"Already?" exclaimed Allan in surprise. "These new machines certainly do surprise me with their speed and power. In the old days the Pauillac wouldn't have been here before noon from the Abyss!"
Together, Beatrice and he walked round the wide piazza to the rear of the bungalow. The home estate sloped gently down toward the cement and boulder wall edging the cliff. In its broad garden stood the stable, where half a dozen horses--caught on the northern savannas and carefully tamed--disputed their master's favor with the touring car he had built up from half a dozen partly ruined machines in Atlanta and other cities.
Up the cliff still roared the thunder of the rapids, to-day untamed by the many turbines and power-plants along the shore. But louder than the river rose the tumult of the rejoicing throng: "They come! They come!"
"Where?" questioned Beta. "See them, boy?"
"There! Look! How swift! My trained men can outfly me now--more luck to them!"
He pointed far to northwestward, over the wide and rolling sea of green, farm-dotted, that had sprung up with marvelous fecundity in the wake of the great fire.
Looking now out over the very same country where, five years and a month before, she had strained her tear-blinded eyes for some sign of Allan's return, Beatrice suddenly beheld three high, swift little specks skimming up the heavens with incredible velocity.
"Hurrah!" shouted Allan boyishly. "Here they come--the last of my Folk!"
He ran to the corner of the piazza and on the tall staff that dominated the canyon and the river-valley dipped the stars and stripes three times in signal of welcome.
And already, ere the salute was done, the rushing planes had slipped full half the distance from the place where they had first been sighted.
A messenger ran down the gravel driveway and saluted.
"O Kromno!" he began. "Master--"
"Master no longer!" Allan interrupted. "Brother now, only!"
The lad stared, amazed.
"Well, what is it?" smiled Allan.
"The Council of the Elders prays you to come to help greet the last-comers. And after that the feast!"
"I come!" he answered. The lad bowed and vanished.
"They aren't going to let me out of it, after all," he sighed. "I'd so much rather let them run their own festival to-day. But no--they've got to ring me in, as usual! You'll come, too, of course?"
She nodded, and a moment later they were walking over the fine lawn toward the plaza.
On the far side, in a wide, open stretch that served the children sometimes as a playground, stood the great hangars of the community's air-fleet. Beyond them rose workshops, their machinery driven by electric power from the turbines at the rapids.