Darkness and Dawn (68 page)

"Thus do I consecrate and give him to you, O my Folk! And from this
hour of his naming I give you, too, a name. No longer shall you be
Merucaans
, but now
Americans
again. The ancient name shall live
once more. He, an American, salutes you, Americans! You are his elder
brothers, and between you the bond shall never loosen till the end.

"I have spoken unto you. This is the Law!"

In silence they received it, in silence made obeisance; and, as Allan
once more carried the child back to its mother, silently they all
departed to their homes and labors.

From that moment Allan believed his rule established now by stronger
bonds of love than any force could be. And through all the
intoxication of success and consummated power he felt a love for
Beatrice, who had rendered all this possible, such as no human words
could ever say.

Allan, Junior, grew lustily, waxed strong, and
filled the colony with joy. A new spirit pervaded Settlement Cliffs.
The vital fact of new life born there, an augury of strength and
increase and world-dominance once more, cemented all the social bonds.

An esprit de corps, an admirable and powerful cooperative sense
developed, and the work of reconstruction, of learning, of progress
went on more rapidly than ever.

Beatrice, seated at the door of Cliff Villa with the child upon her
knee, made a veritable heart and center for all thought and labor. She
and Allan, Junior, became objects almost of worship for the simple
Folk.

It was heart-touching to see the eager interest, the love and
veneration of the people, the hesitant yet fascinated way in which
they contemplated this strange boy, blue-eyed and with yellow hair
beginning to grow already; this, the first child they had ever seen to
show them what the children of their one-time ancestors had been.

The hunters, now growing very expert in the use of firearms, fairly
overloaded the larder of the villa with rare game-birds and venison.
The fishers outdid themselves to catch choice fish for their master's
family. And every morning fruits and flowers were piled at the doorway
for their rulers' pleasure.

Even then, when so much still remained to do, it seemed as though the
Golden Age of Allan's dreams already was beginning to take form. These
were by far the happiest days Beta and he had ever lived. Love, work,
hopes and plans filled their waking hours.

Put far away were all discouragements and fears. All dangers seemed
forever to have vanished. Even the portent of the signal-fires, from
time to time seen on the northern or eastern horizons, were ignored.
And for a while all was peace and joy.

How little they foresaw the future; how little realized the terrible,
the inevitable events now already closing down about them!

Allan made no further trips into the Abyss for about two months and a
half. Before bringing any more of the people to the surface, he
preferred to put all things in readiness for their reception.

He now had a working force of fifty-four men and twelve women.
Including his own son, there were some seven children at Settlement
Cliffs. The labor of civilization waxed apace.

With large plans in view, he dammed the rapids and set up a small mill
and power-plant, the precursor of a far larger one in the future.
Various short flights to the ruins of neighboring towns put him in
possession, bit by bit, of machinery which he could adapt into needful
forms.

In a year or two he knew he would have to clear land and make
preparations for agriculture. A grist-mill would soon be essential. He
could not always depend upon the woods and streams for food for the
colony.

There must be cultivation of fruits and grains; the taming of wild
fowl, cattle, horses, sheep and goats—but no swine; and a regular
evolution up through the stages again by which the society of the past
had reached its climax.

And to his ears the whirring of his turbine as the waters of New Hope
River swirled through the penstocks, the spinning of the wheels, the
slapping of the deerskin belting, made music only second to the voices
of Beatrice and his son.

Allan brought piecemeal and fitted up a small dynamo from some
extensive ruins to southeastward. He brought wiring and several still
intact incandescent lights. Before long Cliff Villa shone resplendent,
to the awe and marvel of the Folk.

But Allan made no mystery of it. He explained it all to Zangamon,
Bremilu and H'yemba, the smith; and when they seemed to understand,
bade them tell the rest.

Thus every day some new improvement was installed, or some fresh
knowledge spread among the colonists.

June had drawn on again, and the hot weather had become oppressive,
before Allan thought once more of still further trips into the Abyss.
Beatrice tried to dissuade him. Her heart shrank from further
separation, risk and fear.

