Her hair had once more been bound up. She had recovered something of her poise and strength. The realization of her mission inspired her to any sacrifice.
“It's all for your sake, Allan,” she whispered as she went. “All for yours--and our boy's!”
Far beneath her New Hope River purled and sparkled in the morning sun. Beyond, the far and vivid tropic forest stretched in wild beauty to the hills that marked the world's end--those hills beyond which--
She put away the thought, refusing to admit even the possibility of Allan's failure, or accident, or death.
“He will come back to me!” she said bravely and proudly, for a moment stopping to face the sun. “He will come back from beyond those hills and trackless woods! He will come back--to us!”
Again she turned, and descending some dozen steps in the terrace path, once more reached the doorway of the hospital cave.
Pausing not, hesitating not, she lifted the rude latch and pushed.
The door refused to give.
Again she tried more forcibly.
It still resisted.
Throwing all her strength against the barrier, she fought to thrust it inward. It would not budge.
“Barred!” she exclaimed, aghast.
Only too true. During her absence, though how or by whom she could not know, the door had been impassably closed to keep her out!
Who, now, was working against her will? Could it be that H'yemba, all burned and blinded as he was, could have returned so soon and once more set himself to thwart her? And if not the smith, then who?
“Rebellion!” she exclaimed. “It's spreading--growing--now, at the very minute when I should have help, faith and cooperation!
“Open! Open, in the name of the law that has been given you--our law!” she cried loudly in the Merucaan tongue.
No answer.
She snatched out a pistol, and with the butt loudly smote the planks of palm-wood. Within, the echoes rumbled dully, but no human voice replied.
“Traitors! Cowards!” she defied the opposing power. “I, a woman, your mistress, am come to save you, and you bar me out! Woe on you! Woe!”
Waiting not, but now with greater haste, she ran down along the pathway toward the next door.
That, too, was sealed. And the next, and the fourth, and all, every one, both on the upper and the lower terrace, all--all were barricaded, even to the great gap made by the landslide.
From within no sound, no reply, no slightest sign that any heard or noticed her. Dumb, mute, passive, invincible rebellion!
In vain she called, commanded, pleaded, explained, entreated. No answer. The white barbarians, all banded against her now, had shut themselves up with their wounded and their dying, to wait their destiny alone.
How many were already dead? How many might yet be saved, who would die without her help? She could not tell. The uncertainty maddened her.
“If they den up, that way,” she said, “pestilence may break out among them and all may die! And then what? If I'm left all alone in the wilderness with Gesafam and the boy--what then?”
The thought was too horrible for contemplation. So many blows had crashed home to her soul the past week--even the past few hours--that the girl felt numbed and dazed as in a nightmare.
It was, it must be, all some frightful unreality--Allan's absence, the avalanche, H'yemba's attack, and this widespread, silent defiance of her power.
Only a few days before Allan had been there with her--strong, vigorous, confident.
Authority had been supreme. Labor, content, prosperity had reigned. Health and life and vigor had been everywhere. On the horizon of existence no cloud; none over the sun of progress.
And now, suddenly--annihilation!
With a groan that was a sob, her face drawn and pale, eyes fixed and unseeing, Beatrice turned back up the terrace path, back up the steep, toward the only door still at her command--Hope Villa.
Back toward the only one of these strange Folk still loyal; back toward her child.
Her head felt strangely giddy. The depths at her left hand, below the parapet of stone, seemed to be calling--calling insistently. Before her sight something like a veil was drawn; and yet it was not a veil, but a peculiar haze, now and then intershot with sparkles of pale light.
Through her mind flittered for the first time something like an adequate realization of the vast, abysmal gulf in culture-status still yawning between these barbarians and Allan and herself.
“Civilization,” she stammered in an odd voice; “why that means--generations!”
All at once she wondered if she were going to faint. A sudden pain had stabbed her temples; a humming had attacked her ears.
She put out her hand against the rock wall of the cliff at the right to steady herself. Her mouth felt hot and very dry.
“I--I must get back home,” she said weakly. “I'm not at all well--this morning. Overexertion--”
Painfully she began to climb the stepped path toward the upper level and Cliff Villa. And again it seemed to her the depths were calling; but now she felt positive she heard a voice--a voice she knew but could not exactly place--a hail very far away yet near--all very strange, unreal and terrifying.
“Oh--am I going to be ill?” she panted. “No, no! I mustn't! For the boy's sake, I mustn't! I can't!”
With a tremendous effort, now crawling rather than walking--for her knees were as water--the girl dragged herself up the path almost to her doorway.
Again she heard the call, this time no hallucination, but reality.
“Beatrice! Beatrice!” the voice was shouting. “O-hé! Beatrice!”
His hail! Allan's!
Her heart stopped, a long minute, and then, leaping with joy, a very anguish of revulsion from long pain, thrashed terribly in her breast.
Gasping with emotion, burned with the first sudden onset of a consuming fever, half-blind, shivering, parched and in agony, the girl made a tremendous effort to hear, to see, to understand.
“Allan! Allan!” she shouted wildly. “Where are you? Where?”
“Beatrice! Here! On the bridge! I'm coming!”
She turned her dimming eyes toward the suspension bridge hung high above the swift and lashing rapids of New Hope River--the bridge, a cobweb-strand in space, across the chasm.
There it seemed to her, though now she could be sure of nothing, so strangely did the earth and sky and cliffs, the bridge, the jungle, all dance and interplay--there, it seemed, she saw a moving figure.
Disheveled, torn, almost naked, lame and slow, yet with something still of power and command in its bearing, this figure was advancing over the swaying path of bamboo-rods lashed to the cables of twisted fiber.
Now it halted as in exhaustion and great pain; now, once more, it struggled forward, limping, foot by foot; crawling, hanging fast to the ropes like some great insect meshed in the wind-swung filaments.
She saw it, and she knew the truth at last.
“Allan! Allan--come quick! Help me--help!”
Then she collapsed. At her door she fell. All things blent and swirled, faded, darkened.
She knew no more.
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.