“And then?”
Rigvin shook his head and sighed.
“O Kromno,” he answered, “the story is too long! We be weary, and would reach the place whereof ye have told us. Later there will be time for talk. But now we cannot tell it all!”
“Ye speak truth, Rigvin!” he exclaimed. “I, too, have many things to tell. It cannot be this day. We will lead ye to the colony. We, too, need rest. My men are in sore straits, as ye see!”
He gestured at the groups gathered along the edge of the ravine. A great noise of talking rose against the heated air; and food and water, too, were being given to the Settlement men by the newcomers.
Stern knew the day was saved. Deep gratitude upwelled in his heart.
“Nothing that I can ever do will repay men like these!” thought he. Then, all at once, a sudden hope thrilled him, and he cried:
“Oh, Rigvin, one thing more! Tell me, in your long journey from the brink, have ye chanced to see a cleft mountain with two peaks on either hand?”
“You mean, master--”
“A mountain; a high jut of land, with two tops, side by side--like two grave-mounds?”
Rigvin stood a moment in thought, his soot-smeared brows wrinkled with the effort of trying to remember. Then all at once he looked up quickly with a smile.
“Yea, master!” he cried. “We saw such!”
“Where, where? For God's sake, where was it?” ejaculated Stern, gripping him by the arm with a hand that shook with sudden keen emotion.
“Where was it, master? Thus one day's marching.”
Rigvin wheeled and pointed to northwestward.
“And ye can find it again?”
“Truly, yes. Why, master?”
“There, near that mountain, lies the wreck of the vlyn b'hotu, the flying boat, Rigvin! Lead us thither! We must find it. And then Settlement Cliffs!”
Through all his exhaustion and his pain he knew that now the goal was close at hand. And beyond toil, suffering and hardship once more beckoned prosperity and peace and love.
CHAPTER XXXIII. FIVE YEARS LATER
Long before daybreak that morning, the thriving village of Settlement Cliffs, capital and market-town of the New Hope Colony, was awake and astir.
For the great festival day was at hand, the fifth anniversary of the founding of the colony, to be celebrated by the arrival of the last Merucaans from the depths of the Abyss.
The old caves, now abandoned save for grain, fruit and fish storehouses were closed and silent. No labor was going forward there. The nets hung dry. From the forges, smithies and work-shops along the river-bank at the rapids arose no sounds of the accustomed industry.
The road and bridge-builders were idle; and from the farms now dotting the rich brûlé across the river--each snug stone house, tiled with red or green, standing among its crops and growing orchards--the Folk were coming in to town for the feast-day.
The broad wooden trestle-bridge across the New Hope echoed with hollow verberations beneath the measured tread of two and four-ox teams hauling creaking wains heaped high with meats, fruits, casks of cider, generous wines, and all the richness of that virgin soil.
On the summer morning air rose laughter from the youths and maidens coming in afoot. Sounded the cries of the teamsters, the barking of dogs, the mingled murmur of speech--English speech again; and the fresh wind, bearing away a fine, golden dust from the long roads, swayed the palm-tops and the fern-trees with a gentle and caressing touch.
All up and down the broad, well-paved street of the village--a street lined with stone cottages, bordered with luxuriant tropic gardens, and branching into a dozen smaller thoroughfares--a happy throng was idling.
Well clad in plain yet substantial weaves from the vine-festooned work-shops below the cliff, abundantly fed, vigorous and strong, not one showed sickness or deformity, such as had scourged the human race in the old, evil days of long ago.
Loose-belted garb, sandals and a complete absence of hats all had their part in this abounding health. Open-air life and rational food completed the work.
No drugs, save three or four essential ones, and no poisons, ever had crept in to menace life. Wine there was, rich and unfermented; but the curse of alcohol existed not. And in the Law it was forever banned.
On the broad porch of their home, a boulder-built cottage facing the broad plaza where palms shaded the graveled paths, and purple, yellow and scarlet blooms lured humming-birds and butterflies, stood Beatrice and Allan.
Both were smiling in the clear June sunlight of that early morning. A cradle rocked by Gesafam--a little older and more bent, yet still hardy--gave glimpses of another olive-branch, this one a girl.
The piazza was littered at its farthest end with serviceable, home-made playthings; but Allan, Junior, had no use for them to-day. Out there on the lawn of the plaza he was rolling and running with a troop of other children--many, many children, indeed.
As Beatrice and Allan watched the play they smiled; and through the man's arm crept the woman's hand, and with the confidence of perfect trust she leaned her head against his shoulder.
“Whoever could have thought,” said he at last, “that all this really could come true? In those dark hours when the Horde had all but swallowed us, when we fell into the Abyss, when those terrible adventures racked our souls down beside the Sunken Sea, and later, here, when everything seemed lost--who could have foreseen this?”
“You could and did!” she answered. “From the beginning you planned everything, Allan. It was all foreseen and nothing ever stopped you, just as the future beyond this time is all foreseen by you and must and shall be as you plan it!”
“Shall be, with your help!” he murmured, and silence came again. Together they watched the holiday crowd gradually congregating in the vast plaza where once the palisade had been. Now the old wooden stockade had long vanished. Cleared land and farms extended far beyond even Newport Heights, where the Pauillac had first come to earth at New Hope.
Well-kept roads connected them all with the settlement. And for some miles to southward the primeval forests had been vanquished by the ever-extending hand of this new, swiftly growing race.
“With my help and theirs!” she rejoined presently. “Never forget, dear, how wonderfully they've taken hold, how they've labored, developed and grown in every way. You'd be surprised--really you would--if you came in contact with them as I do in the schools, to see the marvelous way they learn--old and young alike. It's a miracle, that's all!”
“No, not exactly,” he explained. “It's atavism. These people of ours were really civilized in essence, despite all the overlying ages of barbarism. Civilization was latent in them, that's all. Just as all the children born here under normal conditions have reverted to pigmented skin and hair and eyes, so even the grown-ups have thrown back to civilization. Two or three years at the outside have put back the coloring matter in every newcomer's iris and epidermis. Just so--”
A sudden and quickly-growing tumult in the plaza and down the long, broad street interrupted him. He saw a waving of hands, a general craning of necks, a drift toward the north side of the square, the river side.
The shouts and cheers increased and cries of “They come! They come!” rose on the morning air.
“Already?” exclaimed Allan in surprise. “These new machines certainly do surprise me with their speed and power. In the old days the Pauillac wouldn't have been here before noon from the Abyss!”
Together, Beatrice and he walked round the wide piazza to the rear of the bungalow. The home estate sloped gently down toward the cement and boulder wall edging the cliff. In its broad garden stood the stable, where half a dozen horses--caught on the northern savannas and carefully tamed--disputed their master's favor with the touring car he had built up from half a dozen partly ruined machines in Atlanta and other cities.