Beside the body he stood, in the morgue-cave whither it had been borne. With bowed head the master looked upon the man; and from his eyes fell tears; and in his heart he felt a vacant place not soon to be made whole.
With profound emotion he took Bremilu’s cold hand in his—the hand that had so deftly and so powerfully stricken down the gorilla—and for a while held it, gazing on the dead man’s face.
“Good-by,” said he at length. “You were a brave heart and a true. Never shall you be forgotten. Good-by!”
He summoned a huge fellow named Frumuos, now the most intelligent of the Folk remaining, and together they directed the work of carrying the bodies up to the cliff-top and there burying them.
By the middle of the afternoon some semblance of order and control had become organized in the colony. He returned to Cliff Villa, leaving strict orders for Frumuos to call him in case of need.
Very beautiful the world was that afternoon. In the soft south wind the fronded palms across the river were bowing and nodding gracefully. Overhead, dazzling clouds drifted northward.
It seemed to him he could almost hear the rustle of the dry undergrowth, parched by the past fortnight of exceptionally hot weather; but, above all, rose the eternal babble of the rapids. High in air, a vulture wheeled its untiring spirals. At sight of it he frowned. It reminded him of the Pauillac, now wrecked far beyond the horizon, where the Horde had trapped him. He shuddered, for the memories of the past week were infinitely horrible, and he longed only to forget.
With a last glance at the scene, over which the ominous threads of smoke now drifted in considerable numbers, he frowned. He reentered the villa.
“No matter what happens now,” he muttered, “I’ve got to snatch a few minutes rest. Otherwise, I’m liable to drop in my tracks. And, above all, I must try to pull through. For on me, and me alone, now everything depends!”
He sat down by the bed again, too stupefied by the toxins of fatigue and exhaustion to do more than note that Beatrice was, at any rate, no worse.
Human effort and emotion had, in fact, reached their extreme climax in him. He felt numb all over, in body, mind and soul. A weaker man would have succumbed long ago to but half the hardships he had struggled through. Now he must rest a bit.
“Bring water, Gesafam!” he commanded. When she had obeyed, he let her wash his wounds and dress them with leaves and ointment. Then he himself bandaged them, his head nodding, eyes already drooping shut from moment to moment.
His head sank on the bed, and one hand sought the girl’s. Despite his wonderful vitality and strength, Allan was on the verge of collapse.
Vague and confused thoughts wandered through his unsettled brain.
What was the destiny of the colony to be, now that the Pauillac was lost and so many of the Folk wiped out? Were there any hopes of ultimate success? And the Horde, what of that? How long a respite might be counted on before the inevitable, decisive battle?
A score, a hundred questions, more and more illusory, blent and faded and reformed in his overtaxed mind.
Then, blessed as a balm, sleep took him.
A violent shaking roused him from dead slumber. Old Gesafam stood there beside him. She had him by the arm.
“Waken, O master!” she was crying. “O Kromno, rouse! For now there is great need!”
Dazed, he started up.
“What—what is it now? More trouble?”
She pointed toward the door.
“Beyond there, master! Beyond the river there be many moving creatures! Darts and arrows have begun to fall against the cliff. See, one has even come into the cave! What shall be done, master?”
Broad awake now, Allan ran to the door and peered out.
Daylight was fading. He must have slept an hour or two; it had seemed but a second. In the west the sun was burning its way toward the horizon, through a thick set of haze that cloaked the rim of the earth.
“Here, master! See!”
Stooping, she picked up a long, slight object and handed it to him.
“One of their poisoned darts, so help me!” he exclaimed. “Cast that into the fire, Gesafam. And have a care lest it wound you, for the slightest scratch is death!”
While she, wondering, obeyed, he hastily reconnoitered the situation.
He had felt positive the Horde, after his escape from it by devious and terrible ways, would track him down.
He had known the army of the hideous little beast-folk, that for a year now had been slowly gathering from north and east for one final assault, would eventually find Settlement Cliffs and there make still another attempt to crush him and his.
But, knowing all this, knowing even that the whole region beyond the river now swarmed with these ghastly monstrosities, the actuality appalled him.
Now that the attack was really at hand, he felt a strange and sudden sense of helplessness.
And with a bitter curse he shook his fist at the dark forest across the canon where—even as he looked—he saw a movement of crouching, furtive things; he heard a dull thump-thump as of clubs beating hollow logs.
“You devils!” he execrated. “Oh, for a ton of Pulverite to drop among you!”
“Look, master, look! The bridge! The bridge!”
He turned quickly as old Gesafam pointed up-stream.
There, clearly outlined against the sky, he saw a dozen—a score of little, crouching figures emerge from the forest on the north bank, and at a clumsy run defile along the swaying footpath high above the rapids.
CHAPTER XXVII. WAR!
AT SIGHT of the advance-guard of the Horde now already loping, crouched and ugly, over the narrow bridge to Settlement Cliffs Allan’s first impulse was one of absolute despair.
He had expected an attack ere night, but at least he had hoped an hour’s respite to recover a little of his strength and to muster all the still valid men of the Folk for resistance. Now, however, he saw even this was to be denied him. For already the leaders of the Horde scouts had passed the center of the bridge.
Three or four minutes more and they would be inside the palisade, upon the cliff!
“God! If they once get in there, we’re gone!” cried Allan. “We’re cut off from everything. Our animals will be slaughtered. The boy will die! They can bombard us with rocks from aloft. It means annihilation!”
Already he was running up the path toward the palisade. Not one second was to be lost. There was no time even to call a single man of the Folk to reenforce him. Single-handed and alone he must meet the invaders’ first attack.
Panting, sweating, stumbling, he scrambled up the steep terrace. And as he ran his thoughts outdistanced him.
“Fool that I was to have left the bridge!” choked he. “My first act when I set foot on solid land should have been to cut the ropes and drop the whole thing into the rapids! I might have known this would happen—fool that I was!”
The safety, the life, of the whole colony, including his wife and son, now depended solely on his reaching the southern end of the bridge before the vanguard of the Horde.
With a heart-racking burst of energy he sprang to the defence, and as he ran he drew his hunting-knife.
Reeling with exhaustion, spent, winded, yet still in desperation struggling onward, he won the top of the cliff, swung to the left along the path that led to the bridge, and—more dead than alive—rushed onward in a last, supreme effort.
Already he saw the Anthropoids were within a hundred feet of the abutment. He could plainly see their squat, hideous bodies, their hairy and pendent arms, and the ugly shuMe of their preposterous legs, as at their best speed they made for the cliff.