The Afterglow

CHAPTER XXIX. ALLAN'S NARRATIVE

The week that followed was one of terrible labor, vigil and responsibility for Stern. Not yet recovered from his wounds nor fully rested from his flight before the Horde--now forever happily wiped out--the man nevertheless plunged with untiring energy into the stupendous 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 held them, every one; and he alone it was who wrought some measure of reconstruction in the smitten settlement.

Once Beatrice was out of danger, he turned his attention to the others. He administered his treatment and regimen with a strong hand, and allowed no opposition. Under his direction a little cemetery grew in the palisade--a mournful sight for this early stage in the reconstruction of the world.

Here the Folk, according to their own custom, marked the graves with totem emblems as down in the Abyss, and at night they wailed and chanted there under the bright or misty moon; and day by day the number of graves increased till more than twenty crowned the cliff.

The two Anthropoids were not buried, however, but were thrown into the river from the place where they had been shot down while rolling rocks over the edge. They vanished in a tumbling, eddying swirl, misshapen and hideous to the last.

With his accustomed energy he set his men to work repairing the damage as well as possible, rearranging the living quarters, and bringing order out of chaos. Beta was now able to sit up a little. Allan decided she must have had a touch of brain-fever.

But in his thankfulness at her recovery he took no great thought as to the nature of the disease.

“Thank God, you're on the road to full recovery now, dear!” he said to her on the tenth day as they sat together in the sun before the home cave. “A mighty close call for you--and for the boy, too! Without that good old goat what mightn't have happened? She'll be a privileged character for life in these diggings.”

Beta laughed, and with a thin hand stroked his hair as he bent over her.

“Do you remember those funny goat-pictures Powers used to draw, a thousand years ago?” she asked. “Well, he ought to be here now to make a sketch of you handing one to our kiddums? But--it was no joke, after all, was it? It was life and death for him!”

He kissed her tenderly, and for a while they said nothing. Then he asked:

“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 at work, just as though nothing had happened at all.”

“No, no; you must rest a while. Just so you're better, that's enough for me.”

Beatrice was really gaining fast. The fever had at least left her with an insatiable appetite.

Allan decided she was now well enough again to nurse the baby. So he and the famous goat were mutually spared many a mauvais quart d'heure.

Tallying up matters and things on the evening of the twelfth day, as they sat once more on the terrace in front of Cliff Villa, he inventoried 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,” he commented as he checked up the items. “It means a fresh start in some ways, and no end of work. But, after all, the damage isn't fatal, as it might easily have been. We're about a thousand times better off than there was any hope for.”

“You haven't counted in your own wounds just healing, or the terrific time you had with the Horde,” suggested Beatrice. “How in this world you ever got through I don't see.”

“I don't either. It was a miracle, that's all. From the place where I descended for a little repair work, and where they suddenly attacked us, to the colony, can't be less than one hundred and fifty miles. And such hills, valleys, jungles! Perfectly unimaginable difficulties, Beta! Now that I look back on it myself, I don't see how I ever got here.”

“They killed both the men you had with you?”

“Yes; but one of them not till the second day. You see, the carburetor got clogged and wouldn't spray properly. I realized I could never reach Settlement Cliffs without overhauling it. So I scouted for a likely 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 blest if one of my men didn't hear the brushwood crackling to eastward.

“‘O Kromno, master!’ said he, clutching my arm, ‘there come creatures--many creatures--through the forest! Let us go!’

“I listened and heard it, too; and somehow--subconsciously, I guess--I knew an advance-guard of the Horde was on us!

“It was night, of course. My search-light was still burning, throwing a 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 I remembered how much better the Folk could see without artificial light in our night atmosphere.

“‘Tell me, do you see anything?’ I whispered.

“The other fellow pointed.

“‘There, there!’ he exclaimed. ‘Little people! Many little people coming through the trees!’

“For a moment I was paralyzed. What to do? There was no time now for a getaway, even if the machine hadn't been out of order. My mind was in a whirl, a rout, an utter panic. I confess, Beatrice, for once I was scared absolutely blue--”

“No wonder! Who could have helped being?”

“Because you see, there was no way out. Lord knew how many of the little fiends were closing in on us; they might be on all sides. The country was much broken and absolutely new to me. I had no defenses to fight 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 patter in, so I saw we couldn't stay there. I had some vague idea of stratagem, I remember--some notion of leading the devils away on a long chase, outdistancing them and then swinging round to the machine again by daylight, and possibly fixing it up in time to skip out for home. 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 about the poisoned arrows to let 'em. We stumbled off through the woods at a good gait, crashing away like elephants, while always, apelike, creeping and hideous, the little hairy beast-people stole and slithered 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 of rage when in about five minutes I saw a flicker of flame through the jungle, and then a brighter glare.”

“They burned the Pauillac?”

“I guess so. I never went back to see. They probably burned the planes, 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 attack we 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 reckon it, 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 then leap 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, when my men began to complain of severe pain in the eyes. I had to stop and rig up some shields for them, and smear their hands and faces with mud to keep off the sun. Well, we managed to eat a little fruit and get a drink of water; but as for rest, there was 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 whole country seemed to swarm with the devils. Anyhow, we had to mosey again. 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 of bluish-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 us now, and God knew where home was, or how many thousand of the hairy devils 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 through the forest, and toward night there was no more go in us. So we decided to make a stand. Pretty objects we were, too, torn and bruised, mired from 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 how to handle it; and for about an hour we stood off the devils. But they flanked us, and all at once my man grunted and pitched forward. I'm damned 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 wits and 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 a drink. 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 hours in 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 anything at all. It was a daze, a dream, a nightmare. There was so much pain in every part that no one part could hurt very much. The bushes pretty nearly stripped every rag of clothes off me--and the skin, as well. My sandals went all to pieces. I lost my sense of direction a hundred times, and must have often doubled on my tracks. I ate and drank what I could get, like an animal. Once, in a period of lucidity, I remember finding 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 spear wasn't one of the poisoned ones. Otherwise--”

“There, there! Don't think about it any more, darling! Don't tell me any 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 the river somehow, after a thousand or two eternities. Instinct must have guided me, for I turned upstream in the right direction. And after that, all I remember is seeing the bridge across to Settlement Cliffs.”

“And so you came home to us again, darling?”

“So I came home. Love led me, Beatrice. It was my chart and compass through 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 the kiss that burned itself upon his eager lips he knew some measure of the sweetness of reward.