The report roared heavily in that constricted space. For a moment the obeah stopped short. A look of brute pain, of wonder, then of quintupled rage passed over his face. A twitching grin of passion distorted the huge, wounded gash of the mouth. He screamed. Up came the stone ax.
“Again!” shouted Stern. “Give it to him again!”
She fired on the instant. But already, with a chattering howl, the obeah was running forward. And after him, screaming, snarling, foaming till their lips were all a slaver, the pack swept toward them.
Stern dragged the girl away, back to the landing.
“Up! Up!” he yelled.
Then, turning, he hurled the second bomb.
A blinding glare dazzled him. A shock, as of a suddenly unleashed volcano, all but flung him headlong.
Dazed, choked by the gush of fumes that burst in a billowing cloud out along the hall and up the stairs, he staggered forward. Tightly to his body he clutched the remaining vials. Where was Beatrice? He knew not. Everything boomed and echoed in his stunned ears. Below there, he heard thunderous crashes as wrecked walls and floors went reeling down. And ever, all about him, eddied the strangling smoke.
Then, how long after he knew not, he found himself gasping for air beside a window.
“Beatrice!” he shouted with his first breath. Everything seemed strangely still. No sound of pursuit, no howling now. Dead calm. Not even the drum-beat in the forest, far below.
“Beatrice! Where are you? Beatrice!”
His heart leaped gladly as he heard her answer.
“Oh! Are you safe? Thank God! I—I was afraid—I didn’t know—”
To him she ran along the dark passageway.
“No more!” she panted. “No more Pulverite here in the building!” pleaded she. “Or the whole tower will fall—and bury us! No more!”
Stern laughed. Beatrice was unharmed; he had found her.
“I’ll sow it broadcast outside,” he answered, in a kind of exaltation, almost a madness from the strain and horror of that night, the weakness of his fever and his loss of blood. “Maybe the others, down there still, may need it. Here goes!”
And, one by one, all seven of the bombs he hurled far out and away, to right, to left, straight ahead, slinging them in vast parabolas from the height.
And as they struck one by one, night blazed like noonday; and even to the Palisades the crashing echoes roared.
The forest, swept as by a giant broom, became a jackstraw tangle of destruction.
Thus it perished.
When the last vial of wrath had been out-poured, when silence had once more dropped its soothing mantle and the great brooding dark had come again, “girdled with gracious watchings of the stars,” Stern spoke.
“Gods!” he exclaimed exultantly. “Gods we are now to them—to such of them as may still live. Gods we are—gods we shall be forever!
“Whatever happens now, they know us. The Great White Gods of Terror! They’ll flee before our very look! Unarmed, if we meet a thousand, we’ll be safe. Gods!”
Another silence.
Then suddenly he knew that Beatrice was weeping.
And forgetful of all save that, forgetful of his weakness and his wounds, he comforted her—as only a man can comfort the woman he loves, the woman who, in turn, loves him.
CHAPTER XXX. CONSUMMATION
AFTER a while, both calmer grown, they looked again from the high window.
“See!” exclaimed the engineer, and pointed.
There, far away to westward, a few straggling lights—only a very few—slowly and uncertainly were making their way across the broad black breast of the river.
Even as the man and woman watched, one vanished. Then another winked out, and did not reappear. No more than fifteen seemed to reach the Jersey shore, there to creep vaguely, slowly away and vanish in the dense primeval woods.
“Come,” said Stern at last. “We must be going, too. The night’s half spent. By morning we must be very far away.”
“What? We’ve got to leave the city?”
“Yes. There’s no such thing as staying here now. The tower’s quite untenable. Racked and shaken as it is, it’s liable to fall at any time. But, even if it should stand, we can’t live here any more.”
“But—where now?”
“I don’t just know. Somewhere else, that’s certain. Everything in this whole vicinity is ruined. The spring’s gone. Nothing remains of the forest, nothing but horror and death. Pestilence is bound to sweep this place in the wake of such a—such an affair.
“The sights all about here aren’t such as you should see. Neither should I. We mustn’t even think of them. Some way or other we can find a path down out of here, away—away—”
“But,” she cried anxiously, “but all our treasures? All the tools and dishes, all the food and clothing, and everything? All our precious, hard-won things?”
“Nothing left of them now. Down on the fifth floor, at that end of the building, I’m positive there’s nothing but a vast hole blown out of the side of the tower. So there’s nothing left to salvage. Nothing at all.”
“Can you replace the things?”
“Why not? Wherever we settle down we can get along for a few days on what game I can snare or shoot with the few remaining cartridges. And after that—”
“Yes?”
“After that, once we get established a little, I can come into the city and go to raiding again. What we’ve lost is a mere trifle compared to what’s left in New York. Why, the latent resources of this vast ruin haven’t been even touched yet! We’ve got our lives. That’s the only vital factor. With those everything else is possible. It all looks dark and hard to you now, Beatrice. But in a few days—wait and see!”
“Allan!”
“What, Beatrice?”
“I trust you in everything. I’m in your hands. Lead me.”
“Come, then, for the way is long before us. Come!”
Two hours later, undaunted by the far howling of a wolfpack, as the wan crescent of the moon came up the untroubled sky, they reached the brink of the river, almost due west of where the southern end of Central Park hall been.
This course, they felt, would avoid any possible encounter with stragglers of the Horde. Through Madison Forest—or what remained of it—they had not gone; but had struck eastward from the building, then northward, and so in a wide detour had avoided all the horrors that they knew lay near the wreck of the tower.
The river, flowing onward to the sea as calmly as though pain and death and ruin and all the dark tragedy of the past night, the past centuries, had never been, filled their tired souls and bodies with a grateful peace. Slowly, gently it lapped the wooded shore, where docks and slips had all gone back to nature; the moonlit ripples spoke of beauty, life, hope, love.
Though they could not drink the brackish waters, yet they laved their faces, arms and hands, and felt refreshed. Then for some time in silence they skirted the flood, ever northward, away from the dead city’s heart. And the moon rose even higher, higher still, and great thoughts welled within their hearts. The cool night breeze, freshening in from the vast salt wastes of the sea—unsailed forever now—cooled their cheeks and soothed the fever of their thoughts.
Where the grim ruin of Grant’s Tomb looked down upon the river, they came at length upon a strange, rude boat, another, then a third—a whole flotilla, moored with plaited ropes of grass to trees along the shore.
