Three or four poisoned darts fell clicking on the stones about him. Howls and yells of rage burst from the file of beast-men.
One of the horrible creatures even—with apelike agility—sprang up into the guy ropes of the bridge, clung there, and discharged an arrow from its bamboo blow-gun, chattering with rage.
Stern, running but the faster, plugged him with a forty-four. The Anthropoid, still clinging, yowled hideously, then all at once dropped off and vanished in the depths.
Full drive, Allan hurled himself toward the entrance of the bridge. It seemed to him the beasts were almost on him now.
Plainly he could hear the slavering click of their tushes and see the red, bleared winking of their deep-set eyes.
Now he was at the rope-anchorage, where the cables were lashed to two stout palms.
He emptied his automatic point-blank into the pack.
Pausing not to note effects, he slashed furiously at the left-hand rope.
One strand gave. It sprang apart and began untwisting. Again he hewed with mad rage.
“Crack!”
The cable parted with a report like a pistol-shot. From the bridge a wild, hideous tumult of yells and shrieks arose. The whole fabric, now unsupported on one side, dropped awry. Covered from end to end with Anthropoids, it swayed heavily.
Had men been on it, all must have been flung into the rapids by the shock. But these beast-things, used to arboreal work, to scaling cliffs, to every kind of dangerous adventuring, nearly all succeeded in clinging.
Only three or four were shaken off, to catapult over and over down into the foaming lash of the river.
And still, now creeping with hideous agility along the racked and swinging bridge that hung by but a single rope, they continued to make way, howling and screaming like damned souls.
One gained the shore! At Allan it bounded, crouching, ferocious, deadly. He saw the tiny, venomous lance raised for the throw.
“Flick!”
He felt a twitch on his arm. Was he wounded? He knew not. Only he knew that with blind rage he had flung himself on the second rope, and now with demon-rage was hacking at it desperately.
The snapping whirl of the cable as it parted flung him backward.
He had an instant’s vision of the whole bridge-structure crumpling. Then it vanished. From the depths rose the most awful scream, quickly smothered, that he had ever heard.
And as the bestial bodies went tumbling, rolling, fighting, down the rapids, he suddenly beheld the bridge footway hanging limp and swaying against the further cliff.
“Thank God! In time, in time!” he panted, staggering like a drunken man.
But all at once he beheld two of the Horde still there in front of him—the one that had flung the dart and another. They were advancing at a lope.
Allan turned and fled.
His ammunition was all spent, he knew that to face them was madness.
“I must load up again,” thought he. “Then I’ll make short work of them!”
Fortunately he could far outstrip them in flight. That, and that alone, had already saved him in the past week of horrible pursuit through the forests to northward. And quickly now he ran down the terrace again—down to the caves below. As he ran he shouted in Merucaan:
“Out, my people! Out with you! Out to battle! Out to war!”
Half way upward down to Cliff Villa he met Frumuos toiling upward. Him he greeted and quickly informed of the situation.
“The bridge is down!” he panted. “I cut it! The further shore is swarming with enemies. Two have reached this side!”
“What is this, O Kromno?” asked the man anxiously, pointing at Allan’s shoulder. “Have they wounded you?”
Allan looked and saw a poisoned dart hanging loosely in his left sleeve. As he moved he could feel the point rubbing against his naked skin.
“Merciful Heaven!” he exclaimed. “Has it scratched me?”
With infinite precautions he loosened and threw off his outer garment. He flung it, with the dart still adhering, down over the cliff.
“Look, Frumuos!” he commanded. “Search carefully and see if there be any scratch on the skin!”
The man obeyed, making a minute inspection through his mica eye-shields. Then he shook his head.
“No, Kromno,” he answered. “I see nothing. But the arrow came near, near!”
Stern, tremendously relieved, gestured toward the caves.
“Go swiftly!” he commanded. “Bring up every man who still can fight. All must have full burdens of cartridges. Even though the bridge be down, the enemy will still attack!”
“But how, since the great river lies between?”
“They can climb down those cliffs and swim the river and scramble up this side as easily as we can walk on level ground. Go swiftly! There is no time to lose!”
“I go, master. But tell me, the two who have already reached this side—shall we not first slay them?”
Allan thought. For the first time he now realized clearly the terrible peril that lay in these two Anthropoids already inside the limits of the colony.
He peered up the pathway. No sign of them above. Their animal cunning had warned them not to descend to certain death.
Now Allan knew they were at liberty inside the palisades, waiting, watching, constituting a deadly menace at every turn.
In any one of a thousand places they could lie ambushed, behind trees or bushes, or in the limbs aloft, and thence, unseen, they could discharge an indefinite number of darts.
It was now perilous in the extreme even to venture back to the palisade. Any moment might bring a flicking, stinging messenger of death. Those two, alone, might easily decimate the remaining men of the colony—and now each man was incalculably precious.
“Go, Frumuos,” Allan again commanded. “For the moment we must leave those two up there. Go, muster all the fighting men and bring them up here along the terrace. I must think! Go!”
Suddenly, before the messenger had even had time to disappear round the first bend in the path, Allan found his inspiration.
