The Afterglow

CHAPTER XVI. A RESPITE FROM TOIL

The bright beam of the flash-lamp in his face roused Allan to a consciousness that he was bruised and suffering, and that his left arm ached with dull insistence. Dazed, he brought it up and saw his sleeve of dull brown stuff was dripping red.

Beside him, in the trampled grass, he vaguely made out a hairy bulk, motionless and huge. Bremilu was kneeling beside his master, with words of cheer.

“It is dead, O Kromno! The man-beast is dead! My stone ax broke its skull. See, now it lies here harmless!”

The currents of thought began to flow once more. Allan struggled up, unmindful of his wounds.

“Beatrice! Where is the girl?” he gasped.

As though by way of answer, the tall growths swayed and crackled, and through them a dim figure loomed--a man with something in his arms.

“Zangamon!” panted Allan, springing toward him. “Have you got her? The girl--is she alive?”

“She lives, master!” replied a voice. “But as yet she remains without knowledge of aught.”

“Wounded? Is she wounded?”

Already he had reached Zangamon, and, injured though he was, had taken the beloved form in his arms.

“Beatrice! Beatrice!” he called, pressing kisses to her brow, her eyes, her mouth--still warm, thank God!

He sank down among the underbrush and gathered her to his breast, cradling her, cherishing her to him as though to bring back life and consciousness.

To her heart he laid his ear. It beat! She breathed!

“The light, here! Quick!”

By its clear ray he saw her hair disheveled; her coarse mantle of brown stuff ripped and torn, and on her throat long scratches.

Bruises showed on her hands and arms, as from a terrible fight she had put up against the monster. And his heart bled; and to his lips rose execrations, mingled with the tenderest words of pity and love.

“We must get her back to the cave at once!” he exclaimed. “Quick! Break branches. Make a litter--a bed--to carry her on! Everything depends on getting her to shelter now!”

But the two Merucaans did not understand. All this was beyond their knowledge. Ignoring his hurts, Allan laid the girl down very gently, and with them set to work, directing the making of the litter.

They obeyed eagerly. In a few minutes the litter was ready-made of fern-tree branches thickly covered with leaves and odorous grasses.

On this he placed the girl.

“You, Zangamon, take these boughs here. Bremilu, those others. Now I will hold the light. Back to the cave, now--quick!”

“We need not the light, master. We see better without it. It dazzles our eyes. Use it for yourself. We need it not!” exclaimed Bremilu, stooping above the body of the dead monster to recover his ax.

Involuntarily Allan turned the beam upon the horrible creature. There stood Bremilu, his foot upon the hairy shoulder, tugging hard at the ax-handle. Thrice he had to pull with all his might to loosen the blade which had buried itself deep in the shattered skull.

“A giant gorilla, so help me!” he cried, shuddering. “My God, Beatrice--what a ghastly terror you've been through!”

Still grinning ferociously, in death, with blood-smeared face and glazed, staring eyes, the creature shocked and horrified even Allan's steady nerves. He gazed upon it only a moment, then turned away.

“Enough!” said he. “To the cave!”

A quarter-hour had passed before they reached shelter again. Allan bade the Merucaans heap dry wood on the embers in the cavern, while he himself laid Beatrice upon the bed.

With a piece of their brown cloth dipped in one of the water-jars he bathed her face and bruised throat.

“Fresh water! Fetch a jar of fresh water from the river below!” he commanded Zangamon.

But even as the white barbarian started to obey, the girl stirred, raised a hand, and feebly spoke.

“Allan--oh--are you here again? Allan--my love!”

He strained her to his breast and kissed her; and his eyes grew hot with tears.

“Beatrice!”

Her arms were round his neck, and their lips clung.

“Hurt? Are you hurt?” he cried. “Tell me--how--”

“Allen! The monster--is he dead?” she shivered, sitting up and staring wildly round at the cave walls on which the fresh-built fire was beginning to throw dancing lights.

“Dead, yes. But hush, Beta! Don't think of that now. Everything's all right--you're safe! I'm here!”

“Those men--”

“Two of our own Folk. I brought them back with me--just in time, darling. Without them--”

He broke short off. Not for worlds would he have told her how near the borderland she had been.

