures Powers used to draw, athousand years ago?" she asked. "Well, he ought to be here now to makea sketch of you handing one to our kiddums? But--it was no joke, afterall, was it? It was life and death for him!"
He kissed her tenderly, and for a while they said nothing. Then heasked:
"You're really feeling much--much better to-day?"
"Awfully much! Why, I'm nearly well again! In a day or two I'll be atwork, just as though nothing had happened at all."
"No, no; you must rest a while. Just so you're better, that's enoughfor me."
Beatrice was really gaining fast. The fever had at least left her withan insatiable appetite.
Allan decided she was now well enough again to nurse the baby. So heand the famous goat were mutually spared many a _mauvais quartd'heure_.
Tallying up matters and things on the evening of the twelfth day, asthey sat once more on the terrace in front of Cliff Villa, heinventoried the situation thus:
1--Twenty-six of the Folk are dead. 2--H'yemba is disposed of--praise be! 3--Forty still survive--twenty-eight men, nine women, three children. Of these forty, thirty-three are sound. 4--The Pauillac is lost. 5--The bridge is destroyed, and eight of the caves are gone. 6--The entire forest area to the northward, as far as the eye can reach, is totally devastated. 7--The Horde is wiped out.
"Some good items and some bad, you see, in this trial balance," hecommented as he checked up the items. "It means a fresh start in someways, and no end of work. But, after all, the damage isn't fatal, asit might easily have been. We're about a thousand times better offthan there was any hope for."
"You haven't counted in your own wounds just healing, or the terrifictime you had with the Horde," suggested Beatrice. "How in this worldyou ever got through I don't see."
"I don't either. It was a miracle, that's all. From the place where Idescended for a little repair work, and where they suddenly attackedus, to the colony, can't be less than one hundred and fifty miles. Andsuch hills, valleys, jungles! Perfectly unimaginable difficulties,Beta! Now that I look back on it myself, I don't see how I ever gothere."
"They killed both the men you had with you?"
"Yes; but one of them not till the second day. You see, the carburetorgot clogged and wouldn't spray properly. I realized I could neverreach Settlement Cliffs without overhauling it. So I scouted for alikely place to land, far from any sign of the cursed signal-fires.
"Well, we hadn't been on the ground fifteen minutes before I'm blestif one of my men didn't hear the brushwood crackling to eastward.
"'O Kromno, master!' said he, clutching my arm, 'there comecreatures--many creatures--through the forest! Let us go!'
"I listened and heard it, too; and somehow--subconsciously, I guess--Iknew an advance-guard of the Horde was on us!
"It was night, of course. My search-light was still burning, throwinga powerful white glare into the thicket about a quarter-mile away,beyond the sand-barren where I had taken earth. I turned it off, for Iremembered how much better the Folk could see without artificial lightin our night atmosphere.
"'Tell me, do you see anything?' I whispered.
"The other fellow pointed.
"'There, there!' he exclaimed. 'Little people! Many little peoplecoming through the trees!'
"For a moment I was paralyzed. What to do? There was no time now for agetaway, even if the machine hadn't been out of order. My mind was ina whirl, a rout, an utter panic. I confess, Beatrice, for once I wasscared absolutely blue--"
"No wonder! Who could have helped being?"
"Because you see, there was no way out. Lord knew how many of thelittle fiends were closing in on us; they might be on all sides. Thecountry was much broken and absolutely new to me. I had no defenses tofight from, and it was night. Could anything have been worse?"
"Go on, dear! What next?"
"Well, the Horde was coming on fast, and the darts beginning to patterin, so I saw we couldn't stay there. I had some vague idea ofstratagem, I remember--some notion of leading the devils away on along chase, outdistancing them and then swinging round to the machineagain by daylight, and possibly fixing it up in time to skip out forhome. But--"
"But it didn't work out that way?"
"Hardly! I emptied my automatics into the brown of the advancing pack,and then retreated, flanked by my two men. They were keen to fight,the Merucaans were--always ready for a mix--but I knew too much aboutthe poisoned arrows to let 'em. We stumbled off through the woods at agood gait, crashing away like elephants, while always, apelike,creeping and hideous, the little hairy beast-people stole andslithered among the palms."
Beatrice shuddered.
"Heavens!" she exclaimed. "I--I'd have died of sheer fright!"