“Regular warfare will never do it!” he exclaimed decisively. “They have thousands where we have tens. Before we could pick them off with our firearms they’d have exhausted all our ammunition and have rushed us—and everything would be all over.
“No; there must be some quicker and more drastic way! Even dynamite or Pulverite could never reach them all, swarming over there through miles of forest. Only one thing can stand against them—fire!
“With fire we must sweep and purge the world, even though we destroy it! With fire we must sweep the world!”
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE BESOM OF FLAME
Stern was not long in carrying out his plan.
Even before Frumnos had returned, with the seventeen men still able to bear arms, he was at work.
In Cliff Villa he hastily lashed up half a dozen fireballs, of coarse cloth, thoroughly soaked them in oil, and, with a blazing torch, brought them out to the terrace. Old Gesafam, at his command, bolted the door behind him. At all hazards, Beta and the child must be protected from any possibility of peril.
“Here, Frumnos!” cried Stern.
“Yes, master?”
“Run quickly! Fetch the strongest bow in the colony and many arrows!”
“I go, master!”
Once more the man departed, running.
“Gad! If I only had my oxygen-containing bullets ready!” thought Stern, his mind reverting to an unfinished experiment down there in his laboratory in the Rapids power-house. “They would turn the trick, sure enough! They’d burst and rain fire everywhere. But they aren’t ready yet; and even if they were, nobody could venture down there now!”
For already, plainly visible on the farther edge of the cañon, scores and hundreds of the hideous little beast-men were beginning to swarm. Their cries, despite the contrary stiff wind, carried across the river; and here and there a dart broke against the cliff.
Alrea
dy a few of the Anthropoids were beginning to scramble down the opposite wall of stone.
“Men!” cried Allan commandingly, “not one of those creatures must ever reach this terrace! Take good aim. Waste no single shot. Every bullet must do its work!”
Choosing six of the best marksmen, he stationed them along the parapet with rifles. The firing began at once.
Irregularly the shots barked from the line of sharpshooters; and the little stabs of smoke, drifting out across the river, blent in a thin blue haze. Every moment or two, one of the Horde would writhe, scream, fall—or hang there twitching, to the cliff, with terrible, wild yells.
Stern greeted the return of Frumuos with eagerness.
“Here!” he exclaimed, scattering the arrows among half a dozen men. “Bind these fireballs fast to the arrowheads!”
He dealt out cord. In a moment the task was done.
“Sivad!” he called a man by name. “You, the best bowman of all! Here quickly!”
Even as Sivad fitted the first arrow to the string, and Stern was about to apply the torch, a rattling crash from above caused all to cringe and leap aside.
Down, leaping, ricochetting, thundering, hurtled a great boulder, spurning the cliff-face with a tremendous uproar.
It struck the parapet like a thirteen-inch shell, smashed out two yards of wall, and vanished in the depths. And after it, sliding, rattling and bouncing down, followed a rain of pebbles, fragments and detritus.
“Those two above—they’re attacking!” shouted Stern. “Quick—after them! You, you, you!”
He told off half a dozen men with rifles and revolvers.
“Quick, before they can hide! Look out for their darts! Kill! Kill!”
The detachment started up the path at a run, eager for the hunt.
Stern set the flaring torch to the first fireball. It burst into bright flame.
“Shoot, Sivad! Shoot!” he commanded. “Shoot high, shoot far. Plant your arrow there in the dry undergrowth where the wind whips the jungle! Shoot and fail not!”
The stout bowman drew his arrow to the head, back, back till the flame licked his left hand.
“Zing-g-g-g-g!”
The humming bowspring sang in harmony with the zooning arrow. A swift blue streak split the air, high above the river. In a quick trajectory it leaped.
It vanished in the windswept forest. Almost before it had disappeared, Sivad had snatched another flaming arrow and had planted it farther down stream.
One by one, till all were gone, the marksman sowed the seed of conflagration. And all the while, from the rifles along the parapet, death went spitting at the forefront of invasion.
Another boulder fell from aloft, this time working havoc; for as one of the riflemen sprang to dodge, it struck a shoulder of limestone, bounded, and took him fair on the back.
His cry was smashed clean out; he and the stone, together, plumbed the depths.
But, as though to echo it, shots began to clatter up above. Then all at once they ceased; and a cheer floated away across the cañon.
“They’re done, those two up there, damn them!” shouted Stern. “And look, men, look! The fire takes! The woods begin to burn!”
True! Already in three places, coils of greasy smoke were beginning to writhe upward, as the resinous, dry undergrowth blossomed into red bouquets of flame.
Now another fire burst out; then the two remaining ones. From six centers the conflagration was already swiftly spreading.
Smoke-clouds began to drift downwind; and from the forest depths arose not only harsh cries from the panic-stricken Horde, but also beast and bird-calls as the startled fauna sought to flee this new, red terror.
Shouts and cheers of triumph burst from the little band of defenders on the terrace as the sweeping wind, flailing the flame through the sun-dried underbrush, whirled it crackling aloft in a quick-leaping storm of fire.
