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"This compass I've rigged on gimbals here, beats anything Pauillac himself ever had. What's the matter with my home-made gyrostat and anemometer? And hasn't this aneroid barometer got cards and spades over the old-style models?" Enthusiastic as a boy, Stern shook his head and smiled delightedly at Beatrice as he expounded the merits of the biplane and its fittings.
For the first time that night the idea was strongly borne in upon him that, after all, this might be little better than a wild-goose chase, and that despite his desperate need of the Pauillac engine perhaps the better part of valor might be discretion, retreat, return to Settlement Cliffs while there might still be time.
Oh, that I might see them once, only once, those wonderful things of ancient story! Then, verily, I should be glad to die!" Midnight. Hard-driven now for many hours, heated, yet still running true, the Pauillac had at length made a safe landing on the western verge of the Abyss. Again the voyagers felt solid earth beneath their feet.
The Pauillac had been brought along the road from Newport Heights and housed there. This road passed through strong gates of hewn planks hinged with well-wrought ironwork forged by some of the Folk under the direction of H'yemba, the smith. For H'yemba, be it known, had been brought up by Stern early in December.
With a cry, a sudden flushing of her face, now so wan and colorless, she seemed to throw all her senses into one sense, the power of sight. And though her hand began to shake so terribly that she could only with a great effort hold the glass, she steadied it against a fern-tree and thus managed to find again and hold the moving speck. The Pauillac! Was it indeed the Pauillac and Allan?
The guides broke into a crouching run. All three crashed through the thickets, split the fern-masses, struggled through the tall saber-grass that here and there rose higher than their heads. Allan cursed himself for a fool. That other cry he had heard while on his way from the Pauillac to Settlement Cliffs that had been her cry for help and he had neither known nor heeded. "Fool that I was!
A lashing had given way! Part of the left hand plane had broken loose. Drunkenly, whirling head over like an albatross shot in mid-air, the Pauillac plunged. It righted, swerved, shot far ahead, then once again somersaulted. Stern had disjointed, crazy thoughts of air-pressure, condensation and compression, resistance, abstruse formulae.
And with a fresh grip on the wheel, head well forward, every sense alert and keen to meet whatever conditions might arise, to battle with cross-currents, "air-holes," or any other vortices swirling up out of those unknown depths, he skimmed the Pauillac fair toward the lip of the monstrous vacancy.
They both realized that an early start was necessary if he were to reach the village of the Folk before sleep should assail him. Still more, they dreaded the departure less than the suspense. Together they provisioned the Pauillac, back there on the rocky barren, and made sure everything was in order. Allan assured himself especially that he had fuel enough to last four or five hours.
Rather, its contents, since the concrete walls defied the venomous troop. They knew, at any rate, the use of fire, and not so swiftly skimmed the Pauillac as to prevent both Stern and Beatrice seeing a thin but ominous thread of smoke out-curling on the June air from one of the living-room windows.
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