CHAPTER XXVIII
THE BESOM OF FLAME
Stern was not long in carrying out his plan.
Even before Frumnos had returned, with the seventeen men still able tobear arms, he was at work.
In Cliff Villa he hastily lashed up half a dozen fireballs, of coarsecloth, thoroughly soaked them in oil, and, with a blazing torch,brought them out to the terrace. Old Gesafam, at his command, boltedthe door behind him. At all hazards, Beta and the child must beprotected from any possibility of peril.
"Here, Frumnos!" cried Stern.
"Yes, master?"
"Run quickly! Fetch the strongest bow in the colony and many arrows!"
"I go, master!"
Once more the man departed, running.
"Gad! If I only had my oxygen-containing bullets ready!" thoughtStern, his mind reverting to an unfinished experiment down there inhis laboratory in the Rapids power-house. "_They_ would turn thetrick, sure enough! They'd burst and rain fire everywhere. But theyaren't ready yet; and even if they were, nobody could venture downthere now!"
For already, plainly visible on the farther edge of the canyon, scoresand hundreds of the hideous little beast-men were beginning to swarm.Their cries, despite the contrary stiff wind, carried across theriver; and here and there a dart broke against the cliff.
Already a few of the Anthropoids were beginning to scramble down theopposite wall of stone.
"Men!" cried Allan commandingly, "not one of those creatures must everreach this terrace! Take good aim. Waste no single shot. Every bulletmust do its work!"
Choosing six of the best marksmen, he stationed them along the parapetwith rifles. The firing began at once.
Irregularly the shots barked from the line of sharpshooters; and thelittle stabs of smoke, drifting out across the river, blent in a thinblue haze. Every moment or two, one of the Horde would writhe, scream,fall--or hang there twitching, to the cliff, with terrible, wildyells.
Stern greeted the return of Frumuos with eagerness.
"Here!" he exclaimed, scattering the arrows among half a dozen men."Bind these fireballs fast to the arrowheads!"
He dealt out cord. In a moment the task was done.
"Sivad!" he called a man by name. "You, the best bowman of all! Herequickly!"
Even as Sivad fitted the first arrow to the string, and Stern wasabout to apply the torch, a rattling crash from above caused all tocringe and leap aside.
Down, leaping, ricochetting, thundering, hurtled a great boulder,spurning the cliff-face with a tremendous uproar.
It struck the parapet like a thirteen-inch shell, smashed out twoyards of wall, and vanished in the depths. And after it, sliding,rattling and bouncing down, followed a rain of pebbles, fragments anddetritus.
"Those two above--they're attacking!" shouted Stern. "Quick--afterthem! _You, you, you!_"
He told off half a dozen men with rifles and revolvers.
"Quick, before they can hide! Look out for their darts! _Kill! Kill!_"
The detachment started up the path at a run, eager for the hunt.
Stern set the flaring torch to the first fireball. It burst intobright flame.
"Shoot, Sivad! Shoot!" he commanded. "Shoot high, shoot far. Plantyour arrow there in the dry undergrowth where the wind whips thejungle! Shoot and fail not!"
The stout bowman drew his arrow to the head, back, back till the flamelicked his left hand.
"Zing-g-g-g-g!"
The humming bowspring sang in harmony with the zooning arrow. A swiftblue streak split the air, high above the river. In a quick trajectoryit leaped.
It vanished in the wind-swept forest. Almost before it haddisappeared, Sivad had snatched another flaming arrow and had plantedit farther down stream.
One by one, till all were gone, the marksman sowed the seed ofconflagration. And all the while, from the rifles along the parapet,death went spitting at the forefront of invasion.
Another boulder fell from aloft, this time working havoc; for as oneof the riflemen sprang to dodge, it struck a shoulder of limestone,bounded, and took him fair on the back.
His cry was smashed clean out; he and the stone, together, plumbed thedepths.
But, as though to echo it, shots began to clatter up above. Then allat once they ceased; and a cheer floated away across the canyon.
"_They're_ done, those two up there, damn them!" shouted Stern. "Andlook, men, look! The fire takes! _The woods begin to burn!_"
True! Already in three places, coils of greasy smoke were beginning towrithe upward, as the resinous, dry undergrowth blossomed into redbouquets of flame.
Now another fire burst out; then the two remaining ones. From sixcenters the conflagration was already swiftly spreading.
Smoke-clouds began to drift downwind; and from the forest depths arosenot only harsh cries from the panic-stricken Horde, but also beast andbird-calls as the startled fauna sought to flee this new, red terror.
Shouts and cheers of triumph burst from the little band of defenderson the terrace as the sweeping wind, flailing the flame through thesun-dried underbrush, whirled it crackling aloft in a quick-leapingstorm of fire.
