“Over!” I cried, astonished. “What do you mean? Will you abandon all your ambitions—the certain fortune that awaits you—the applause and admiration of your fellow men?”
“What do they all amount to?” he asked. “Yes; I abandon them. I’m going to live with Ilalah.”
“Here; in the half savage and almost unknown land of the Techlas. The result of years of labor has been wiped out of existence in a flash, and I have not the courage to begin all over again. I have no patterns of the machine and the drawings and specifications all were destroyed with it. I could never build another that would equal it in perfection. But why should I attempt it? I do not need an automobile here. I do not need fortune, or fame, or anything but love; and this Ilalah has given me freely.”
“Do I understand you to mean that you will always remain in this forsaken country?”
“That is my intention,” he said. “I shall help my wife to rule her people and in her companionship be happy in a simple, natural way.”
We argued with him long and earnestly, while Ilalah sat beside him silent and smiling but very sure that we could not prevail over his sudden but preposterous resolution.
They found a few scraps of what they believed to have once been Nalig-Nad, and that night the remains were consumed with fire, accompanied by many impressive ceremonies. Other funeral pyres burned also, both in the enclosure and on the plain beyond; for the most malignant of the green chiefs had followed the king to assist him in destroying the automobile and had therefore shared his fate.
Bright and early next morning Ned Britton appeared at the edge of the forest leading his band of seamen to our rescue. We advanced eagerly to meet him and told him the news of the king’s destruction and of our altered standing with the new ruler of the San Blas. Ned had heard and felt the explosion even on the wreck, but thought that it must have been an earthquake.
The newcomers were not regarded with much favor by the Indians, yet I thought that we all assisted greatly to lend dignity to the day’s ceremonies, which included the formal acknowledgment of Ilalah as ruler and lawgiver of the nation and her subsequent marriage—a most primitive rite—to the inventor, Duncan Moit. Ilalah’s husband was next adopted as a Techla, and then the excitement seemed to subside and the population settled down to business again.