Retarded by the vast, birdlike bulk that trailed below, they seemed hardly to make any progress at all. Stern ordered the free boats to hitch on and help by towing. Lines were passed, and after a while all twenty-five canoes, driven by the power of two hundred and fifty pairs of sinewy arms, were dragging the Pauillac shoreward.
Stern's excitement--now that the machine was really almost in his grasp again--far from diminishing, was every minute growing keener.
The delay until he could examine it and see its condition and its chances of repair, seemed interminable. Continually he urged the patriarch--himself profoundly moved--to force the rowers to still greater exertion. At a paddle he labored, throwing every ounce of strength into the toil. Each moment seemed an hour.
“Gad! If it's only possible to make it fly again!” thought he.
Half an hour passed, and now at length the dim and clustered lights of the village began to show vaguely through the mist.
“Come on, boys; now for it!” shouted Stern. “Land her for me and I'll show you wonders you never even dreamed of!”
They drew near the shore. Already Stern was formulating his plans for landing the machine without injuring it, when out from the beach a long and swift canoe put rapidly, driven by twenty men.
At sight of it the rowing in Stern's boats weakened, then stopped. Confused cries arose, altercations and strange shouts; then a hush of expectancy, of fear, seemed to possess the boat crews.
And ever nearer, larger, drew the long canoe, a two-pronged, blazing cresset at its bows.
Across the waters drifted a word.
“Go on, you! Row!” cried Stern. “Land the machine, I tell you! Say, father, what's the matter now? What are my men on strike for all of a sudden? Why don't they finish the job?”
The old man, perplexed, listened intently.
Between the group of canoes and the shore the single boat had stopped. A man was standing upright in it. Now came a clear hail, and now two or three sentences, peremptory, angry, harsh.
At sound of them consternation seized certain of the men. A number dropped the ropes, while others reached for the slings and spears that always lay in the bottoms of the canoes.
“What the devil now?” shouted Stern. “You all gone crazy, or what?”
He turned appealingly to the old man.
“For Heaven's sake, what's up?” he cried. “Tell me, can't you, before the idiots drop my machine and ruin the whole thing? What--”
“Misfortune, O my son!” cried the patriarch in a strange, trembling voice. “The worst that could befall! In our absence he has come back--he, Kamrou! And under pain of death he bids all men abandon every task and haste to homage. Kamrou the Terrible is here!”
CHAPTER XXXV. FACE TO FACE WITH DEATH
For a moment Stern stared, speechless with amazement, at the old man, as though to determine whether or not he had gone mad. But the commotion, the mingled fear and anger of the boat crews convinced him the danger, though unknown, was very real.
And, flaring into sudden rage at this untimely interruption just in the very moment of success, he jerked his pistol from its holster, and stood up in the boat.
“I'll have no butting in here!” he cried in a loud, harsh voice. “Who the devil is Kamrou, I'd like to know? Go on, on, to shore!”
“My son--”
“You order these men to grab those ropes again and go ashore or I warn you there's going to be a whole big heap of trouble!”
Over the waters drifted another hail, and the strange long boat, under the urge of vigorous arms, now began to move toward Stern's fleet. At the same time, mingled cries arose on shore. Stern could see lights moving back and forth; some confusion was under way there, though what, he could not imagine.
“Well,” he cried, “are you going to order these men to go forward? Or shall I--with this?”
And menacingly he raised the grim and ugly gun.
“Oh my son!” exclaimed the patriarch, his lips twitching, his hands outstretched--while in the boats a babel of conflicting voices rose--“O my son, if I have sinned in keeping this from you, now let me die! I hid it from your knowledge, verily, to save my people--to keep you with us till this thing should be accomplished! My reckoning was that Kamrou and his men would stay beyond the Great Vortex, at their labor, until after--”
“Kamrou?” shouted Stern again. “What the deuce do I care about him? Who is he, anyhow? A Lanskaarn, or--”
The girl seized Allan's hand.
“Oh, listen, listen!” she implored. “I--”
“Did you know about this? And never told me?”
“Allan, he said our work could all be done before they--”
“So you did know, eh?”
“He said I must not tell you. Otherwise--”
“Oh, hang that! See here, Beatrice, what's the matter, anyhow? These people have all gone crazy, just in a second, the old man and all! If you know anything about it, for God's sake tell me! I can't stand much more!
“I've got to get this machine to land before they go entirely nutty and drop it, and we lose all our work for nothing. What's up? Who's this Kamrou they're talking about? For Heaven's sake, tell me!”
“He's their chief. Allan--their chief! He's been gone a long time, he and his men. And--”
“Well, what do we care for him? We're running this village now, aren't we?”
“Listen. The old man says--”
“He's a hard nut, eh? And won't stand for us--is that it?” He turned to the patriarch. “This Kamrou you're talking about doesn't want us, or our new ideas, or anything? Well, see here. There's no use beating around the bush, now. This thing's going through, this plan of ours! And if Kamrou or anybody else gets in the way of it--good-by for him!”
“You mean war?”
“War! And I know who'll win, at that! And now, father, you get these men here to work again, or there'll be some sudden deaths round here!”
“Hearken, O my son! Already the feast of welcome to Kamrou is beginning, around the flame. See now, the boat of his messenger is close at hand, bidding all those in this party to hasten in, for homage. Kamrou will not endure divided power. Trust me now and I can save you yet. For the present, yield to him, or seem to, and--”
“Yield nothing!” fairly roared the engineer, angrier than he had ever been in his whole life. “This is my affair now! Nobody else butts in on it at all! To shore with these boats, you hear? or I begin shooting again! And if I do--”
“Allan!” cried the girl.
“Not a word! Only get your gun ready, that's all. We've got to handle this situation sharp, or it's all off! Come, father,” he delivered his ultimatum to the patriarch; “come, order them ashore!”
The old man, anguished and tremulous, spoke a few words. Answers arose, here, there. He called something to the standing figure in the despatch-boat, which slackened stopped, turned and headed for the distant beach.
With some confusion the oarsmen of the fleet took up their task again. And now, in a grim silence, more disconcerting even than the previous uproar, the boats made way toward land.
Ten minutes later--minutes during which the two Americans kept their revolvers ready for instant action--the aeroplane began to drag on the bottom. Despite the crowd now gathered on the beach, very near at hand and ominously silent, Stern would not let the machine lie even here, in shallow water, where it could easily have been recovered at any time. Like a bulldog with its jaws set on an object, he clung to his original plan of landing the Pauillac at once.