In the doorway appeared another form, armed with an iron spear. Came a quick word of command.
With a cry of utter hopelessness and heartbreak, a wail that seemed to pierce the very soul, the patriarch turned and stumbled to the door.
He paused. He turned, and, stretching out both feeble arms to them—to them, who meant so infinitely much to him, so absolutely nothing to his barbarous race—cried:
“Fare you well, O godlike people of that better time! Fare you well! Before another tide has risen on our accursed black beach, verily both of you, the last survivors—”
With a harsh word of anger, the spearsman thrust him back and away.
Stern leaped forward, revolver leveled.
But before he could pull trigger the iron door had clanged shut.
Once more darkness swallowed them.
Black though it was, it equaled not the blackness of their absolute despair,
CHAPTER XXVIII. THE BATTLE IN THE DARK
FOR a time no word passed between them. Stern took the girl in his arms and comforted her as best he might; but his heart told him there was now no hope.
The old man had spoken only too truly. There existed no way of convincing these barbarians that their prisoners were not of some hated, hostile tribe. Evidently the tradition of the outer world had long since perished as a belief among them. The patriarch’s faith in it had come to be considered a mere doting second childhood vagary, just as the tradition of the Golden Age was held to be by the later Greeks.
That Stern and Beatrice could in any way convince their captors of the truth of this outer world and establish their identity as real survivors of the other time, lay wholly outside the bounds of the probable.
And as the old man’s prophecy of evil—interrupted, yet frightfully ominous—recurred to Stern’s mind, he knew the end of everything was very close at hand.
“They won’t get us, though, without a stiff fight, damn them!” thought he. “That’s one satisfaction. If they insist on extermination—if they want war—they’ll get it, all right enough! And it’ll be what Sherman said war always was, too—Hell!”
Came now a long, a seemingly interminable wait. The door remained fast-barred. Oppression, heat, thirst, hunger tortured them, but relief there was none.
And at length the merciful sleep of stupefaction overcame them; and all their pain, their anguish and forebodings were numbed into a welcome oblivion.
They were awakened by a confused noise—the sound of cries and shouts, dulled by the thick walls, yet evidently many-voiced—harsh commands, yells, and even some few sharp blows upon the prison stones.
The engineer started up, wide-eyed and all alert now in the gloom.
Gone were his lassitude, his pain. Every sense acute, he pistol-butt, finger on trigger.
“Ready there, Beatrice!” cried he. “Something’s started at last! Maybe it’s our turn now. Here, get behind me—but be ready to shoot when I tell you! Steady now, steady for the attack!”
Tense as coiled springs they waited. And all at once a bar slid, creaking. Around the edge of the metal door a thin blue line of light appeared.
“Stand back, you!” yelled Stern. “The first man through that door’s a dead one!”
The line of light remained a moment narrow, then suddenly it broadened. From without a pandemonium of sound burst in—howls, shrieks, imprecations, cries of pain.
Even in that perilous moment a quick wonder darted through Stern’s brain, what the meaning of this infernal tumult might be, and just what ghastly fate was to be theirs—what torments and indignities they might still have to face before the end.
“Remember, Beatrice,” he commanded, “if I’m killed, use the revolver on yourself before you let them take you!”
“I know!” she cried. And, crouching beside him in the half light, she, too, awaited what seemed the inevitable.
The door swung open.
There stood the patriarch again, arms extended, face eager with a passionate hope and longing, a great pride even at that strange and pregnant moment.
“Peace, friends!” he cried. “I give you peace! Strike me not down with those terrible weapons of yours! For verily I bring you hope again!”
“Hope? What d’you mean?” shouted Stern.
Through the opened door he caught vague glimpses in the luminous fog of many spearmen gathered near—of excited gestures and the wild waving of arms—of other figures that, half seen, ran swiftly here and there.
“Speak up, you! What’s the matter? What’s wanted?” demanded the engineer, keeping his automatic sighted at the doorway. “What’s all this infernal row? If your people there think they’re going to play horse with us, they’re mightily mistaken! You tell them the first man that steps through that door to get us never’ll take another step! Quick! What’s up?”
“Come!” answered the aged man, his voice high and tremulous above the howling tumult and the roar of the great gas-well. “Come, now! The Lanskaarn—they attack! Come! I have spoken of your weapons to my people. Come, fight for us! And verily, if we win—”
“What kind of a trick are you putting up on us, anyhow?” roared Stern with thrice-heated rage. “None o’ that now! If your people want us, let ’em come in here and get us! But as for being fooled that way and tricked into coming out—”
“I swear the truth!” supplicated the patriarch, raising his withered hand on high.” If you come not, you must verily die, oh, friends! But if you come—”
“Your own life’s the first to pay for any falsehood now.”
“I give it gladly! The truth, I swear it! Oh, listen, while there is still time, and come! Come!”
“What about it, girl?” cried Stern. “Are you with me? Will you take a chance on it?”
“There’s nothing else to do, Allan. They’ve got us, anyway. And—and I think the old man’s telling the truth. Hear that, now—”
Off somewhere toward the fortification wall that edged the beach, sounds of indisputable conflict were arising. The howls, cries, shrieks, blows were not to be mistaken.
Stern’s resolution was instant.
“I’m with you, old man!” he shouted. “But remember your promise. And if you fail me—it’s your finish!
“Come, Beta! Stick close to me! If we fall, we’ll go down together. It’s both or neither. Come on—come on!”
Out into the glare of the great flame they issued warily, out into the strangely glowing mist that covered the incredible village as with a virescent pall.
Blinking, they stared about them, not knowing for a moment whither to run or where to shoot.
But the patriarch had Stern by the arm now; and in the midst of a confused and shouting mass of the Folk—all armed with spears and slings, knobbed clubs and battle-maces—was pushing him out through the circle of those ghastly posts whence dangled the headless skeletons.
“Where? Which way?” cried Stern. “Show me—I’ll do the rest!”
“Thither!” the old man directed, pointing with one hand, while with the other he shoved the engineer forward. Blind though he was, he knew the right direction. “Thither—to the wall!”
For a second Stern had the thought of leaving Beatrice in the cell, where she might at least be safe from the keen peril of battle; but greater dangers threatened her, he knew, in his absence.
At all hazards they must keep together. And with a cry: “Come! Come—stick close to me!” once more he broke into a run toward the sea.
Through the mists, which grew darker as he neared the wall with Beatrice close beside him and the troop that followed them, he could catch glimpses of the battle.