shall all conspirators be cast. Now go!”
He dismissed them. While they departed and filed down the terraces to their own homes, he stood there with folded arms, watching them very gravely. The last one vanished He nodded.
“They’ll do now!” said he to himself. “No more trouble from that source! Another milestone passed along the road of self-control, self-government and communal spirit. Ah, but the road’s a long one yet—a long and hard and stony road to follow!”
Next day Stern began making his plans for the recovery of the lost aeroplane.
“This is by far the most important matter now before the colony,” he told Beatrice, watching her nurse the boy as they sat by the fire, while outside the rain drummed over cliff and canon, hill and plain. “Our very life depends on keeping a free means of communication open with the mother-country of the Folk, so to call it, and with the city-ruins that supply us with so many necessary articles. No other form of transportation will do. At all hazards we must have an aeroplane—one at least, more later, if possible.”
“Of course,” she answered; “but why not make one here? Down there in your workshop—”
“I haven’t the equipment yet,” he interrupted; “nor yet the necessary metal, the wire, a hundred things. All that will come in time when we get some mines to work and start a few blast-furnaces. But for the present, the best and quickest thing to do will be to look up the old machine again.
“But,” she objected, terrified at thought of losing him again: “but I thought you said the Horde wrecked it!”
“So they did; but beasts like that probably couldn’t destroy the vital mechanism beyond possibility of repair. That is, not unless they heaped a lot of wood all over it, and heated it white-hot, which I don’t think they had intelligence enough to do. In any event, what’s left will serve me as a model, for another machine. I really think I’ll have to have a try for it.”
“Oh, Allan! You aren’t going to venture out into the wilderness again?”
“Why not, dearest? You must remember the forest is all burned now; perhaps for hundreds of miles. And the Horde, the one greatest peril that has dogged us ever since those days in the tower, has been swept out with the besom of flame!”
“Which has also surely destroyed the machine, even if they haven’t!” she exclaimed, using every possible argument to discourage him.
“I hardly think so,” he judged. “You see, I left it in a wide sand-barren. I think, on the whole, it will pay me to make the expedition. Of course I shan’t take less than a dozen men to help me bring it back—what’s left of it.”
“But Allan, can you find your way?”
“I’ve got to! That machine must positively be recovered! Otherwise we’re totally cut off from the Abyss. Colonizing stops, and all kinds of hell may break loose below ground before I can build another machine entire. There are no railroads running now to the brink,” he added smiling; “and no elevators to the basement of the world. It’s the old Pauillac again or nothing!”
The girl exhausted all her arguments and entreaties in vain. Once Allan’s mind was definitely made up along the line of duty, he went straight forward, though the heavens fell.
Four days later the expedition set out.
Allan had made adequate preparations in every way. He left a strong and well-armed guard to protect Settlement Cliffs. By careful thought and chart-drawing he was able to approximate the probable position of the machine. With him he took fifteen men, headed by Zangamon, who now insisted he was well enough to go, and ably seconded by Frumuos.
Each man carried an automatic, and six had rifles. They bore an average of one hundred cartridges apiece, and in knapsacks of goat-leather, dried rations for a week. Each also carried fish hooks and a stout fiber line.
The party counted on being able to supplement their supplies with trout, bass and pickerel from countless untouched streams. They might. too, come into wooded country, if the fire had left any to northward, and here they knew game would be plentiful.
One thing seemed positive in that new world: starvation could not threaten.
Cloudy and dull the morning was—yet well-suited to the needs of the Folk—when the expedition left Settlement Cliffs. The convoy, each man provided with eye-guards and his hands and face well painted with protecting pigment, waited impatiently in the palisade, while Allan said farewell to Beta and the little chap.
For a long moment he strained them both to his breast, then, the woman’s kiss still hot upon his lips, ran quickly up the path and joined his picked troop of scouts.
“Forward, men!” cried he, taking the lead with Zangamon.
Some minutes later Beatrice saw them defiling over the long, shaking bridge.
Through her tears she watched them, waving her hand to Allan—even making the baby shake its little hand as well-and throwing kisses to him, who returned them gaily.
On the far bank the party halted a minute to shout a few last words to the assembled colonists that lined the parapet of the terrace.
Then they turned, and, striking northwest, plunged boldly into the burned and blackened waste.
Long after the marching column had disappeared over the crest of the second hill Beatrice still watched. Up on the cliff-top, with the powerful telescope at her eye, she followed the faint, drifting line of dust and ash that marked the line of march.
Only when this, too, had disappeared, merged in the somber gray of the horizon, did she sadly and very slowly descend the path once more, back to the loneliness of a home where now no husband’s presence greeted her.
Though she tried to smile—tried to believe all would yet be well, old Gesafam, glancing up from her labors at the cooking-hearth, saw tears were shining in her beautiful gray eyes.
Barbarian though the ancient beldame was, she knew, she understood that after all, now as for all time, in every venture and in every task, the woman’s portion was the harder one.
CHAPTER XXXI. A STRANGE APPARITION
AT A good round pace, where open going permitted, the party made way, striking boldly across country in the probable direction of the lost aeroplane.
Some marched in silence, thoughtfully; others sang, as though setting out upon the Great Sunken Sea in fishing boats. But one common purpose and ambition thrilled them all.
A man less boldly resourceful that Allan Stern must have thought long, and long hesitated, before thus plunging into a desolated and unknown territory on such a hunt.
For, to speak truth, the finding of the needle in the haystack would have been as easy as any hope of ever locating the machine in all those thousands of square miles of devastation.
But Stern felt no fear. The great need of the colony made the expedition imperative; his supreme self-trust rendered it possible.
From the very beginning of things, back there in the tower overlooking Madison Forest, he had never even ad. misted the possibility of failure in any undertaking. Defeat lay wholly outside his scheme of things. That it could ever be his portion simply never had occurred to him.
As they progressed he carefully reviewed everything in his mind. Plans and equipment seemed perfectly adequate. In addition to the impedimenta already mentioned, a few necessary tools, a supply of cordage for transporting the machine, and three bottles of brandy for emergencies had been judiciously added to the men’s burdens.
Each, in addition, carried a small flat water-jug, tightly stopped, slung over his shoulder. Allan counted on streams being plentiful; but he meant to look out even for the unexpected, too.
He had wisely taken means to protect their feet for the long tramp. In spite of all their opposition he had made them prepare and bind on sandals of goat’s leather. Hitherto they had gone barefooted at Settlement Cliffs; but now that w as no longer permissible.
The total equipment of each man weighed not less than one hundred pounds, including tools and all. No