"Listen, dearest," she entreated as they sat by young Allan's bedside,
one sultry, breathless night. "I think you've risked enough; really I
do. You've got a boy now to keep you here, even if I can't! Please
don't go! Follow out the plan you spoke to me about yesterday, but
don't go yourself!"

"The plan?"

"Yes,
you
know. Your idea of training three or four of the most
intelligent men to fly, and perhaps building one or two more
planes—that is, establishing a regular service to and from the Abyss.
That would be so much wiser, Allan! Think how deadly imprudent it is
for you, you personally, to take this risk every time! Why, if
anything should happen—"

"But it won't! It can't!"

"—What would become of the colony? We haven't got anything like
enough of a start to go ahead with, lacking you! I speak now without
sentiment or foolish, womanly fears, but just on a common-sense,
practical basis. Viewed at that angle, ought you to take the risk
again?"

"There's no time now, darling, to build more planes! No time to teach
flying! We've got to recruit the colony as fast as possible, in case
of emergencies. Why, I haven't made a trip since—since God knows
when! It's time I was off now!"

"Allan!"

"Well?"

"Suppose you
never
went again? With the population we now have, and
the natural increase, wouldn't civilization reestablish itself in
time?"

"Undoubtedly. But think how long it would take! Every additional
person imported puts us ahead tremendously. I may never be able to
bring all the Folk, all the Lanskaarn, and those other mysterious
yellow-haired people they talk about from beyond the Great Vortex. But
I can do my share, anyhow. Our boy here may have to complete the
process. It may take a lifetime to accomplish the rescue, but it must
be done!"

"So you're determined to go again?"

"I am! I must!"

She seized his hand imploringly.

"And leave us? Leave your boy? Leave
me?
"

"Only to return soon, darling! Very soon!"

"But after this one trip, will you promise to train somebody else to
go in your place?"

"I'll see, dearest!"

"No, no! Not that! Promise!"

She had drawn his head down, and now her face close to his, was
trembling in her eagerness.

"Promise! Promise me, Allan! You must!"

Suddenly moved by her entreaty, he yielded.

"I promise, Beta!" he exclaimed. "Gad, I didn't know you were so
deadly afraid of my little expeditions! If I'd understood, I might
have been arranging otherwise already. But I certainly will change
matters when I get back. Only let me go once more, darling—that'll be
the last time, I swear it to you!"

She gave a great sigh of relief unspeakable and kept silence. But in
her eyes he saw the shine of sudden tears.

Allan had been gone more than four days and a
half before Beatrice allowed herself to realize or to acknowledge the
sick terror that for some hours had been growing in her soul.

His usual time of return had hitherto been just a little over three
days. Sometimes, with favorable winds to the brink of the Abyss, and
unusually strong rising currents of vapors from the sunken sea—from
the Vortex, perhaps?—he had been able to make the round trip in sixty
hours.

But now over a hundred and eight hours had lagged by since Beatrice,
carrying the boy, had accompanied him up the steep path to the hangar
in the palisaded clearing.

How light-hearted, confident, strong he had been, filled with great
dreams and hopes and visions! No thought of peril, accident, or
possible failure had clouded his mind.

She recalled his farewell kiss given to the child and to herself, his
careful inspection of the machine, his short and vigorous orders, and
the supreme skill with which he had leaped aloft upon its back and
gone whirring up the sky till distance far to the northwestward had
swallowed him.

And since that hour no sign of return. No speck against the blue. No
welcome chatter of the engine far aloft, no hum of huge blades beating
the summer air! Nothing!

Nothing save ever-growing fear and anguish, vain hopes, fruitless
peerings toward the dim horizon, agonizing expectations always
frustrated, a vast and swiftly growing terror.

Beatrice cringed from her own thoughts. She dared not face the truth.

For that way, she felt instinctively, lay madness.

Five days dragged past, then six, then seven, and still no sign
of Allan came to lighten the terrible and growing anguish of the
woman.

