Stern's heart went sick within him A terrible rage welled up--a hate such as he had never believed possible to feel.
Wild imprecations struggled to be voiced. He snapped his lips together in a thin line, his eyes narrowed, and his face went gray.
"The infernal little beasts!" he gritted. "Tried to trap us in the tower--cut our boat loose afterward--and now invading us! Don't know when they're licked, the swine!"
Beatrice had lost her color now. Milk-white her face was; her eyes grew wide with terror; she strove to speak, but could not.
Her hand went out in a wild, repelling gesture, as though by the very power of her love for home she could protect it now against the incursion of these foul, distorted, inhuman little monsters.
Stern acted quickly. He had been about to cut off power and coast for the beach; but now he veered suddenly to eastward again, rotated the rising-plane, and brought the Pauillac up at a sharp tilt. Banking, he advanced the spark a notch; the engine shrilled a half-tone higher, and with increased speed the aero lifted them bravely in a long and rising swoop.
He snatched his automatic from its holster on his hip and as the plane swept past the beach, down-stream, let fly a spatter of steel jacketed souvenirs at the fast-thickening pack on the sand.
Far up to the girl and him, half heard through the clatter of the motors, they sensed a thin, defiant, barbarous yell--a yapping chorus, bestial and horrible.
Again Stern fired.
He could see quick spurts of water jet up along the edge of the sand, and one of the creatures fell, but this was only a chance shot.
At that distance, firing from a swift-skimming plane, he knew he could do no execution, and with a curse slid the pistol back again into its place.
"Oh, for a dirigible and a few Pulverite bombs, same as we had in the tower!" he wished. "I'd clean the blighters out mighty quick!"
But now Beatrice was pointing, with a cry of dismay, down, away at the bungalow itself, which had for a moment become visible at the far end of the clearing as the Pauillac scudded past.
Even as Stern thought: "Odd, but they're not afraid of us--a flying-machine means nothing to them, does not terrify them as it would human savages. They're too debased even to feel fear!"--even as this thought crossed his brain he, too, saw the terrible thing that the girl had cried out at sight of.
"My God!" he shouted. "This--this is too much!"
All about the bungalow, their home, the scene of such happy hours, so many dreams and hopes, such heart-enthralling labors, hundreds of the Horde were swarming.