Blinded with staggering grief and terror, stunned, stricken, all but annihilated, the man recoiled.
Then, with a cry, he sprang to the bed again, and now in a very passion of eagerness explored it. His trembling hands dragged all the bedding off and threw it broadcast. By the dim light he peered with wide and terror-smitten eyes.
"My boy!" he choked. "My boy!"
But beyond all manner of doubt the boy had been stolen.
Unable to understand, or think, or plan, Allan stood there, his face ghastly, his heart quivering within him.
What could have happened? How and why? If the door had been securely locked and the old nurse been with the child, how could the kidnapper have borne him away?
What? How? Why?
More, ever more, questions crowded the man's brain, all equally without answer.
But now, he dimly realized, was no time for solving problems. The minute demanded swift and drastic action. He must find, must save, his son! After that other riddles could he unraveled.
"H'yemba!" he cried hoarsely. "This is H'yemba's work! Revenge and hate have driven him to rebel again. To try to seize Beatrice! To steal my son! At this time of peril and affliction, above all others! H'yemba! The smith must die!"
But first he realized he must get Beatrice into safety.
In haste he ran to the door, picked up the girl and carried her to the bed. Here he disposed her at ease, covered her with the bedding, and bathed her face and hands with water from the cooling-jar.
The old nurse he laid upon the broad couch by the fire and likewise tended. He saw now she had been struck with a stone ax, a glancing blow, severe, but not necessarily fatal.
"Probably trying to defend the boy!" thought he. "Brave heart! Faithful even unto death--if death be your reward!"
Leaving her, he returned to his wife.
Now, he well understood, he had no time for emotion. There must be no false move. Even at the expense of a little time, he must plan the campaign with skill and execute it with relentless energy.
He alone now stood for power, rule, order, law, in this disintegrated community--this colony racked with disaster, anarchy and death.
Upon him alone now depended its whole fate and future, and, with it, the fate and future of the world.
"Merciful Lord, what a situation!" he whispered. "At home, disruption and savagery. Outside, the Horde--the Horde now pressing onward after me!"
He sat down beside the bed and forced himself to think. Weak as he was and wounded with a spear-thrust in the lower leg as well as a jagged cut across the breast, he felt that he might still keep strength enough for a few hours more of toil.