"I didn't feel like dying of fright, but I infernally near died ofrage when in about five minutes I saw a flicker of flame through thejungle, and then a brighter glare."
"They burned the Pauillac?"
"I guess so. I never went back to see. They probably burned theplanes, and tried to batter up the rest of it with rocks and things.They wrecked it all right enough, I guess. _That_ was for the attackwe made on 'em from its safe elevation at the bungalow. Well--"
"What then?"
"I can hardly remember. We trekked south, as near as I could reckonit, or south by east, with New Hope River as our objective-point. Oh,what's the use trying to tell it all? You know the jungle at night?"
"Wild beasts, you mean?"
"And snakes, Beta! _Some_ sensation to step on a copperhead and thenleap off just in time to miss the snap of the fangs, eh?"
"Oh, don't Allan! Don't!"
"All right; I'll skip that part. Anyhow, we hiked till daybreak, whenmy men began to complain of severe pain in the eyes. I had to stop andrig up some shields for them, and smear their hands and faces with mudto keep off the sun. Well, we managed to eat a little fruit and get adrink of water; but as for rest, there wa
s none. For inside an hour,hanged if the darts didn't begin dropping again!"
"They'd come up with you!"
"Maybe. Or else it was another group of 'em. No telling. The wholecountry seemed to swarm with the devils. Anyhow, we had to moseyagain. But--well--one of the darts got home on my best fighter.And--h-m!--he didn't last five minutes. He turned a kind ofbluish-green, too. And swelled a good bit. I'll spare you the details,Beta. At any rate, we had to leave him. So there were only two of usnow, and God knew where home was, or how many thousand of the hairydevils were lying in ambush on the way. So then--"
"What did you do?" she asked, shuddering.
"We hiked, and kept on hiking! All day we beat and trampled throughthe forest, and toward night there was no more go in us. So we decidedto make a stand. Pretty objects we were, too, torn and bruised, miredfrom swamps clear to our waists, and a mass of scratches and bruises!Well, we hadn't long to wait when the attack was on again.
"I gave my one remaining man the spare automatic, and showed him howto handle it; and for about an hour we stood off the devils. But theyflanked us, and all at once my man grunted and pitched forward. I'mdamned if they hadn't driven a spear clean through his lungs!
"After that, good God! it was just a man-hunt, endless and horrible,through trackless wilds, over hills and mountains, through valleys,across rivers, Heaven knows where! But I always tried to keep my witsand beat to southward, hoping, ever hoping I might reach the New Hope.Well--now and then I could get far enough ahead to snatch a bite or adrink. Twice I slept--twice, in about a week; think of that, will you?Once in a hollow tree, and once under a rock-ledge. Only a few hoursin all. But it helped. Without that I couldn't have got through."
She took his hand, and kissed and caressed it.
"My Allan!" she whispered, while in her eyes the tears started hot."You suffered all that just to come home again?"
"What else was there to do? The last few days I hardly knew anythingat all. It was a daze, a dream, a nightmare. There was so much pain inevery part that no one part could hurt very much. The bushes prettynearly stripped every rag of clothes off me--and the skin, as well. Mysandals went all to pieces. I lost my sense of direction a hundredtimes, and must have often doubled on my tracks. I ate and drank whatI could get, like an animal. Once, in a period of lucidity, I rememberfinding a nest of fledgling birds. I crunched them down alive,pin-feathers and all! Well--"
"My boy! My poor, lost, tortured boy!"
"When they wounded me I never even knew. All I know is that the spearwasn't one of the poisoned ones. Otherwise--"
"There, there! Don't think about it any more, darling! Don't tell meany more. I know enough. It's too awful! Let's both try to forget!"
"I guess that's the best way, after all," he answered. "I found theriver somehow, after a thousand or two eternities. Instinct must haveguided me, for I turned upstream in the right direction. And afterthat, all I remember is seeing the bridge across to SettlementCliffs."
"And so you came home to us again, darling?"
"So I came home. Love led me, Beatrice. It was my chart and compassthrough the wilderness. Not even pain and hunger could confuse them.Nothing but death could ever blot them out!"
"And after all you'd been through, dear, you did what you did for us?Without resting? Without delay or respite?"
"That's life," he answered simply. "That's the price of the new world.He who would build must suffer!"
Her arms embraced him, her breath was warm upon his face, and in thekiss that burned itself upon his eager lips he knew some measure ofthe sweetness of reward.
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