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Updated: May 9, 2025
By dawn they were on the edge of a plateau; back of them stretched the inhabited country; ahead, a haze- covered expanse. Nothing but rocks was about them. "Ye are sure that we had best keep on?" asked Cunora uneasily. Rolla nodded, slowly but positively. "It is best. Back of us lies certain capture. Ahead we know not what; but at least there is a chance!"
Rolla and Cunora came a little nearer; and still remaining hidden, saw that more than half their friends had succumbed. One by one the remainder dropped out; their forms lay all about what was left of the fire. The two women could easily see what their friends were blind to: the bees were simply biding their time. "Ought we not to rush in and warn them?" whispered Cunora to Rolla.
Behind them that is, at their feet lay the stone-covered expanse they had just traversed; ahead of them there was nothingness itself. Cunora shook with fear and cold. "Let us not go on, Rolla!" she whimpered. "I like not the looks of this void; it may contain all sorts of beasts. I I am afraid!" She began to sob convulsively. Rolla peered into the darkness. Nothing whatever was to be seen.
Keeping their eyes very wide open and their ears strained for the slightest buzz, the two contrived to pass through the village, out into the fields, and thence, from cover to cover, into the foothills on that side of the valley where their lovers had found the pyrites. "If only we knew which stream they ascended!" lamented Cunora, as they stood in indecision before a fork in the river.
Another five minutes had not passed before not only that hive, but all within the "city" were emptied; and millions upon millions of desperate bees were under way toward the village. Rolla and Cunora knew of it first.
"I dreamed that a man, very pale of face and most curiously clad, did approach me while I was at work. He smiled and spake kindly, in a language I could not understand; but I know he meant full well. "This be the curious thing, Cunora: He picked up a handful of leaves from the ground and laid them on the trough at my side.
Cunora fell to sobbing again. "I cannot help it! I am afraid!" Rolla scarcely heard. An enormous idea had just occurred to her. She had told the girl to think of Dulnop and Corrus; but was it not equally true that they should think of all the other humans, their fellow slaves, each of whom had suffered nearly as much? Was not the fire equally precious to them all?
They hovered over the prostrate forms of the aborigines and made sure that they were unconscious. "Is there nothing we can do?" whispered Cunora, straining her eyes to see. "Nothing, save to watch and wait," returned Rolla, her gaze fixed upon the dark heap which marked her lover's form. And thus an hour passed, with the four on the earth quite unable to take a hand in any way.
The other bees in the hive came crowding around, and Supreme had some difficulty in maintaining her dignity and authority. In the end she confided in the subordinate next in command: "I have had a terrible dream. One of our slaves, or a woman much like one, assaulted me with a new and fearful weapon." She described it more or less as Rolla had told Cunora.
Cunora was close upon her heels. "Hail to the flowing flower!" She held up a torch. Down fell the villagers to their knees. Holla strode forward and found Corrus, even as Cunora located her Dulnop. "Hail to the flowing flower!" shouted Rolla again. "And hail to the free people of this world! A new day cometh for us all! The masters are no more!"
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