Beta sprang from the bed and faced him.
"Go, or I shoot you down like a dog!" she threatened.
He sneered.
"There will be no shooting," he answered coolly. "But there will be speech for you to hear. Now listen! _This_ is what ye brought us here to? The man and you? _This?_ To death and woe? To accidents and perishings?
"Ye brought us to hardship and to battle, not to peace! With lies, deceptions and false promises ye enticed us! We were safe and happy in our homes in the Abyss beside the sunless sea, till _ye_ fell thither in your air-boat from these cursed regions. We--"
"For this speech ye shall surely die when the master comes!" cried she. "This is treason, and the penalty of it is death!"
He continued, paying no heed:
"We had no need of you, your ways, or your place. But the man Allan would rule or he would ruin. He overthrew and killed our chief, the great Kamrou himself--Kamrou the Terrible! To us he brought dissensions. From us he bore the patriarch away and slew him, and then made us a great falsehood in that matter.
"So he enticed us all. And ye behold the great disaster and the death!
The man Allan has deserted us all to perish here. Coward in his heart, he has abandoned _you_ as well! Gone once more to safety and ease, below in the Abyss, there to rule the rest of the Folk, there to take wives according to our law, while _we_ die here!"
Menacingly he advanced toward the dumb-stricken woman, his face ablaze with evil pa.s.sion.
"Gremnya!" (coward) he shouted. "Weakling at heart. Great boaster, doer of little deeds! Even you, who would be our mistress, he has abandoned--even his own son he has forsaken. A rotten breed, truly!
And we die!
"But listen now. This shall not be! I, H"yemba, the smith, the strongest of all, will not permit it. I will be ruler here, if any live to be ruled! And you shall be my serving-maid--your son my slave!"
Aghast, struck dumb by this wild tempest of rebellion, Beatrice recoiled. His face showed like a white blur in the gloom.
"Allan!" she gasped. "My Allan--"
The huge smith laughed a venomous laugh that echoed through the cave.
"Ha! Ye call on the coward?" he mocked, advancing on her. "On the coward who cannot hear, and would not save you if he could? Behold now ye shall kneel to me and call me master! And my words from now ye shall obey!"
She s.n.a.t.c.hed for her pistol. It was not there. In the excitement of the past hours she had forgotten to buckle it on. She was unarmed.
H"yemba already grasped for her, to force her down upon the floor, kneeling to him--to make her call him master.
Already his strong and hairy fingers had all but seized her robe.
But she, lithe and agile, evaded the grip. To the fire she sprang. She caught up a flaming stick that lay upon the hearth. With a cry she dashed it full into his glaring eyes.
So sudden was the attack that H"yemba had no time even to ward it off with his hands. Fair in the face the scorching flame struck home.
Howling, blinded, stricken, he staggered back; beat the air with vain blows and retreated toward the door.
As he went he poured upon her a torrent of the most hideous imprecations known to their speech--and they were many.
But she, undaunted now, feeling her power and her strength again, followed close. And like blows of a flail, the sputtering, flaring flame beat down upon his head, neck, shoulders.
His hair was blazing now; a smell of scorched flesh diffused itself through the cavern.
"Go! _Go, dog!_" she shouted, maddened and furious, in consuming rage and hate. "Coward! Slanderer and liar! Go, ere I kill you now!"
In panic-stricken fright, unable to see, trying in vain to ward off the devastating, torturing whip of flame and to extinguish the fire ravaging his hair, the brute half ran, half fell out of the cave.
Down the steep path he staggered, yelling curses; down, away, anywhere--away from this pursuing fury.
But the woman, outraged in all her inmost sacred tendernesses, her love for child and husband, still drove him with the blazing scourge--drove, till the torch was beaten to extinction--drove, till the smith took refuge in his own cave.
There, being spent and weary, she let him lie and howl. Exhausted, terribly shaken in body and soul, yet her eyes triumphant, she once more climbed the precipitous path to her own dwelling. The torch she flung away, down the canyon into the river.
She ran to the far recess of the cave, found Gesafam indeed bound and helpless, and quickly freed her.
The old woman was shaking like a leaf, and could give no coherent account of what had happened. Beta made her lie down on the couch, and herself prepared a bowl of hot broth for the faithful nurse.
Then she bethought herself of the pistol Allan had given her.
"I must never take that off again, whatever happens," said she.
"But--where is it now?"
In vain she hunted for it on the table, the floor, the shelves, and in the closets Allan had built. In vain she ransacked the whole cave.
The pistol, belt, and cartridges--all were gone.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE RETURN OF THE MASTER
Suddenly finding herself very much alarmed and shaken, Beatrice sat down in the low chair beside her bed, and covering her face with both hands tried to think.
The old woman, somewhat recovered, moved about with words of pity and indignation, and sought to make speech with her, but she paid no heed.
Now, if ever, she had need of self-searching--of courage and enterprise. And all at once she found that, despite everything, she was only a woman.
Her pa.s.sion spent, she felt a desperate need of a man"s strength, advice, support. In disarray she sat there, striving to collect her reason.
Her robe was torn, and her loosened hair, escaping from its golden pins, cascaded all about her shoulders. Loudly her heart throbbed; a certain shivering had taken possession of her, and all at once she noticed that her brow was burning.
Resolutely she tried to put her weakness from her, and marshalled her thoughts. In the bed her son still slept quietly, his fat fist protruding from the clothes, his ruddy, healthy little face half buried in the pillow.
A great, overpowering wave of mother-love swept her heart. She leaned forward, and through lids now tear-dimmed, with eyes no longer angry, peered at the child--her child and Allan"s.
"For your sake--for yours if not for mine," she whispered, "I must be strong!"
She thought.
"Evidently some great conspiracy is going on here. Beyond and apart from the calamity of the landslide, some other and even greater peril menaces the colony!"