CHAPTER XXVII
WAR!
At sight of the advance-guard of the Horde now already loping,crouched and ugly, over the narrow bridge to Settlement Cliffs Allan'sfirst impulse was one of absolute despair.
He had expected an attack ere night, but at least he had hoped anhour's respite to recover a little of his strength and to muster allthe still valid men of the Folk for resistance. Now, however, he saweven this was to be denied him. For already the leaders of the Hordescouts had passed the center of the bridge.
Three or four minutes more and they would be inside the palisade, uponthe cliff!
"God! If they once get in there, we're gone!" cried Allan. "We're cutoff from everything. Our animals will be slaughtered. The boy willdie! They can bombard us with rocks from aloft. It meansannihilation!"
Already he was running up the path toward the palisade. Not one secondwas to be lost. There was no time even to call a single man of theFolk to reenforce him. Single-handed and alone he must meet theinvaders' first attack.
Panting, sweating, stumbling, he scrambled up the steep terrace. Andas he ran his thoughts outdistanced him.
"Fool that I was to have left the bridge!" choked he. "My first actwhen I set foot on solid land should have been to cut the ropes anddrop the whole thing into the rapids! I might have known this wouldhappen--fool that I was!"
The safety, the life, of the whole colony, including his wife and son,now depended solely on his reaching the southern end of the bridgebefore the vanguard of the Horde.
With a heart-racking burst of energy he sprang to the defence, and ashe ran he drew his hunting-knife.
Reeling with exhaustion, spent, winded, yet still in desperationstruggling onward, he won the top of the cliff, swung to the leftalong the path that led to the bridge, and--more dead thanalive--rushed onward in a last, supreme effort.
Already he saw the Anthropoids were within a hundred feet of theabutment. He could plainly see their squat, hideous bodies, theirhairy and pendent arms, and the ugly shuffle of their preposterouslegs, as at their best speed they made for the cliff.
Three or four poisoned darts fell clicking on the stones about him.Howls and yells of rage burst from the file of beast-men.
One of the horrible creatures even--with apelike agility--sprang upinto the guy ropes of the bridge, clung there, and discharged an arrowfrom its bamboo blow-gun, chattering with rage.
Stern, running but the faster, plugged him with a forty-four. TheAnthropoid, still clinging, yowled hideously, then all at once droppedoff and vanished in the depths.
Full drive, Allan hurled himself toward the entrance of the bridge. Itseemed to him the beasts were almost on him now.
Plainly he could hear the slavering click of their tushes and see thered, bleared winking of their deep-set eyes.
Now he was at the rope-anchorage, where the cables were lashed to twostout palms.
He emptied his automatic point-blank into the pack.
Pausing not to note effects, he slashed furiously at the left-handrope.
One strand gave. It sprang apart and began untwisting. Again he hewedwith mad rage.
"_Crack!_"
The cable parted with a report like a pistol-shot. From the bridge awild, hideous tumult of yells and shrieks arose. The whole fabric, nowunsupported on one side, dropped awry. Covered from end to end withAnthropoids, it swayed heavily.
Had _men_ been on it, all must have been flung into the rapids by theshock. But these beast-things, used to arboreal work, to scalingcliffs, to every kind of dangerous adventuring, nearly all succeededin clinging.
Only three or four were shaken off, to catapult over and over downinto the foaming lash of the river.
And still, now creeping with hideous agility along the racked andswinging bridge that hung by but a single rope, they continued to makeway, howling and screaming like damned souls.
One gained the shore! At Allan it bounded, crouching, ferocious,deadly. He saw the tiny, venomous lance raised for the throw.
"_Flick!_"
He felt a twitch on his arm. Was he wounded? He knew not. Only he knewthat with blind rage he had flung himself on the second rope, and nowwith demon-rage was hacking at it desperately.
The snapping whirl of the cable as it parted flung him backward.
He had an instant's vision of the whole bridge-structure crumpling.Then it vanished. From the depths rose the most awful scream, quicklysmothered, that he had ever heard.
And as the bestial bodies went tumbling, rolling, fighting, down therapids, he suddenly beheld the bridge footway hanging limp and swayingagainst the further cliff.
"Thank God! In time, in time!" he panted, staggering like a drunkenman.
But all at once he beheld two of the Horde still there in front ofhim--the one that had flung the dart and another. They were advancingat a lope.
Allan turned and fled.
His ammunition was all spent, he knew that to face them was madness.
"I must load up again," thought he. "Then I'll make short work ofthem!"
Fortunately he could far outstrip them in flight. That, and thatalone, had already saved him in the past week of horrible pursuitthrough the forests to northward. And quickly now he ran down theterrace again--down to the caves below. As he ran he shouted inMerucaan:
"Out, my people! Out with you! Out to battle! Out to war!"
Half way upward down to Cliff Villa he met Frumuos toiling upward. Himhe greeted and quickly informed of the situation.
"The bridge is down!" he panted. "I cut it! The further shore isswarming with enemies. Two have reached this side!"
"What is this, O Kromno?" asked the man anxiously, pointing at Allan'sshoulder. "Have they wounded you?"
Allan looked and saw a poisoned dart hanging loosely in his leftsleeve. As he moved he could feel the point rubbing against his nakedskin.
"Merciful Heaven!" he exclaimed. "Has it scratched me?"
With infinite precautions he loosened and threw off his outer garment.He flung it, with the dart still adhering, down over the cliff.
"Look, Frumuos!" he commanded. "Search carefully and see if there beany scratch on the skin!"
The man obeyed, making a minute inspection through his micaeye-shields. Then he shook his head.
"No, Kromno," he answered. "I see nothing. But the arrow came near,near!"
Stern, tremendously relieved, gestured toward the caves.
"Go swiftly!" he commanded. "Bring up every man who still can fight.All must have full burdens of cartridges. Even though the bridge bedown, the enemy will still attack!"
"But how, since the great river lies between?"
"They can climb down those cliffs and swim the river and scramble upthis side as easily as we can walk on level ground. Go swiftly! Thereis no time to lose!"
"I go, master. But tell me, the two who have already reached thisside--shall we not first slay them?"
Allan thought. For the first time he now realized clearly the terribleperil that lay in these two Anthropoids already inside the limits ofthe colony.
He peered up the pathway. No sign of them above. Their animal cunninghad warned them not to descend to certain death.
Now Allan knew they were at liberty inside the palisades, waiting,watching, constituting a deadly menace at every turn.
In any one of a thousand places they could lie ambushed, behind treesor bushes, or in the limbs aloft, and thence, unseen, they coulddischarge an indefinite number of darts.
It was now perilous in the extreme even to venture back to thepalisade. Any moment might bring a flicking, stinging messenger ofdeath. Those two, alone, might easily decimate the remaining men ofthe colony--and now each man was incalculably precious.
"Go, Frumuos," Allan again commanded. "For the moment we must leavethose two up there. Go, muster all the fighting men and bring them uphere along the terrace. I must think! Go!"
Suddenly, before the messenger had even had time to disappear roundthe first bend in the pat
h, Allan found his inspiration.
"Regular warfare will never do it!" he exclaimed decisively. "Theyhave thousands where we have tens. Before we could pick them off withour firearms they'd have exhausted all our ammunition and have rushedus--and everything would be all over.
"No; there must be some quicker and more drastic way! Even dynamite orPulverite could never reach them all, swarming over there throughmiles of forest. Only one thing can stand against them--_fire!_
"With fire we must sweep and purge the world, even though we destroyit! _With fire we must sweep the world!_"