All day long now she would watch for him—save at such times as the
care and nursing of her child mercifully distracted her attention a
little while from the intolerable grief and woe consuming her.

She would stand for hours on the rock terrace, peering into the
northwest; she would climb the steep path a dozen times a day, and in
distraction pace the cliff-top inside the palisaded area, where now
some few wild sheep and goats were penned in process of domestication.

Here she would walk, calling in vain his name to the uncaring winds of
heaven. With the telescope she would untiringly sweep the far reaches
of the horizon, hoping, ever hoping, that at each moment a vague and
distant speck might spring to view, wing its swift way southeastward,
resolve itself into that one and only blessed sight her whole soul
craved and burned for—the Pauillac and her husband!

And so, till night fell, and her strained eyes could no longer
distinguish anything but swimming mists and vapors, she would watch,
her every thought a prayer, her every hope a torment—for each hope
was destined only to end in disappointment bitterer far than death.

And when the shrouding dark had robbed her of all possibility for
further watching she would descend with slow and halting steps,
grief-broken, dazed, half-maddened, to the home-cavern—empty now, in
spite of her child's presence there—empty, and terrible, and drear!

Then would begin the long night vigil. Daylight gave some simulacrum
of relief in action, some slight deadening of pain in the very
searching of the sky, the strong, determined hope against what had now
become an inner conviction of defeat and utter loss. But night—

Night! Nothing, then, but to sit and think, and think, and think, to
madness! Sleep was impossible. At most, exhausted nature snatched only
a few brief spells of semi-consciousness.

Even the sight of the boy, lying there sunk in his deep and healthy
slumber, only kindled fresh fires of woe. For he was Allan's child—he
spoke to her by his mere presence of the absent, the lost, perhaps the
dead man.

And at thought that now she might be already widowed and her boy
fatherless, she would pace the rock-floor in terrible, writhen crises
of agony, hands clenched till the nails pierced the delicate flesh,
eyes staring, face waxen, only for the sake of the child suppressing
the sobs and heart-torn cries that sought to burst from her
overburdened soul.

"Oh, Allan! Allan!" she would entreat, as though he could know and
hear. "Oh, come back to me! What has happened? Where are you? Come
back, come back to your boy—to me!"

Then, betimes, she would catch up the child and strain it to her
breast, even though it awakened. Its cries would mingle with her
anguished weeping; and in the firelit gloom of the cave they two—she
who knew, and he who knew not—would in some measure comfort one
another.

On the eighth day she sustained a terrible shock, a sudden joy
followed by so poignant a despair that for a moment it seemed to her
human nature could endure no more and she must die.

For, eagerly watching the cloud-patched sky with the telescope, from
the cliff-top—while on the terrace old Gesafam tended the child—she
thought suddenly to behold a distant vision of the aeroplane!

A tiny spot in the heavens, truly, was moving across the field of
vision!

With a cry, a sudden flushing of her face, now so wan and colorless,
she seemed to throw all her senses into one sense, the power of sight.
And though her hand began to shake so terribly that she could only
with a great effort hold the glass, she steadied it against a
fern-tree and thus managed to find again and hold the moving speck.

The Pauillac! Was it indeed the Pauillac and Allan?

"Merciful Heaven!" she stammered. "Bring him back—to me!"

Again she watched, her whole soul aflame with hope and eagerness and
tremulous joy, ready to burst into a blaze of happiness—and then came
disillusion and despair, blacker than ever and more terrible.

For suddenly the moving speck turned, wheeled and rose. One second she
caught sight of wings. She knew now it was only some huge, tropic
bird, afar on the horizon—some condor, vulture, or other creature of
the air.

Then, as with a quick swoop, the vulture slid away and vanished behind
a blue hill-shoulder, the woman dropped her glass, sank to earth,
and—half-fainting—burst into a terrible, dry, sobbing plaint. Her
tears, long since exhausted, would not flow. Grief could pass no
further limits.