_ BOOK III. THE AFTERGLOW
CHAPTER XXIV. THE BOY IS GONE!
The man, weak, wounded, racked with exhaustion from the terrible ordeal of the past days, felt fresh vigor leap through his spent veins at sight of her distress, afar.
He broke into a strange, limping run across the slight and shaking bridge; 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 the terraces, 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? " he stammered, 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 about him, sensing a great and devastating change since his departure, but as yet unable to comprehend its nature.
Giddy himself with loss of blood and terrible fatigues, he hardly more than half saw what lay before him; yet he knew catastrophe had befallen Settlement Cliffs.
The river now foamed through strange new obstructions. A whole section of the cliff was gone. No sign of life at all was to be seen anywhere down the terraces or paths.
None of the Folk, their blinking eyes shielded by their mica glasses from 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 the colony, he knew, had suddenly and for some incomprehensible reason stopped, as a watch stops when the spring is broken.
And, worse than all, here Beatrice now lay in his arms, stricken by some strange malady. He could not know the cause--the sleepless nights, the terrible toil, the shattering nervous strain of catastrophe, of nursing, of the swift rebellion.
But he saw plainly now, the girl was burning with fever. And, raising his face to heaven, he uttered a cry, half a groan, half a sob--the cry of a soul racked too long upon the torture-wheel of fate.
"But--but where's the boy?" he asked himself, striving to recover his self-control; trying to understand, to act, to save. "What's happened here? 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 to show themselves; to come to him and to obey.
But though the shattered cliff rang with his commands, no one appeared. In all seeming as deserted and as void of human life as on the first day he and Beta had set foot there, the canyon brooded under the morning sun, and for all answer rose only the foaming tumult of the 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 bed anyhow! After that we'll see!"
With a strength he knew not lay now in his wasted arms, he lifted her bodily and carried her to the door of Cliff Villa, their home among the massive buttresses of rock.
But, to his vast astonishment and terror, he found the door refused to open. It was fast barred inside.
Even from his own house he found himself shut out, an exile and a stranger!
Loudly he shouted for admission, savagely beat upon the planks, all to no purpose. There came no sound from within, no answering word or sign.
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, and seizing a great boulder from the top of the parapet that guarded the terraced walk, dashed it against the door. The planks groaned and quivered, 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 incoherent speech.
Whirling, he saw the girl's mouth move. In her delirium she was speaking.
He knelt again beside her, cradled her in his arms, kissed and cherished her--and he heard broken, disjointed words--words that filled him with passionate rage and overpowering woe.
"So many dead--so many!--And so many dying.--
You, H'yemba! You beast! Let me go!--Oh, when the master comes!"
Allan understood at last. His mind, now clear, despite the maddening torments of the past week, grasped the situation in a kind of supersensitive clairvoyance.
As by a lightning-flash on a dark night, so now the blackness of his wonder, of this mystery, all stood instantly illumined. He understood.
"What incredible fiendishness!" he exclaimed, quite slowly, as though unable to imagine it in human bounds. "At a time of disaster and of death, 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 cartridge remained either in its magazine or in the pouches of his belt. The fouled and blackened barrel told something of the terrible story of the past few days.
"Gone, all gone," he muttered; but, with sudden inspiration, bent over the girl.
"Ah! Ammunition again!"
Quickly he reloaded from her belts. One belt he buckled round his waist. 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, and give treatment. I need fresh water, but I daren't go down to the river for it and leave her here. At any minute H'yemba may appear. And when he does, I must see him first.
"Evidently the thing most necessary is to gain access to our home. How can 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 the smith'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 automatic almost 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 and forced 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 foe were lying there in wait for him.
"Surrender!" he cried loudly in the Merucaan tongue. "If there be any here who war with me, surrender!
At the first sign of fight, you die!"
No answer.
Still leaving the girl beside the broken door till he should feel positive there was no peril--and always filled with a vast wonder how the 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 and exposures of the week past seemed to have fallen from him like an outworn 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 the cave-dwelling.
Suddenly he stopped.
"Who's there?" he challenged loudly.
At the left of the room, not far from the big fireplace, he had perceived a dim, vague figure, prone upon the floor.
"
Answer, or I shoot!"
But the figure remained motionless. Allan realized there was no fight in it. Still cautiously, however, he advanced.
Now he touched the figure with his foot, now bent above it and peered down.
"Old Gesafam! Heaven above! Wounded! What does this mean?"
Starting back, he stared in horror at the old woman, stunned and motionless, with the blood coagulating along an ugly cut on her forehead.
Then, as though a prescience had swept his being, he sprang to the bed.
"My son! My boy! Where are you?" he shouted hoarsely.
With a shaking hand he flung down the bedclothes of finely woven palm fiber.
"My boy! My boy!"
The bed was empty. His son had disappeared. _