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"We waited, Kromno, but you came not. Did you forget your people in the darkness?" "No, Rigvin. There has been great distress in Settlement Cliffs. The flying boat is lost. Even now we seek it. Enemies attacked. We destroyed them, but had to sweep the world with fire, as ye see. Many things have happened to keep me from my people. But how came ye here?
"Yet will we not compel any man to go. All shall be free " "Thank God!" breathed Allan, with a mighty sigh. " Free to stay or go, as they will. Our village is too full, even now. We have many children. It were well that some should make room for others. Those who dare, have our consent. Now, speak you to the people, your people, O Kromno, and see who chooses the upper world with you!"
Turning, he saw Gesafam. "The child, O Kromno, hungers. It is crying for food!" Allan thought. He saw at once the impossibility of letting the boy come near its mother. Some other arrangement must be made. "Ah!" thought he. "I have it!" He gestured toward the door. "Go," he commanded. "Go up the path, to the palisaded place. Take this rope. Bring back, with you a she-goat.
A vague uneasiness began to oppress him. The fire, he reckoned, should have shown ere now in the far distance. Without it, how find his way? And what of Beatrice? His uneasy reflections were suddenly interrupted by a word from Zangamon, at his right. "O Kromno, master, see?" "What is it, now?" "A fire, very distant, master!" "Where?" queried Stern eagerly, his heart leaping with joy.
"What is this, O Kromno?" asked the man anxiously, pointing at Allan's shoulder. "Have they wounded you?" Allan looked and saw a poisoned dart hanging loosely in his left sleeve. As he moved he could feel the point rubbing against his naked skin. "Merciful Heaven!" he exclaimed. "Has it scratched me?" With infinite precautions he loosened and threw off his outer garment.
He laid a compelling hand on the shoulder of one, Rigvin, whom he remembered as a mighty caster of the nets on the Great Sunken Sea. "Oh, Rigvin!" he commanded. "Come aside with me. I must have speech at once!" "I come, O Kromno. Speak, and I make answer!" "How came ye here without the flying boat? How did ye escape from the Abyss? Whither went ye? Tell me all!"
He would desire you to come to him." "He is at peace? He found the upper world good?" "He found it good, Vreenya. And he is at peace." "It is well. Now the commands of Tai Kromno shall be done. His house is ready!" While Stern clambered out of the machine and stretched his half-paralyzed limbs, the news ran, a murmur of many voices, through the massed Folk.
"The light, master it is like knives to me! Like spears to my eyes, master! I cannot bear it!" whispered the Merucaan, pointing to where, around the interstices of the doorway, bright white gleams were streaming in. Allan considered with perplexity. "It hurts, you say?" "Yes, Kromno! Once or twice I have tried to watch that strange fire, but I cannot. The pain is very great!"
The prospect even of war was welcome anything in place of this unending trek through the burned wilderness. Zangamon cried: "Where be those that come, O Kromno? And what manner of men?" "Yonder," indicated Stern. "I know not who, save that they be men. Wait but a little and you shall know. Now to the ravine!"
In from the sea, summoned by waving flares, the fishing-boats came plowing mightily, driven by many paddles in the hands of the strange, white-haired men. Along the beach the townsfolk thronged, and down the causeway, beneath the vast monolithic plinth of the fortified gate, jostled and pushed an ever-growing multitude. Cries of "Kromno h'viat! Tai Kromno!" reechoed "The chief has come back!
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