“Well?”
“It's still out there somewhere, isn't it? Out there, in those black, unsounded depths--the biplane?”
“You mean--”
“Why couldn't we raise it again, and--”
“Of course! You know I mean to try as soon as I have these people under some control so I can get them to cooperate with me--get them to understand!”
“Not till then? No escape till then? But, Allan, it may be too late!” she burst out with passionate eagerness.
Puzzled, he turned and peered at her in the bluish gloom.
“Escape?” he queried. “Too late? Why, what do you mean? Escape from what? You mean that we should leave these people, here, before we've even begun to teach them? Before we've discovered some way out of the Abyss for them? Leave everything that means the regeneration of the human race, the world? Why--”
A touch upon his arm interrupted him.
He turned quickly to find the patriarch standing at his side. Silent and dim through the fog, he had come thither with sandaled feet, and now stood with a strange, inscrutable smile on his long-bearded lips.