“What death?” cried Stern.
“Even the death of H'yemba! Let him be cast from the parapet to death in the white rushing river far below!”
All echoed the cry: “Death to all traitors, from the rock!”
“So be it, then,” Stern concluded. “Ye have spoken, and it shall be written as a Law. From Execution Rock shall all conspirators be cast. Now go!”
He dismissed them. While they departed and filed down the terraces to their own homes, he stood there with folded arms, watching them very gravely. The last one vanished. He nodded.
“They'll do now!” said he to himself. “No more trouble from that source! Another milestone passed along the road of self-control, self-government and communal spirit. Ah, but the road's a long one yet--a long and hard and stony road to follow!”
Next day Stern began making his plans for the recovery of the lost aeroplane.
“This is by far the most important matter now before the colony,” he told Beatrice, watching her nurse the boy as they sat by the fire, while outside the rain drummed over cliff and cañon, hill and plain. “Our very life depends on keeping a free means of communication open with the mother-country of the Folk, so to call it, and with the city-ruins that supply us with so many necessary articles. No other form of transportation will do. At all hazards we must have an aeroplane--one at least, more later, if possible.”
“Of course,” she answered; “but why not make one here? Down there in your workshop--”
“I haven't the equipment yet,” he interrupted; “nor yet the necessary metal, the wire, a hundred things. All that will come in time when we get some mines to work and start a few blast-furnaces. But for the present, the best and quickest thing to do will be to look up the old machine again.”