CHAPTER III
CATASTROPHE!
Toward five o'clock next afternoon, from the swooping back ofthe air-dragon they sighted a far blue ribbon winding among woodedheights, and knew Hudson once more lay before them.
The girl's heart leaped for joy at thought of once again seeing HopeVilla, the beach, the garden, the sun-dial--all the thousand and onelittle happy and pleasant things that, made by them in the heart ofthe vast wilderness, had brought them such intimate and unforgetabledelight.
"There it is, Allan!" cried she, pointing. "There's the river again.We'll soon be home now--home again!"
He smiled and nodded, watchful at the wheel, and swung the biplane alittle to southward, in the direction where he judged the bungalowmust lie.
Weary they both were, yet full of life and strength. The trip from thechasm had been tedious, merely a long succession of hours in therushing air, with unbroken forest, hills, lakes, rivers, and ever moreforest steadily rolling away to westward like a vast carpet a thousandfeet below.
No sign of man, no life, no gap in nature's all-embracing sway. Eventhe occasional heap of ruins marking the grave of some forgotten cityserved only to intensify the old half-terror they had felt, whenflying for the first time, at thought of the tremendous desolation ofthe world.
The shining plain of Lake Erie had served the first day as a landmarkto keep them true to their course.
That night they had stopped at the ruins of Buffalo, where they hadcamped in the open, and where next morning Stern had fully replenishedhis fuel-tanks with the usual supplies of alcohol from the debris oftwo or three large drug-stores.
From Buffalo eastward, over almost the same course along which thehurricane of ten months ago had driven them, battling at random withthe gale, they steered by the compass. Toward mid-morning they saw athin line of smoke arising in the far north, answered by still anotheron the hills beyond, but to these signs they gave no heed.
Already they had seen and scorned them during their first stay at thebungalow. They felt that nothing more was to be seriously feared fromsuch survivors of the Horde as had escaped the great Battle of theTower--a year and a half previously.
"Those chaps won't bother us again; I'm sure of that!" said Allan,nodding toward the smoke-columns that rose, lazily blue, on thehorizon. "The scare we threw into them in Madison Forest will lastthem _one_ while!"
Still in this confident, defiant mood it was that they sighted theriver again and watched it rapidly broaden as the Pauillac, in a longseries of flat arcs, spurned the June air and whirled them onwardtoward their goal.
Nearer the Hudson drew, and nearer still; and now its untroubledazure, calm save for a few cat's-paws of breeze that idled on thesurface, stretched almost beneath them in their rapid flight.
"We're still a little too far north, I see," the man judged, and sweptthe biplane round to southward.
The ruins of Newburgh lay presently upon their right. Soon after thecrumbled walls of West Point's pride slid past in silence, save forthe chatter of the engines, the whirling roar of the propeller-blades'vast energy.
No boat now vexed the flood. Upon its bosom neither steam nor sail nowplowed a furrow. Along the banks no speeding train flung itssmoke-pennant to the wind. Primeval silence, universal calm, wrappedall things.
Beatrice shuddered slightly. Now that they were nearing "home" thedesolation seemed more appalling.
"Oh, Allan, is it possible all this will ever be peopledagain--_alive?_"
"Certain to be! Once we get those records and begin transplanting theMerucaans, the rest will be only a matter of time!"
She made no answer, but in her eyes shone pride that he could knowsuch visions, have such faith.
Already they recognized the ruins of Nyack, and beyond them the pointin the river behind which, they knew, lay Hope Villa, nestling in itsgardens, its little sphere of cultivation hewn from the very heart ofthe dense wilderness.
Allan slackened speed, crossed to the eastern bank, and jockeyed for asafe landing.
The point slipped backward and away. There, right ahead, they caught aglimpse of the long white beach where they had fished and bathed andbuilt their boat-house, and whence in their little yawl they had tenmonths before started on their trip of exploration--a trip destined toend so strangely in the Abyss.
"Home! Home!" cried Beta, the quick tears starting to her lids. "Oh,home again!"
Already the great plane was swooping downward toward the beach, hardlya mile away, when a harsh shout escaped the man.
"Look! Canoes! My God--_what_--"
As the drive of the Pauillac opened up the concave of the sand andbrought its whole length to view, Stern and the girl suddenly becameaware of trouble.
There, strung along the beach irregularly, they all at once made outten, twenty, thirty boats. Still afar, they could see these were thesame rough bancas such as they had seen after the battle--bancas inone of which they two had escaped up-river!
"Boats! The Horde again!"
Even as he shouted a tiny, black, misshapen little figure rancrouching out onto the sand. Another followed and a third, and now adozen showed there, very distinct and hideous, upon the whitecrescent.
Stern's heart went sick within him A terrible rage welled up--a hatesuch as he had never believed possible to feel.
Wild imprecations struggled to be voiced. He snapped his lips togetherin a thin line, his eyes narrowed, and his face went gray.
