CHAPTER XXXVIII
THE SUN OF SPRING
"What altitude now? Can you make-out, Allan?"
"No. The aneroid's only good up to five miles. We must have made twohundred, vertically, since this morning. The way the propeller takeshold and the planes climb in this condensed air is just a miracle!"
"Two passengers at that!" Beatrice answered, leaning back in her seatagain. She turned to the patriarch, who, sitting in an extra place inthe thoroughly overhauled and newly equipped Pauillac, was holdingwith nervous hands to the wire stays in front of him.
"Patience, father," she cheered him. "Two hours more--not over three,at the outside--and you shall breathe the upper air again! For thefirst time the sunlight shall fall upon your face!"
"The sun! The sun! Oh, is it possible?" murmured the aged man."Verily, I had never thought to live until this day! _The sun!_"
Came silence between these three for a time, while the strong heart ofthe machine beat steadily; and the engineer, with deft and skilfulhand, guided it in wide-swept spirals upward, ever up, up, up, backtoward the realms of day, of life, once more; up through the fogs andclouds, away from heat and dark and mystery, toward the clear, pure,refreshing air of heaven again.
At last Stern spoke.
"Well, father," said he, "I never would have thought it; but you wereright, after all! They're like so much clay in the potter's hand now,for me. I see I can do with them whatever I will.
"I was afraid some of them might object, after all, to any suchproposition. It's one thing for them to accept me as boss down there,and quite another for them to consent to wholesale transplanting, suchas we've got under way. But I can't see any possible reason why--withplenty of time and patience--the thing can't be accomplished allright. The main difficulty was their consent; and now we've got that,the rest is mere detail and routine work."
"Time and patience," repeated the girl. "Those are our watchwords now,boy. And we've got lots of both, haven't we?"
"Two passengers each trip," the engineer continued, more practicalthan she, "and three trips a week, at the most, makes six of the Folklanded on the surface weekly. In other words, it'll take--"
"No matter about that now!" interrupted Beatrice. "We've got all thetime there is! Even if it takes five years, what of that? What aremonths or even years in the life-history of the world?"
Stern kept silence again. In his mind he was revolving a hundred vitalquestions of shelter, feeding, acclimatization for these men, now tobe transported from a place of dark and damp and heat to the strangeouter regions of the surface-world.
Plainly he saw it would be a task of unparalleled skill, delicacy, anddifficult accomplishment; but his spirits rose only the higher as hefaced its actual details. After all that he and Beatrice had beenthrough since their wakening in the tower, he feared no failure tosolve any questions that now might rise. By care, by keeping the Folkat first in caves, then gradually accustoming them to stronger andbrighter light, more air, more cold, he knew he could bridge the gapof centuries in a few years.
Ever adaptable, the human body would respond to changed environments.Patience and time--these would solve all!
And as for this Folk's barbarism, it mattered not. Much better suchstock to rebuild from than some mild, supine race of far higherculture. To fight the rough battles of life and re-establishment stillahead, the bold and warlike Merucaans were all that he could wish.
"Imagine _me_ as a school-teacher," suddenly exclaimed the girl,laughing: "giving the children A B C and making them read: 'I see thecat'--when there _aren't_ any cats nowadays--no tame ones, anyhow!Imagine--"
"Sh-h-h!" cautioned Stern. "Don't waste your energies imaginingthings just yet. There's more than enough real work, food-getting,house-building in caves, and all that, before we ever get to schools.That's years ahead yet, education is!"
Silence again, save for the strong and ceaseless chatter of theengine, that, noisy as a score of mowing machines, flung itsindomitable challenge to gravitation out into the fathomless void onevery hand.
"Allan! Allan! Oh, a star! Look, look! _Astar!_"
The girl was first to see that blest and wondrous thing. Hours hadpassed, long, weary hours; steadily the air-pressure had sunk, thevapors thinned; but light had not yet filtered through the mists. AndAllan's mind had been sore troubled thereat. He had not thought of thesimple reason that they were reaching the surface at night.
But now he knew, and as she cried to him "A star!" he, too, looked andsaw it, and as though he had been a little child he felt the suddentears start to his weary eyes.
"A star!" he answered. "Oh, thank God--a star!"
It faded almost at once, as vapors shrouded it; but soon it cameagain, and others, many more; and now the first breath of the cool andblessed outer air was wafted to them.
Used as they had been, all these long months--for now the year hadturned again and early spring was coming up the world--used to theclosed and stifling atmosphere of the Abyss, its chemicalized fogs andmists, the first effect of the pure surface-air was almostintoxicating as they mounted higher, higher, toward the lip of thetitanic gulf.
The patriarch, trembling with eagerness and with exhaustion--for hewas very old and now his vital forces were all but spent--breathed itonly with difficulty. Rapid was his respiration; on either pallidcheek a strange and vivid patch of color showed.
Suddenly he spoke.
"Stars? You see them--really see them?" faltered he. "Oh, for my sightagain! Oh, that I might see them once, only once, those wonderfulthings of ancient story! Then, verily, I should be glad to die!"