But Stern was silent as he watched the fierce and sudden onset of theconflagration. Between narrowed lids, as though calculating a graveproblem, he observed the crazed birds taking sudden flight, launchinginto air and whirling drunkenly hither and yon with harsh cries fortheir last brief bit of life.
He listened to the animal calls in the forest and to the strangecrashings of the underwood as the creatures broke cover and in vainsought safety.
Mingled with these sounds were others--yells, shrieks, andgibberings--the tumult of the perishing Horde.
Swiftly the fire spread to right and left, even as it ate northwardfrom the river.
The mass of Anthropoids inevitably found themselves trapped; theirslouching, awkward figures could here or there be seen in some clearspace, running wildly. Then, with a gust of flame, that space, too,vanished, and all was one red glare.
The riflemen, meanwhile, were steadily potting such of the littledemons as still were crawling up or down the cliffside opposite.Surely, relentlessly, they shot the invaders down. And, even as Sternwatched, the enemy melted and vanished before his eyes.
Allan was thinking.
"What may this not result in?" he wondered as he observed the swiftand angry leap of the forest-fire to northward. "It may ravagethousands of square miles before rain puts an end to it. It maydevastate the whole country. A change in the wind may even drive itback on us, across the river, sweeping all before it. This may meanruin!"
He paused a moment, then said aloud:
"Ruin, perhaps. Yes; but the alternative was death! There was no otherway!"
Now none of the attackers remained save a few feebly twitching,writhing bodies caught on some protuberance of rock. Here, there, oneof these fell, and like the rest was borne away down stream.
Through the heated air already verberated a strange roar as theforest-fire leaped up the opposite hillside in one clear lick ofincandescence. This roar hummed through the heavens and trembled overthe long reaches of the river.
The fire jumped a little valley and took the second hill, burning asclear as any furnace, with a swift onward, upward slant as the windfanned it forward through the dry brush and among the crowded palms.
Now and then, with a muffled explosion, a sap-filled palm burst. Here,or yonder, some brighter flare showed where the fire had run at oneclear leap right to the fronded top of a fern-tree.
Fire-brands and dry-kye, caught up by the swirl, spiralled through thethick air and fell far in advance of the main fire-army, each outpostcolonizing into swift destruction.
Already the nearer portion of the opposite cliff-edge was barren andsmoking, swept clean of life as a broom might sweep an ant-hill.Tourbillons of dense smoke obscured the sky.
The air flew thick with brands, live coals and flaring bits of bark,all whirling aloft on the breath of the fire-demon. Showers of bu
rningjewels were sown broadcast by the resistless wind.
Stern, unspeakably saddened in spite of victory by this wholesaledestruction of forest, fruit and game, turned away from themagnificent, the terrifying spectacle.
He left his riflemen staring at it, amazed and awed to silence by thesplendor of the flame-tempest, which they watched through theireye-shields in absolute astonishment.
Back to Cliff Villa he returned, his step heavy and his heart likelead. In a few brief hours, how great, how terrible, how devastatingthe changes that had come upon Settlement Cliffs!
Attack, destruction, pestilence and flame had all worked their willthere; and many a dream, a plan, a hope now lay in ashes, even likethose smoldering cinder-piles across the river--those pyres thatmarked the death-field of the hateful, venomous, inhuman Horde!
Numb with exhaustion and emotions, he staggered up the path, knocked,and was admitted to his home by the old nurse.
He heard the crying of his son, vigorously protesting against someinfant grievance, and his tired heart yearned with strong father-love.
"A hard world, boy!" thought he. "A hard fight, all the way through.God grant, before you come to take the burden and the shock, I mayhave been able to lighten both for you?"
The old woman touched his arm.
"O, master! Is the fighting past?"
"It is past and done, Gesafam. _That_ enemy, at least, will never comeagain! But tell me, what causes the boy to cry?"
"He is hungered, master. And I--I do not know the way to milk thestrange animal!"
Despite his exhaustion, pain and dour forebodings, Allan had to smilea second.
"That's one thing you've got to learn, old mother!" he exclaimed."I'll milk presently. But not just yet!"
For first of all he must see Beatrice again. The boy must cry a bit,till he had seen her!
To the bed he hastened, and beside it fell on his knees. His eagereyes devoured the girl's face; his trembling hand sought her brow.
Then a glad cry broke from his lips.
Her face no longer burned with fever, and her pulse was slower now. Aprofuse and saving perspiration told him the crisis had been passed.
"Thank God! Thank God!" he breathed from his inmost soul. In his armshe caught her. He drew her to his breast.
And even in that hour of confusion and distress he knew the greatestjoy of life was his.