The Afterglow | Page 6

the engine shrilled a half-tone higher, and with increased speed the aero lifted them bravely in a long and rising swoop.
He snatched his automatic from its holster on his hip and as the plane swept past the beach, down-stream, let fly a spatter of steel jacketed souvenirs at the fast-thickening pack on the sand.
Far up to the girl and him, half heard through the clatter of the motors, they sensed a thin, defiant, barbarous yell--a yapping chorus, bestial and horrible.
Again Stern fired.
He could see quick spurts of water jet up along the edge of the sand, and one of the creatures fell, but this was only a chance shot.
At that distance, firing from a swift-skimming plane, he knew he could do no execution, and with a curse slid the pistol back again into its place.
"Oh, for a dirigible and a few Pulverite bombs, same as we had in the tower!" he wished. "I'd clean the blighters out mighty quick!"
But now Beatrice was pointing, with a cry of dismay, down, away at the bungalow itself, which had for a moment become visible at the far end of the clearing as the Pauillac scudded past.
Even as Stern thought: "Odd, but they're not afraid of us--a flying-machine means nothing to them, does not terrify them as it would human savages. They're too debased even to feel fear!"--even as this thought crossed his brain he, too, saw the terrible thing that the girl had cried out at sight of.
"My God!" he shouted. "This--this is too much!"
All about the bungalow, their home, the scene of such happy hours, so many dreams and hopes, such heart-enthralling labors, hundreds of the Horde were swarming.
Like vicious parasites attacking prey, they overran the garden, the grounds, even the house itself.
As in a flash, Stern knew all his work of months must be undone--the fruit-trees he had rescued from the forest be cut down or broken, the bulbs and roots in the garden uptorn, even the hedges and fences trampled flat.
Worse still, the bungalow was being destroyed! 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.
With an imprecation of unutterable hate and rage, yet impotent to stay the ravishment of Hope Villa, Stern brought the machine round in a long spiral.
For a moment the wild, suicidal idea possessed him to land on the beach, after all, and charge the little slate-blue devils who had evidently piled all the furnishings together in the bungalow and were now burning them.
He longed for slaughter now; he lusted blood--the blood of the Anthropoid pack which from the beginning had hung upon his flank and been as a thorn unto his flesh.
He seemed to feel the joy of rushing them, an automatic in each hand spitting death, just as he had mown down the Lanskaarn in the Battle of the Wall, down below in the Abyss. Even though he knew the inevitable ends poisoned spear-thrust, a wound with one of those terribly envenomed arrows--he felt no fear.
Revenge! If he could only feel its sweetness, death had no terrors.
Common sense instantly sobered him and dispelled these vain ideas. The bungalow, after all, was not vital to his future or the girl's. Barring the set of encyclopedias on metal plates, everything else could be replaced with sufficient labor. Only a madman would risk a fight with such a Horde in company with a woman.
Not now were he and Beatrice entrenched in a strong tower, with terrible explosives. Now they were in the open, armed only with revolvers. For the present there was no redress.
"Beta," cried he, "we're up against it this time for fair--and we can't hit back!"
"Our bungalow! Our precious home!"
"I know." He saw that she was crying: "It's a rotten shame and all that, but it isn't fatal."
He brought the Pauillac down-wind again, coasting high over the bungalow, whence smoke now issued ever more and more thickly.
"We're simply hamstrung this time, that's all. Where those devils have come from and how many there may be, God knows. Thousands, perhaps; the woods may be full of em. It's lucky for us they didn't attack while we were there!
"Now--well, the only thing to do is let 'em have their way for the present. Eventually--"
"Oh, can't we ever get rid of the horrid little beasts for good?"
"We can and will!" He spoke very grimly, soaring the machine still higher over the river and once more coming round above the upper end of the beach. "One of these days there's got to be a final reckoning, but not yet!"
"So it's good-by to Hope Villa, Allan? There's