"The infernal little beasts!" he gritted. "Tried to trap us in thetower--cut our boat loose afterward--and now invading us! Don't knowwhen they're licked, the swine!"
Beatrice had lost her color now. Milk-white her face was; her eyesgrew wide with terror; she strove to speak, but could not.
Her hand went out in a wild, repelling gesture, as though by the verypower of her love for home she could protect it now against theincursion of these foul, distorted, inhuman little monsters.
Stern acted quickly. He had been about to cut off power and coast forthe beach; but now he veered suddenly to eastward again, rotated therising-plane, and brought the Pauillac up at a sharp tilt. Banking, headvanced the spark a notch; the engine shrilled a half-tone higher,and with increased speed the aero lifted them bravely in a long andrising swoop.
He snatched his automatic from its holster on his hip and as the planeswept past the beach, down-stream, let fly a spatter of steel jacketedsouvenirs at the fast-thickening pack on the sand.
Far up to the girl and him, half heard through the clatter of themotors, 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 coulddo no execution, and with a curse slid the pistol back again into itsplace.
"Oh, for a dirigible and a few Pulverite bombs, same as we had in thetower!" he wished. "I'd clean the blighters out mighty quick!"
But now Beatrice was pointing, with a cry of dismay, down, away at thebungalow itself, which had for a moment become visible at the far endof the clearing as the Pauillac scudded past.
Even as Stern thought: "Odd, but they're not afraid of us--aflying-machine means nothing to them, does not terrify them as itwould human savages. They're too debased even to feel fear!"--even asthis thought crossed his brain he, too, saw the terrible thing thatthe 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, somany dreams and hopes, such heart-enthralling labors, hundreds of theHorde were swarming.
Like vicious parasites attacking prey, they overran the garden, thegrounds, even the house itself.
As in a flash, Stern knew all his work of months must be undone--thefruit-trees he had rescued from the forest be cut down or broken, thebulbs and roots in the ga
rden uptorn, even the hedges and fencestrampled 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 skimmedthe Pauillac as to prevent both Stern and Beatrice seeing a thin butominous thread of smoke out-curling on the June air from one of theliving-room windows.
With an imprecation of unutterable hate and rage, yet impotent to staythe ravishment of Hope Villa, Stern brought the machine round in along spiral.
For a moment the wild, suicidal idea possessed him to land on thebeach, after all, and charge the little slate-blue devils who hadevidently piled all the furnishings together in the bungalow and werenow burning them.
He longed for slaughter now; he lusted blood--the blood of theAnthropoid pack which from the beginning had hung upon his flank andbeen as a thorn unto his flesh.
He seemed to feel the joy of rushing them, an automatic in each handspitting death, just as he had mown down the Lanskaarn in the Battleof the Wall, down below in the Abyss. Even though he knew theinevitable ends poisoned spear-thrust, a wound with one of thoseterribly 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. Thebungalow, after all, was not vital to his future or the girl's.Barring the set of encyclopedias on metal plates, everything elsecould be replaced with sufficient labor. Only a madman would risk afight with such a Horde in company with a woman.
Not now were he and Beatrice entrenched in a strong tower, withterrible explosives. Now they were in the open, armed only withrevolvers. For the present there was no redress.
"Beta," cried he, "we're up against it this time for fair--and wecan't hit back!"
"Our bungalow! Our precious home!"
"I know." He saw that she was crying: "It's a rotten shame and allthat, but it isn't fatal."
He brought the Pauillac down-wind again, coasting high over thebungalow, whence smoke now issued ever more and more thickly.
"We're simply hamstrung this time, that's all. Where those devils havecome 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 attackwhile we were there!
"Now--well, the only thing to do is let 'em have their way for thepresent. Eventually--"
"Oh, can't we _ever_ get rid of the horrid little beasts for good?"
"We can and will!" He spoke very grimly, soaring the machine stillhigher over the river and once more coming round above the upper endof 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, itspossibilities. But Allan only shook his head.
"And expose the Pauillac on the beach?" he asked. "One good swing witha 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 force majeure and_wait!_ Remember what we've said already? 'Je recule pour mieuxsauter?' Wait till we get a fresh start on these hell-hounds; we'lljump 'em far enough!"
The bungalow now lay behind. The whole clearing seemed alive with thelittle blue demons, like vermin crawling everywhere. Thicker andthicker now the smoke was pouring upward. The scene was one of utterdesolation.
Then suddenly it faded. The plane had borne its riders onward and awayfrom the range of vision. Again only dense forest lay below, while toeastward sparkled the broad reach where, in the first days of theirhappiness at Hope Villa, the girl and Allan had fished and bathed.
Her tears were unrestrained at last; but Allan, steadying the wheelwith 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_have_ burned up our home-made mission furniture! Come, Beatrice, notears--we've other things to think of now!"
"Where away, since our home's gone?" she queried pitifully.
"Where away? Why, Storm King, of course! And the cathedral and therecords, and--_and_--"