Beatrice had lost her color now. Milk-white her face was; her eyes grew wide with terror; she strove to speak, but could not.
Her hand went out in a wild, repelling gesture, as though by the very power of her love for home she could protect it now against the incursion of these foul, distorted, inhuman little monsters.
Stern acted quickly. He had been about to cut off power and coast for the beach; but now he veered suddenly to eastward again, rotated the rising-plane, and brought the Pauillac up at a sharp tilt. Banking, he advanced the spark a notch; the engine shrilled a half-tone higher, and with increased speed the aero lifted them bravely in a long and rising swoop.
He snatched his automatic from its holster on his hip and as the plane swept past the beach, down-stream, let fly a spatter of steel jacketed souvenirs at the fast-thickening pack on the sand.
Far up to the girl and him, half heard through the clatter of the motors, they sensed a thin, defiant, barbarous yell--a yapping chorus, bestial and horrible.
Again Stern fired.
He could see quick spurts of water jet up along the edge of the sand, and one of the creatures fell, but this was only a chance shot.
At that distance, firing from a swift-skimming plane, he knew he could do no execution, and with a curse slid the pistol back again into its place.
“Oh, for a dirigible and a few Pulverite bombs, same as we had in the tower!” he wished. “I'd clean the blighters out mighty quick!”
But now Beatrice was pointing, with a cry of dismay, down, away at the bungalow itself, which had for a moment become visible at the far end of the clearing as the Pauillac scudded past.
Even as Stern thought: “Odd, but they're not afraid of us--a flying-machine means nothing to them, does not terrify them as it would human savages. They're too debased even to feel fear!”--even as this thought crossed his brain he, too, saw the terrible thing that the girl had cried out at sight of.
“My God!” he shouted. “This--this is too much!”
All about the bungalow, their home, the scene of such happy hours, so many dreams and hopes, such heart- enthralling labors, hundreds of the Horde were swarming.
Like vicious parasites attacking prey, they overran the garden, the grounds, even the house itself.
As in a flash, Stern knew all his work of months must be undone--the fruit-trees he had rescued from the forest be cut down or broken, the bulbs and roots in the garden uptorn, even the hedges and fences trampled flat.
Worse still, the bungalow was being destroyed! Rather, its contents, since the concrete walls defied the venomous troop.
They knew, at any rate, the use of fire, and not so swiftly skimmed the Pauillac as to prevent both Stern and Beatrice seeing a thin but ominous thread of smoke out-curling on the June air from one of the living-room windows.
With an imprecation of unutterable hate and rage, yet impotent to stay the ravishment of Hope Villa, Stern brought the machine round in a long spiral.
For a moment the wild, suicidal idea possessed him to land on the beach, after all, and charge the little slate-blue devils who had evidently piled all the furnishings together in the bungalow and were now burning them.
He longed for slaughter now; he lusted blood--the blood of the Anthropoid pack which from the beginning had hung upon his flank and been as a thorn unto his flesh.
He seemed to feel the joy of rushing them, an automatic in each hand spitting death, just as he had mown down the Lanskaarn in the Battle of the Wall, down below in the Abyss. Even though he knew the inevitable ends poisoned spear-thrust, a wound with one of those terribly envenomed arrows--he felt no fear.
Revenge! If he could only feel its sweetness, death had no terrors.
Common sense instantly sobered him and dispelled these vain ideas. The bungalow, after all, was not vital to his future or the girl's. Barring the set of encyclopedias on metal plates, everything else could be replaced with sufficient labor. Only a madman would risk a fight with such a Horde in company with a woman.
Not now were he and Beatrice entrenched in a strong tower, with terrible explosives. Now they were in the open, armed only with revolvers. For the present there was no redress.
“Beta,” cried he, “we're up against it this time for fair--and we can't hit back!”
“Our bungalow! Our precious home!”
“I know.” He saw that she was crying: “It's a rotten shame and all that, but it isn't fatal.”
He brought the Pauillac down-wind again, coasting high over the bungalow, whence smoke now issued ever more and more thickly.
“We're simply hamstrung this time, that's all. Where those devils have come from and how many there may be, God knows. Thousands, perhaps; the woods may be full of em. It's lucky for us they didn't attack while we were there!
“Now--well, the only thing to do is let 'em have their way for the present. Eventually--”
“Oh, can't we
“We can and will!” He spoke very grimly, soaring the machine still higher over the river and once more coming round above the upper end of the beach. “One of these days there's got to be a final reckoning, but not yet!”
“So it's good-by to Hope Villa, Allan? There's no way?”
“It's good-by. Humanly speaking, none.”
“Couldn't we land, blockade ourselves in the boat-house, and--”
Her eyes sparkled with the boldness of the plan--its peril, its possibilities. But Allan only shook his head.
“And expose the Pauillac on the beach?” he asked. “One good swing with a war-club into the motor and then a week's siege and slow starvation, with a final rush--interesting, but not practical, little girl. No, no; the better part of valor is to recognize
The bungalow now lay behind. The whole clearing seemed alive with the little blue demons, like vermin crawling everywhere. Thicker and thicker now the smoke was pouring upward. The scene was one of utter desolation.
Then suddenly it faded. The plane had borne its riders onward and away from the range of vision. Again only dense forest lay below, while to eastward sparkled the broad reach where, in the first days of their happiness at Hope Villa, the girl and Allan had fished and bathed.
Her tears were unrestrained at last; but Allan, steadying the wheel with one hand, drew an arm about her and kissed and comforted her.
“There, there, little girl! The world's not ended yet, even if they
“Where away, since our home's gone?” she queried pitifully.
“Where away? Why, Storm King, of course! And the cathedral and the records, and--
CHAPTER IV. “TO-MORROW IS OUR WEDDING-DAY”
Purple and gold the light of that dying day still glowed across the western sky when the stanch old Pauillac, heated yet throbbing with power, skimmed the last league and swung the last great bend of the river that hid old Storm King from the wanderers' eager sight.
Stern's eyes brightened at vision of that vast, rugged headland, forest-clad and superb in the approaching twilight. Beatrice, weary now and spent--for the long journeys, the excitements and griefs of the day had worn her down despite her strength--paled a little and grew pensive as the massive structure of the cathedral loomed against the sky-line.
