“What keeps my children here,” asked he, “when already it is long past the sleeping-hour? Verily, this should not be! Come,” he commanded. “Come away! To-morrow will be time for speech.”
And, giving them no further opportunity to talk of this new problem, he spoke of other matters, and so led them back to his hospitable hut of stone.
But for a long time Allan could not sleep. Weird thoughts and new suspicions now aroused, he lay and pondered many things.
What if, after all, this seeming friendliness and homage of the savage Folk were but a mask?
A vision of the boiling geyser-pit rose to his memory. And the dreams he dreamed that night were filled with strange, confused, disquieting images.
CHAPTER XXXII
PREPARATIONS
He woke to hear a drumming roar that seemed to fill the spaces of the Abyss with a wild tumult such as he had never known--a steady thunder, wonderful and wild.
Starting up, he saw by the dim light that the patriarch was sitting there upon the stone, thoughtful and calm, apparently giving no heed to this singular tumult. But Stern, not understanding, put a hasty question.
“What's all this uproar, father? I never heard anything like that up in the surface-world!”
“That? Only the rain, my son,” the old man answered. “Had you no rain there? Verily, traditions tell of rain among the people of that day!”