Across the Zodiac (64 page)

"Coward, scoundrel, murderer!" I cried. "You shall die a more terrible
death than that which your own savage law prescribes for crimes like
yours. Bind him; he shall hang from my vessel in the air till I see
fit to let him fall! For the rest, see that none are left alive to
boast what they have done this day."

Struggling and screaming, the Regent was dragged to the summit, and
hung by the waist, as I had threatened, from the entrance window of
the Astronaut. Esmo's body and those of the other slain among the
Zveltau had been raised, and our comrades were about to carry them to
the carriages and remove them homeward. From the wardrobe of the
Astronaut, furnished anew for our voyage, I brought a long soft
therne-cloak, intended for Eveena's comfort; and wrapped in it all
that was left to us of the loveliest form and the noblest heart that
in two worlds ever belonged to woman. I shred one long soft tress of
mingled gold and brown from those with which my hand had played; I
kissed for the last time the lips that had so often counselled,
pleaded, soothed, and never spoken a word that had better been left
unsaid. Then, veiling face and form in the soft down, I called around
me again the brethren who had fallen back out of sight of my last
farewell, and gave the corpse into their charge. Turning with restless
eagerness from the agony, which even the sudden shock that rendered me
half insensible could not deaden into endurable pain, to the passion
of revenge, I led two or three of our party to the foot of the ladder
beneath the entrance window of my vessel, and was about in their
presence to explain his fate more fully to the struggling, howling
victim, half mad with protracted terror. But at that moment my purpose
was arrested. I had often repeated to Eveena passages from those
Terrestrial works whose purport most resembled that of the mystic
lessons she so deeply prized; and words, on which in life she had
especially dwelt, seemed now to be whispered in my ear or my heart by
the voice which with bodily sense I could never hear again:—
"Vengeance is Mine; I will repay." The absolute control of my will and
conscience, won by her perfect purity and unfailing rectitude,
outlasted Eveena's life. Turning to her murderer—

"You shall die," I said, "but you shall die not by revenge but by the
law; and not by your own law, but by that which, forbidding that
torture shall add to the sting of death, commands that 'Whoso sheddeth
man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed.' Yet I cannot give you a
soldier's death," as my men levelled their weapons. Cutting the cord
that bound him, and grasping him from behind, I flung the wretch forth
from the summit far into the air; well assured that he would never
feel the blow that would dismiss his soul to its last account, before
that Tribunal to whose judgment his victim had appealed. Then I
entered the vessel, waved my hand in farewell to my comrades, and,
putting the machinery in action, rose from the surface and prepared to
quit a world which now held nothing that could detain or recal me.

My task was not quite done. It was well for me in the first moments of
this new solitude, of this maddening agony, that there was instant
work imperatively demanding the attention of the mind as well as the
exercise of the body. I had first, by means of the air pump, to fill
the vessel with an atmosphere as dense as that in which I had been
born and lived so long; then to close the entrance window and seal it
hermetically, and then to arrange the steering gear. To complete the
first task more easily, I arrested the motion of the vessel till she
rose only a few feet per minute. Whilst employed on the air pump, I
became suddenly aware, by that instinct by which most men have been at
one time or another warned of the unexpected proximity of friend or
foe, that I was not alone. Turning and looking in the direction of the
entrance, I saw, or thought I saw, once more the Presence beheld in
the Hall of the Zinta. But commanding, enthralling as were those eyes,
they could not now retain my attention; for beside that figure
appeared one whose presence in life or death left me no thought for
aught beside. I sprang forward, seemed to touch her hand, to clasp her
form, to reach the lips I bent my head to meet:—and then, in the
midst of the bright sunlight, a momentary darkness veiled all from my
eyes. Lifting my head, however, my glance fell, through the window to
which the Vision had drawn me, directly upon Ecasfe and upon the home
from which I had taken her whose remains were now being carried back
thither. Snatching up my field-glass, I scanned the scene of which I
had thus caught a momentary and confused glimpse. The roof was
occupied by a score of men armed with the lightning weapon, and among
them glanced the familiar badge—the band and silver star. Clambering
over the walls of the wide enclosure, and threatening to storm the
house, were a mob perhaps a thousand in number, many of them similarly
armed, the rest with staves, spears, or such rude weapons as chance
might afford. Two minutes brought me immediately over them. In
another, I was descending more rapidly than prudence would have
suggested. The strife seemed for a moment to cease, as one of the
crowd pointed, not to the impending destruction overhead, but to some
object apparently at an equal elevation to westward. A shout of
welcome from the remaining defenders of the house called right upward
the eyes of their assailants. For an instant they felt the bitterness
of death; a cry of agony and terror that pierced even the thick walls
and windows of the Astronaut reached my ears. Then a violent shock
threw me from my feet. Springing up, I knew what wholesale slaughter
had avenged Eveena and her father, preserved her family, and given a
last victory to the Symbol she so revered. In another instant I was on
the roof, and my hands clasped in Zulve's.

