Suddenly Allan caught and crushed her in his arms.
“My wife!” he whispered.
The satin of her skin from breast to brow surged into sudden flame. Her eyes closed and between her eager lips the breath came fast.
“Oh, Allan--husband! I feel--I hear--”
“The voice of the unborn, crying to us from out the dark, ‘O father, mother, give us life!’”
CHAPTER IX
AT SETTLEMENT CLIFFS
Ten days later the two lovers--now man and wife--were back again at the eastern lip of the Abyss. With them on the biplane they had brought the phonograph and records, all securely wrapped in oiled canvas, the same which had enveloped the precious objects in the leaden chest.
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. The sight of their little home and garden, now totally devastated, they knew would only sadden them unnecessarily.
“Let it pass, dearest, as a happy memory that was and is no more,” Stern cheered the girl as he held her in his arms the first night of their stay in the new camp, and as together they watched the purple haze of sunset beyond the chasm. “Some day, perhaps, we may go back and once more restore Hope Villa and live there again, but for the present many other and far more weighty matters press. It will be wisest for a while to leave the East alone. Too many of the Horde are still left there. Here, west of the Ohio River Valley, they don't seem to have penetrated--and what's more, they never shall! Just now we must ignore them--though the day of reckoning will surely come! We've got our hands full for a while with the gigantic task ahead of us. It's the biggest and the hardest that one man and one woman ever tackled since the beginning of time!”