"Now, now just as the rescue of these people was at hand, just as the machine might have carried us and them back into the world, slowly, one by one--now comes defeat and death!"
An exceeding great bitterness filled his soul once more at this harsh, cynic turn of fate. But most of all he yearned toward Beatrice. That he should die mattered nothing; but the thought of this girl perishing at their hands there in the lost Abyss was dreadful as the pangs of all the fabled hells.
Again he fought to hold back, to try for some sight, even a fleeting glimpse of Beatrice; but the Folk with harsh cries drove him roughly forward.
He could not even see the patriarch. All was confusion, glare, smoke, noise, as he was thrust through the fortified gate, out into the thronged plaza.
Everywhere rose cries, shouts, vociferations, among which he could distinguish only one a thousand times repeated: "Kamrou! Kamrou!"
And through all his rage and bitter bafflement and pain, a sudden great desire welled up in him to see this chief of the Folk, at last--to lay eyes on this formidable, this terrible one--to stand face to face with him in whose hand now lay everything, Kamrou!
Across the dim, fog-covered expanse of the plaza he saw the blue-green shimmer of the great flame.
Thither, toward that strange, eternal fire and the ghastly circle of the headless skeletons the Folk were drifting now. Thither his captors were dragging him.
And there, he knew, Kamrou awaited Beatrice and him. There doom was to be dealt out to them. There, and at once!
Thicker the press became. The flame was very near now, its droning roar almost drowning the great and growing babel of cries.
On, on the Folk bore him. All at once he saw again that two-pronged torch raised before him, going ahead; and a way cleared through the press.
Along this way he was carried, no longer struggling, but eager now to know the end, to meet it bravely and with calm philosophy, "as fits a man."
And quite at once he found himself in sight of the many dangling skeletons. Now the quivering jet of the flame grew visible. Now, suddenly, he was thrust forward into a smooth and open space. Silence fell.
Before him he saw Kamrou, Kamrou the Terrible, at last.