“You heard my shouts? You heard our signal?”

“Oh--I don't know Allan. I can't think, yet--it's all so terrible--so confused--”

“There, there, sweetheart; don't think about it any more. Just lie down and rest. Go to sleep. I'll watch here beside you. You're safe. Nothing can hurt you now!”

She lay back with a sigh, and for a while kept silence while he sat beside her, his uninjured arm beneath her head.

His one ambition, now that he found she was not seriously hurt in body, was to keep her from talking of the horrible affair--from exciting herself and rehearsing her terrors. Above all, she must be quieted and kept calm.

At last, in her own natural voice, she spoke again.

“Allan?”

“What is it, sweetheart?”

“I owe you my life once more! If I was yours before, I'm ten times more yours now!”

He bent and kissed her, and presently her deepened breathing told him she had drifted over the borderline into the sleep of exhaustion.

He blessed her strength and courage.

“No futility here,” thought he. “No useless questions or hysterics; no scene. Strong! Gad, but she's strong! She realized she was safe and I was with her again; that sufficed. Was there ever another woman like her since the world began?”

Only now that the girl slept did he pay attention to the two Merucaans who, sitting by the cave door, were regarding him with troubled looks.

“Master!” said Zangamon, arising and coming toward him.

“Well, what is it now?”

“You are wounded, O Kromno! Your arm still bleeds. Let us bind it.”

“It is nothing--only a scratch!”

But Zangamon insisted.

“Master,” said he, “in this we cannot obey you. See? While you and the woman talked I fetched water, as you commanded. Now I must wash your hurts and bind them.”

Allan had to accede. Together the two Merucaans examined the injuries with words of commiseration. The “scratch” turned out to be three severe lacerations of the forearm. The gorilla's teeth had missed the radial artery only by a fluke of fortune.

They bathed away the clotted blood and bandaged the arm not unskilfully. Allan pressed the hand of Zangamon, then that of his companion.

“No thanks of mine can tell you what I feel!” he exclaimed straight from the heart. “Only for you to guide me, to drive the man-brute, to strike it down when it was just about to throttle me--only for you, both she and I--”

He could not finish. The words choked him. He felt, as never before, a sudden, warm, human touch of kinship with the Merucaans--a strong, nascent affection. Till now they had been savages to him--inferiors.

Now he perceived their inner worth--the strong and manly stamina of soul and body; and through him thrilled a love for these strange men, his saviors and the girl's.

Once more he seemed to see a vision of the future--a world peopled by the descendants of this hardy and resourceful folk, “without disease of flesh or brain, shapely and fair, the married harmony of form and function”--and, as with a gesture, he dismissed them wondering, not understanding in the least why he should thank them, he knew the world already had begun once more to come back under the hand, under the strong control of man.

“Sleep now, master,” Bremilu entreated. “We who are new to this strange world will sit outside the door upon the rock and watch those fires so far above that you call stars. And the big sun-fire that is coming, too--we would see that!”

“No, not yet!” Stern commanded. “You cannot bear it for a while. Stay within and roll the rock against the door and sleep. The great fire might injure you or even kill you, as it did the--”

He checked himself just in time, for “the patriarch” had all but escaped him. Zangamon, with sudden understanding, once more advanced toward him as he sat there by the girl.

“O master! You mean the ancient man? He is dead?”

Stern nodded.

“Yes,” he answered. “He was so old and weak, the touch of the fire in the sky--he could not bear it. But his death was happy, for at least he felt its warmth upon his brow!”

The Merucaans kept silence for a moment, then Stern heard them murmuring together, and a vague uneasiness crept over him.

He strove, however, to put it away; though in his heart the shame of the lie he had been forced to tell would not be quieted.

The colonists, however, made no further speech, but presently rolled the rock in front of the cave entrance, then wrapped themselves in their long cloaks and lay down by the fire.

Soon, like the healthy savages they were, they were fast asleep, with vigorous snorings.

Thus the night passed, while Stern kept watch over the girl; and another day crept slowly up the sky, and in the cave now rested four human beings--the vanguard of the coming nation.