“It meets my pleasure,” answered Allan. “And when ye have talked, I desire your answer!”
He crossed his arms, faced the multitude, and waited, while the elders gathered in a little group by the dungeon and for some minutes conferred in low and earnest tones.
Outwardly, the man seemed calm, but his soul burned within him and his heart was racing violently.
For on this moment, he well knew, hung the world's destiny. Should they decide to venture forth into the outer world all would be well. If not, the long labor, the plans, the hopes were lost forever.
Well he knew the stubborn nature of the Folk. Once their minds set, nothing on earth could ever stir them.
“Thank God I managed that lie about the patriarch!” thought Allen quickly. “If I'd slipped up on that, and told them he died at the very minute the sunlight struck him, it would have been all off, world without end. Hope it doesn't make a row later. But if it does, I'll face it. The main and only thing now is to get 'em started. They've got to go, that's all there is about it.
“Gad! After all, it's a terrific proposition I'm putting up to these simple fishers of the Abyss. I'm asking them, just on my say-so, to root up the life, the habits, the traditions of more than a thousand years and make a leap into the dark--into the light, I mean.
“I'm asking them to leave everything they've ever known for thirty generations and take a chance on what to them must be the wildest and most hare-brained adventure possible to imagine. To risk homes, families, lives, everything, just on my unsupported word. Jove! Columbus's proposal to his men was a mere afternoon jaunt compared with this! If they refuse, how can I blame them? But if they accept--God! what stuff I'll know they're made of! With material like that to work with, the conquest of the world's in sight already.”
His eyes, wandering nervously along the front ranks of the waiting Folk, dimly illumined by the dull blue glow of the fire-well that shone through the mist, suddenly stopped with apprehension. His brows contracted, and on his heart it seemed as though a gripping hand had suddenly laid hold.
“H'yemba, the smith, again! Damn him! H'yemba!” he muttered, in sudden anger strongly tinged with fear.
The smith, in fact, was standing there a little to the left of him, huge and sinewed hands loosely clasped in front of him, face sinister, eyes glowing like two malevolent evil fires.
Allan noted the defiant poise of the body, the vast breadth of the shoulders, the heavy hang of the arms, biceped like a gorilla's.
For a minute the two men looked each other steadfastly in the eye, each measuring the other. Then suddenly the voice of Vreenya broke the tension.
“O Kromno, we have spoken. Will you hear us?”
Stern faced him, a strange sinking at his heart, almost as though the foreman of a jury stood before him to announce either freedom or sentence of death.
But, holding himself in check, lest any sign of fear or nervousness betray him, he made answer:
“I will hear you. Speak!”
“We have listened to your words. We believe you speak truth. Yet--”
“Yet what? Out with it, man!”
“Yet will we not compel any man to go. All shall be free--”
“Thank God!” breathed Allan, with a mighty sigh.
“--Free to stay or go, as they will. Our village is too full, even now. We have many children. It were well that some should make room for others. Those who dare, have our consent. Now, speak you to the people, your people, O Kromno, and see who chooses the upper world with you!”
Once more Allan turned toward the assemblage. But before he had found time to frame the first question in this unfamiliar speech, a disturbance somewhat to the left interrupted him.
There came a jostling, a pushing, a sound of voices in amazement, anger, approbation, doubt.
Into the clear space stepped H'yemba, the smith. His powerful right hand he raised on high. And boldly, in a loud voice, he cried:
“Folk of the Merucaans, this cannot be!”
CHAPTER XIII. THE RAVISHED NEST
“It cannot be? Who says it cannot be? Who dares stand out and challenge me?”
“I, H'yemba, the man of iron and of flame!”
Stern faced him, every nerve and fiber quivering with sudden passion. At realization that in the exact psychological moment when success lay almost in his hand, this surly brute might baffle him, he felt a wave of murderous hate.
He realized that the dreaded catastrophe had indeed come to pass. Now his sole claim to chieftainship lay in his power to defend the title. Failure meant--death.
“You?” he shouted, advancing on the smith.
His opponent only leered and grimaced offensively. Then without even having vouchsafed an answer, he swung toward the elders.
“I challenge!” he exclaimed. “I have the right of words!”
Vreenya nodded, fingering his long white beard.
“Speak on!” he answered. “Such is our ancient custom.”
“Oh, people,” cried the smith, suddenly facing the throng, “will ye follow one who breaks the tribal manners of our folk? One who disdains our law? Who has neglected to obey it? Will ye trust yourselves into hands stained with law-breaking of our blood?”
A murmur, doubtful, wondering, obscure, spread through the people. By the greenish flare-light Stern could see looks of wonder and dismay. Some frowned, others stared at him or at the smith, and many muttered.
“What the devil and all have I broken now?” wondered Allan. “Plague take these barbarous customs! Jove, they're worse than the taboos of the old Maoris, in the ancient days! What's up?”
He had not long to wonder, for of a sudden H'yemba wheeled on him, pointed him out with vibrant hands, and in a voice of terrible anger cried:
“The law, the law of old! No man shall be chief who does not take a wife from out our people! None who weds one of the Lanskaarn, the island folk, or the yellow-haired Skeri beyond the Vortex, none such shall ever rule us. Yet this man, this stranger who speaks such great things very hard to be believed, scorns our custom. No woman from among us he has taken, but instead, that vuedma of his own kind! What? Will ye--”
He spoke no further, for Allan was upon him with one leap. At sound of that word, the most injurious in their tongue, the fires of Hell burst loose in Stern.
Reckoning no consequences, staying for no parley or diplomacy, he sprang; and as he sprang, he struck.
The blow went home on the smith's jaw with a smash like a pile-driver. H'yemba, reeling, swung at him--no skill, no science, just a wild, barbaric, sledge-hammer sweep.
It would have killed had it landed, but Allan was not there. In point of tactics, the twentieth century met the tenth.
And as the smith whirled to recover, a terrible left-hander met him just below the short ribs.
With a grunt the man doubled, sprawled and fell. By some strange atavism, which he never afterward could understand, Allan counted, in the Folk's tongue: “Hathi, ko, zem, baku” and so up to “lamnu”--ten.
Still the smith did not rise, but only lay and groaned and sought to catch the breath that would not come.
“I have won!” cried Allan in a loud voice. “Here, you people, take this greun, this child, away! And let there be no further idle talk of a dead law--for surely, in your custom, a law dies when its champion is beaten! Come, quick, away with him!”
Two stout men came forward, bowed to Allan with hands clasped upon their breasts in signal of fresh allegiance, and without ceremony took the insensible smith, neck-and-heels, and lugged him off as though he had only been a net heavily laden with fish.