"We know," she said. "Our darling's
esve
brought us a line that told
all; and what is left of those who were all to me, of her who was so
much to you, will now be returned to us almost at once."

We were interrupted. A cry drew my eyes to the right, where, springing
from a balloon to the car of which was attached a huge flag emblazoned
with the crimson and silver colours of the Suzerain, Ergimo stood
before us.

"I am too late," he said, "to save life; in time only to put an end to
rebellion and avert murder. The Prince has fulfilled his promise to
you; has repealed the law that was to be a weapon in the hands that
aimed at his life and throne, as at the Star and its children. The
traitors, save one, the worst, have met by this time their just doom.
That one I am here to arrest. But where is our Chief? And," noticing
for the first time the group of women, who in the violence of alarm
and agony of sorrow had burst for once unconsciously the restraints of
a lifetime—"where ... Are you alone?"

"Alone for ever," I said; and as I spoke the procession that with bare
and bent heads carried two veiled forms into the peristyle below told
all he sought to know. I need not dwell on the scene that followed. I
scarcely remember anything, till a chest of gold, bearing the cipher
which though seldom seen I knew so well, was placed in my hands. I
turned to Zulve, and to Ergimo, who stood beside her.

"Have you need of me?" I said. "If I can serve her house I will remain
willingly, and as long as I can help or comfort."

"No," replied Ergimo; for Zulve could not speak. "The household of
Clavelta are safe and honoured henceforth as no other in the land.
Something we must ask of him who is, at any rate for the present, the
head of this household, and the representative of the Founder's
lineage. It may be," he whispered, "that another" (and his eyes fell
on the veiled forms whose pink robes covered with dark crimson gauze
indicated the younger matrons of the family) "may yet give to the
Children of the Star that natural heir to the Signet we had hoped from
your own household. But the Order cannot remain headless."

Here Zulve, approaching, gave into my hand the Signet unclasped from
her husband's arm ere the coffer was closed upon his form. I understood
her meaning; and, as for the time the sole male representative of the
house, I clasped it on the arm of the Chief who succeeded to Esmo's
rank, and to whom I felt the care of Esmo's house might be safely
left. The due honour paid to his new office, I turned to depart. Then
for the first time my eyes fell on the unveiled countenance and
drooping form of one unlike, yet so like Eveena—her favourite and
nearest sister, Zevle. I held out my hand; but, emotion overcoming the
habits of reserve, she threw herself into my arms, and her tears fell
on my bosom, hardly faster than my own as I stooped and kissed her
brow. I had no voice to speak my farewell. But as the Astronaut rose
for the last time from the ground, the voices of my brethren chanted
in adieu the last few lines of the familiar formula—

"Peace be yours no force can break,
Peace not Death hath power to shake;"

* * *

"Peace from peril, fear, and pain;
Peace—until we meet again!
Not before the sculptured stone,
But the All-Commander's Throne."

[1]
Qy.
(GREEK: apo)
, from,
(GREEK: ergos)
, work—as
en-ergy?

[2]
The chemical notation of the MS. is unfortunately
different from any known to any chemist of my acquaintance, and
utterly undecipherable.

[3]
Last figures illegible: the year is probably 183.

[4]
These distances are given in Roman measures and round
numbers not easy of exact rendering.

[5]
In 1830 or thereabouts.—ED.

[6]
The Martial year is 687 of our days, and eight Martial
years are nearly equivalent to fifteen Terrestrial. Roughly, and in
round numbers, the time figures given may be multiplied by two to
reduce them to Terrestrial periods.—ED.

[7]
Say fifty-sixth; in effect, fiftieth.—Narrator.

[8]
Equivalent in time to ninety-three and forty-seven with
us; in effect corresponding to eighty and forty.

[9]
About ninety; in time, one hundred and six.

[10]
Seventy; in time, eighty-three.—
Narrator
.

[11]
The centuries, hundreds, thousands, etc., appear to
represent multiples of twelve, not ten.—ED.

[12]
Aluminium?—ED.

[13]
Here, and here only, the name is written in full; but
the first part is blurred. It may be Alius (Ali), Julius (Jules),
Elias, or may represent any one of a dozen English surnames. The
single cipher, employed elsewhere throws no light on it.—ED.