“It is to our left,” she told me, as we watched and waited, “that our people will descend the cliff if they continue in that purpose. It is only there that it is possible to climb it.”
It looked impossible to me, even there, but I did not question it.
“The Dwellers come,” she said, “we are none too soon. If you make your mind blank and observe only, I do not think they will detect us. Everything may depend on that. Avoid thought. Do not communicate with my kind either, if they should appear.”
Then she closed her mind, and I was alone beside her.
When the Killers ran out from the blazing gateway, they had scattered aimlessly about the plateau, as ants do when their nest is broken, and for some time they remained in restless tumult, moving continually without direction or purpose, but this was changed in a moment to the frantic desperate rushes of rats when the dogs are among them, and they can find no outlet.
The Dwellers came up the hillside in no appearance of haste, and what they thought or knew of the events we had occasioned they gave no sign to indicate.
There were three of them side by side, taking cliffs in their stride round which our path had wound, and approaching from the only point at which the sides were not too precipitous and deep, even for their attempting.
Arriving on the level ground they consulted for a moment, and then one of them came forward alone. The wall was still blazing in places, or I think he would have stepped over it without change of pace, but, as it was, he leapt easily, and then proceeded systematically to investigate the smouldering ruins of the settlement. The killing-pens, which had caught fire last, were still blazing, and he approached them with caution, but I think that ivory-yellow skin, on which I had seen the teeth of the Frog-Mouths bite in vain, must have been insensitive to fire also, so closely was he standing, as he looked down to observe the victims that boiled beneath it.
He stood there for a long while, as though he found difficulty—as well he might—in understanding all that had happened. I tried to avoid thought, as I had been directed, but the idea crossed me that had the Bat-wings lived, they would not have failed to disclose the whole tale of the imprisoned Leader, and of my companion’s presence, if they had thought that they could have gained anything by so doing. Had it been in that Leader’s mind when she had directed us to destroy them? I thought it likely; but at least the minds of my companion and myself had been free from any such consideration, and the deed itself had been a good one.
With a heavy thoughtfulness he went back to his companions.
Meanwhile, they had not been idle.
It is probable that it had not been the mere coming of the Dwellers, so much as the sight of the things they carried, which had produced so sudden a panic among the Killers who saw them. For they had now shaken out a net, with which they were sweeping the ground from end to end till the whole of the Killers were a kicking, whistling confusion within its ample meshes. One of them then sat on the ground, and taking the basket from his back, he abstracted from it a lidded vessel or cup, which he set open before him.
One by one he pulled the frantic victims loose from the net that held them, and after a glance of inspection, squeezed them in his hand over the cup, so that their blood drained into it.
When he had squeezed sufficiently, he threw the empty carcase with a careless aim, high into the air, to fall far off in the boiling tank, from which its own meals had been so often taken.
This went on for about an hour, during which he dealt with some hundreds in this way, and also selected about two dozen which he inspected more carefully, and then passed to his companion, who also looked over them, and either handed them back to take their turn at the squeezing, or dropped them into his basket.
I supposed that they had decided to destroy this colony, and to found a new one with the few which they had saved for that purpose, but I reflected that this could not have been their intention when they handed over the Bat-wings for destruction, at a feast which would never be held, and if they had now come prepared to take that course, it implied a foresight or knowledge of what was passing, which was sufficiently disconcerting.
I could not resolve that problem, but it soon became evident that the occasion was of some further importance, for one by one they were joined by others, until I had counted fourteen of these giants that were assembled on the plateau.
More than once their words came over to us as the wind helped them, but to me they bore no meaning. Whether they conversed among themselves by other means, as they were able to do with the Amphibians, I could not tell, but they spoke little outwardly, and mainly monosyllables. They seemed to be waiting for an event impending.
Thus they waited, till the twilight was nearing. As I saw them on the plateau, their huge bulks dwarfed by the proportions of the scenery around them, I thought of them again as Titans of an earlier world, and of a size the most natural to the background against which they moved.
I was conscious not only of my own insignificance, but of a vulgarity also, which was not personal to myself, but belonging to the race from which I came.
I clothed them in imagination with the garments to which I was accustomed, and their significance and their dignity
