Not yet even fully awake, Beatrice was conscious of a sudden, vast responsibility laid on her shoulders. She felt the thrill of leadership and command, for in her hands alone now rested the fate of the community.
Out of bed she sprang, her grief for the moment crushed aside, aquiver now with the spirit of defense against all ills that might menace the colony and her child.
"The cliff falls?" she cried, starting for the doorway.
"Yea, mistress! Hark!"
Both women heard a grating, crushing sound. The whole fabric of the cavern trembled again, as though shuddering; then, far below, a grinding crash reechoed--and now rose shouts, cries, wails of pain.
Already Beatrice was out of the door and running down the terrace.
"Yulcia! Yulcia!" the old woman stood screaming after her. "You must not go!"
She answered nothing, but ran the faster. Already she could see dust rising from the river-brink; and louder now the cries blended in an anguished chorus as she sped down the terrace.
What could have happened? How great was the catastrophe? What might the death-roll be?
Her terrors about Allan had at last been thrown into the background of her mind. She forgot the boy, herself, everything save the crushing fact of some stupendous calamity.
All at once she stopped with a gasp of terror.
She had reached the turn in the path whence now all the further reach of the cliff was visible. But, where the crag had towered, now appeared only a great and jagged rent in the limestone, through which the sky peered down.
An indescribable chaos of fragments, blocks, debris, detritus of all kinds half choked the river below; and the swift current, suddenly blocked, now foamed and chafed with lathering fury through the newly fallen obstacle.
Broken short off, the path stopped not a hundred yards in front of her.
As she stood there, dazed and dumb, harkening the terrible cries that rose from those still not dead in the ruins, she perceived some of the Folk gathered along the brink of the new chasm. More and more kept coming from the scant half of the caves still left. And all, dazed and numbed like herself, stood there peering down with vacant looks.
Beatrice first recovered wit. Dimly she understood the truth. The cavern digging of the Folk, the burrowing and honeycombing through the cliff, must have sprung some keystone, started some "fault," or broken down some vital rib of the structure.
With irresistible might it had torn loose, slid, crashed, leaped into the canyon, carrying with it how many lives she knew not.
All she knew now was that rescues must be made of such as still lived, and that the bodies of the dead must be recovered.