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"He was so old and weak, the touch of the fire in the sky he could not bear it. But his death was happy, for at least he felt its warmth upon his brow!" The Merucaans kept silence for a moment, then Stern heard them murmuring together, and a vague uneasiness crept over him.
Beatrice shuddered slightly. Now that they were nearing "home" the desolation seemed more appalling. "Oh, Allan, is it possible all this will ever be peopled again alive?" "Certain to be! Once we get those records and begin transplanting the Merucaans, the rest will be only a matter of time!" She made no answer, but in her eyes shone pride that he could know such visions, have such faith.
At sound of that word a startled cry broke from the lips of Stern's elder boatman, a cry which, taken up from boat to boat, drifted dully through the fog, traversed the whole fleet of strange, slow-moving craft, and lost itself in the vague gloom. "Merucaans! Merucaans!" the shout arose, with other words whereof Stern knew not the meaning; and closer pressed the outlying boats.
One ladder, pushed outward, dragged half a dozen of the Merucaans with it; and at the bottom of the wall a circling eddy of the Lanskaarn despatched the fighting Folkmen who had been hauled to their destruction by the grappling besiegers.
Much better such stock to rebuild from than some mild, supine race of far higher culture. To fight the rough battles of life and re-establishment still ahead, the bold and warlike Merucaans were all that he could wish.
Some of the hardier of the first-arrived colonists had already far sooner than Allan had hoped begun to tolerate a little daylight. Following his original idea, he prepared some sets of brown mica eye-shields, and by the aid of these a number of the Merucaans were able to endure an hour or two of early dawn and late evening in the open air.
They made a camp, which was to serve them for a while as headquarters in their tremendous undertaking of bringing the Merucaans to the surface, and here carefully stored their treasure in a deep cleft of rock, secure from rain and weather. They had not revisited the bungalow on the return trip.
Silence overhung the assemblage save for the fretful cry of children here and there, squeezed in the press or clinging to their mothers' backs after the fashion of the Merucaans. Afar, on the walls, the faint and raucous quarreling of the sea-birds drifted through the fog.
"O my people," he began, striving to speak clearly above the noise of the fire-jet, his voice sounding dull and heavy in that compressed atmosphere, "O Folk of the Merucaans, I greet you! There be many things to tell that you must know and believe. I have come back to you with great peril in my flying-boat to tell you of the upper world and all its goodness.
And boldly, in a loud voice, he cried: "Folk of the Merucaans, this cannot be!" "It cannot be? Who says it cannot be? Who dares stand out and challenge me?" "I, H'yemba, the man of iron and of flame!" Stern faced him, every nerve and fiber quivering with sudden passion.
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