Midnight.
Hard-driven now for many hours, heated, yet still running true, thePauillac had at length made a safe landing on the western verge of theAbyss. Again the voyagers felt solid earth beneath their feet. By theclear starlight Stern had brought the machine to earth on a littleplateau, wooded in part, partly bare sand. Numb and stiff, he hadalighted from the driver's seat, and had helped both passengersalight,
The girl, radiant with joy, had kissed him full upon the lips; thepatriarch had fallen on his knees, and, gathering a handful of thesand--the precious surface of the earth, long fabled among his Folk,long worshipped in his deepest reveries--had clasped it to his thinand heaving breast.
If he had known how to pray he would have worshipped there. But eventhough his lips were silent, his attitude, his soul were all one vastand heartfelt prayer--prayer to the mother-earth, the unseen stars,the night, the wind upon his brow, the sweet and subtle airs of heaventhat enfolded him like a caress.
Stern wrapped the old man in a spare mantle, for the night was chill,then made a crackling fire on the sands. Worn out, they rested, all.Little they said. The beauty and majesty of night now--seen againafter long absence--a hundred times more solemn than they had everknown it, kept the two Americans from speech. And the old man, buriedin his own thoughts, sat by the fire, burning with a fever ofimpatient longings for the dawn.
Five o'clock.
Now all across the eastern sky, shrouded as it was with the slow,silent mist-wreaths rising ghostly from the Abyss, delicate pink andpearl-gray tints were spreading, shading above to light blues and topurples of exquisite depth and clarity.
No cloud flecked the sky, the wondrous sky of early spring. Dawn, pureas on the primal day, was climbing from the eastern depths. And,thrilled by that eternal miracle, the man and woman, hand in hand,awaited the full coming of the light.
The patriarch spoke.
"Is the sun nigh arisen now?" he queried in a strange, awed voice,trembling with eagerness and deep emotion. "Is it coming, at last--thesun?"
"It'll be here now before long, father," answered Stern.
"From which direction does it come? Am I facing it?" he asked, withpitiful anxiety.
"You're facing it. The first rays will fall on you. Only be patient. Ipromise you it shall not fail!"
A pause. Then the aged man spoke again.
"Remember, oh, my children,"
said he, with terrible earnestness, "allthat I have told you, all that you must know. Remember how to dealwith my people. They are as children in your hands. Be very patient,very firm and wise; all will be well.
"Remember my warnings of the Great Vortex, so very far below our sea,the Lanskaarn, and all those other perils of the Abyss whereof I havespoken. Remember, too, all the traditions of the Cave of Records. Someday, when all else is accomplished, you may find that cave. I havetold you everything I know of its location. Seek it some day, and findthe history of the dead, buried past, from the time of the greatcatastrophe to the final migration when my ancestors sought the lowersea."
Another silence. All three were too deeply moved for any speech. Andever mounting higher, brighter and more clear, dawn flung its glorieswide across the sky.
"Help me that I may stand, to greet the day!" at last the patriarchsaid. "I cannot rise, alone."
Stern and the girl, each taking an arm, got him to his feet. He stoodthere facing the east, priestlike in venerable and solemn worship ofthe coming sun.
"Give me each a hand, my children," he commanded. In Stern's hand,strong, corded, toil-worn, he laid the girl's.
"Thus do I give you each to each," said he. "Thus do I make you one!"
Stern drew Beatrice into his arms. Blind though the old man was, hesensed the act, and smiled. A great and holy peace had shrouded him.
"Only that I may feel the sun upon my face!" breathed he.
All at once a thinning cloud-haze let the light glow through.
Beatrice looked at Stern. He shook his head.
"Not yet," he answered.
Swiftly uprose the sun. The morning wind dispelled the shroudingvapors.
"Oh, what is this warmth?" exclaimed the patriarch, tremblingviolently. "What is this warmth, this glow upon my face? This life,this--"
Out toward the east he stretched both hands. Instinctively thepriestlike worship of the sun, old when the world was still ininfancy, surged back to him again after the long, lost centuries ofdarkness and oblivion.
"The sun! _The sun!_" he cried, his voice triumphant as atrumpet-call. Tears coursed from his blind eyes; but on his lips asmile of joy unutterable was set.
"The sun! _At last! The_--"
Stern caught his feeble body as he fell.
Down on the sands they laid him. To the stilled heart Stern laid hisear.
Tears were in his eyes, too, and in the girl's, as Stern shook hishead, silently.
Up over the time-worn, the venerable, the kindly face they drew themantle, but not before each had reverently kissed the wrinkledforehead.
"Better thus," whispered the engineer. "Far better, every way. He hadhis wish; he felt the sunshine on his face; his outgoing spirit mustbe mingled with that worshipped light and air and sky--with dawn--withspringtime--"
"With life itself!" said Beatrice.
And through her tears she smiled, while higher rose the warm,life-giving sun of spring.
BOOK III
THE AFTERGLOW
Darkness and Dawn Page 68