When I came to myself I was lying upon a bank of ferns in the outskirts of the city. It was still night; the black cloud of death had passed on; the air was pure. Like a man for days bereft of water, I lay and drank in the air, pure at last, as the Almighty distils it for us.
Bodies were lying around me on the bank. A dark, silent house stood nearby; and a deserted boat. All darkness and silence—the brooding silence of death. I was still dazed. Maida—Georg; they seemed like people in a dream long faded. Industriana! They were going to the Rhaal City of Industriana. I had been trying to get there. I must get there now—join them. I climbed to my feet; the edge of a forest was nearby and with wavering steps I started toward it.
Looking back on it now I realize that I was even then half crazed. In a daze I must have stumbled through the forest for hours. Unreasoning, with only that one idea—to get to Industriana; and in the background of my consciousness the vague belief that Elza would be there to greet me. Into the depths of the untrammeled forest with unguided steps I wandered.
At last I found myself wondering if the dawn were coming; the tri-night hour was long since passed; the auroral lights as I could sometimes see them through the tangle of vegetation overhead, were low in the sky. Insects—and sometimes larger beings—leaped and slithered unseen before my advance. But I did not heed them. Eyes may have peered at me as I stumbled through the blackness of the undergrowth; but if they did, I did not notice them.
And then at last I was brought abruptly to full rationality and consciousness. Stumbling through a tangle of low growth—a black thicket which tore at my garments and scratched my flesh—I was transfixed by a woman's scream. It came through the darkness from near at hand. A crashing of the underbrush, and a woman's scream of terror. It stopped my breath, turned me cold.
Elza!
CHAPTER XXX
The Monster
I stood frozen with horror; but as my brain cleared—awake at last to full rationality and consciousness—beneath the horror came a surging joy of the knowledge that at last Elza was near me. The scream was repeated; inactive no longer, I dashed the thicket branches apart with my arms and plunged forward through the darkness.