But Stern was silent as he watched the fierce and sudden onset of the conflagration. Between narrowed lids, as though calculating a grave problem, he observed the crazed birds taking sudden flight, launching into air and whirling drunkenly hither and yon with harsh cries for their last brief bit of life.
He listened to the animal calls in the forest and to the strange crashings of the underwood as the creatures broke cover and in vain sought safety.
Mingled with these sounds were others—yells, shrieks, and gibberings—the tumult of the perishing Horde.
Swiftly the fire spread to right and left, even as it ate northward from the river.
The mass of Anthropoids inevitably found themselves trapped; their slouching, awkward figures could here or there be seen in some clear space, running wildly. Then, with a gust of flame, that space, too, vanished, and all was one red glare.
The riflemen, meanwhile, were steadily potting such of the little demons as still were crawling up or down the cliffside opposite. Surely, relentlessly, they shot the invaders down. And, even as Stern watched, the enemy melted and vanished before his eyes.
Allan was thinking.
“What may this not result in?” he wondered as he observed the swift and angry leap of the forest-fire to northward. “It may ravage thousands of square miles before rain puts an end to it. It may devastate the whole country. A change in the wind may even drive it back on us, across the river, sweeping all before it. This may mean ruin!”
He paused a moment, then said aloud:
“Ruin, perhaps. Yes; but the alternative was death! There was no other way!”
Now none of the attackers remained save a few feebly twitching, writhing bodies caught on some protuberance of rock. Here, there, one of these fell, and like the rest was borne away down stream.
Through the heated air already verberated a strange roar as the forest-fire leaped up the opposite hillside in one clear lick of incandescence. This roar hummed through the heavens and trembled over the long reaches of the river.
The fire jumped a little valley and took the second hill, burning as clear as any furnace, with a swift onward, upward slant as the wind fanned it forward through the dry brush and among the crowded palms.
Now and then, with a muffled explosion, a sap-filled palm burst. Here, or yonder, some brighter flare showed where the fire had run at one clear leap right to the fronded top of a fern-tree.
Fire-brands and dry-kye, caught up by the swirl, spiralled through the thick air and fell far in advance of the main fire-army, each outpost colonizing into swift destruction.
Already the nearer portion of the opposite cliff-edge was barren and smoking, swept clean of life as a broom might sweep an ant-hill. Tourbillons of dense smoke obscured the sky.
The air flew thick with brands, live coals and flaring bits of bark, all whirling aloft on the breath of the fire-demon. Showers of burning jewels were sown broadcast by the resistless wind.
Stern, unspeakably saddened in spite of victory by this wholesale destruction of forest, fruit and game, turned away from the magnificent, the terrifying spectacle.
He left his riflemen staring at it, amazed and awed to silence by the splendor of the flame-tempest, which they watched through their eye-shields in absolute astonishment.
Back to Cliff Villa he returned, his step heavy and his heart like lead. In a few brief hours, how great, how terrible, how devastating the changes that had come upon Settlement Cliffs!
Attack, destruction, pestilence and flame had all worked their will there; and many a dream, a plan, a hope now lay in ashes, even like those smoldering cinder-piles across the river—those pyres that marked the death-field of the hateful, venomous, inhuman Horde!
Numb with exhaustion and emotions, he staggered up the path, knocked, and was admitted to his home by the old nurse.
He heard the crying of his son, vigorously protesting against some infant grievance, and his tired heart yearned with strong father-love.
“A hard world, boy!” thought he. “A hard fight, all the way through. God grant, before you come to take the burden and th
e shock, I may have been able to lighten both for you?”
The old woman touched his arm.
“O, master! Is the fighting past?”
“It is past and done, Gesafam. That enemy, at least, will never come again! But tell me, what causes the boy to cry?”
“He is hungered, master. And I—I do not know the way to milk the strange animal!”
Despite his exhaustion, pain and dour forebodings, Allan had to smile a second.
“That’s one thing you’ve got to learn, old mother!” he exclaimed. “I’ll milk presently. But not just yet!”
For first of all he must see Beatrice again. The boy must cry a bit, till he had seen her!
To the bed he hastened, and beside it fell on his knees. His eager eyes devoured the girl’s face; his trembling hand sought her brow.
Then a glad cry broke from his lips.
Her face no longer burned with fever, and her pulse was slower now. A profuse and saving perspiration told him the crisis had been passed.
“Thank God! Thank God!” he breathed from his inmost soul. In his arms he caught her. He drew her to his breast.
And even in that hour of confusion and distress he knew the greatest joy of life was his.
CHAPTER XXIX
ALLAN’S NARRATIVE
The week that followed was one of terrible labor, vigil and responsibility for Stern. Not yet recovered from his wounds nor fully rested from his flight before the Horde—now forever happily wiped out—the man nevertheless plunged with untiring energy into the stupendous tasks before him.
He was at once the life, the brain, the inspiration of the colony. Without him all must have perished. In the hollow of his hand he held them, every one; and he alone it was who wrought some measure of reconstruction in the smitten settlement.
Once Beatrice was out of danger, he turned his attention to the others. He administered his treatment and regimen with a strong hand, and allowed no opposition. Under his direction a little cemetery grew in the palisade—a mournful sight for this early stage in the reconstruction of the world.
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