Stern blessed fate for this. If any such had existed, he knew human nature well enough to feel certain that, there in the eternal gloom and fog, the race would soon have given itself over to excesses and have miserably perished.
"To my mind," he said to Beatrice, one time, "the survival of our race under such conditions is one of the most marvelous things possibly to be conceived." Out toward the black and mist-hidden sea that rolled forever in the gloom he gestured from the wall where they were standing.
"Imagine!" he continued. "No sunlight--for centuries! Without that, nothing containing chlorophyl can grow; and science has always maintained that human life must depend, at last analysis, on chlorophyl, on the green plants containing it. No grains, no soil, or agriculture, no mammals even! Why, the very Eskimo have to depend on mammals for their life!
"But these people here, and the Lanskaarn, and whatever other unknown tribes live in this vast Abyss, have to get their entire living from this tepid sea. They don't even possess wood to work with! If this doesn't prove the human race all but godlike in its skill and courage and adaptability, what does?"
She stood a while in thought, plainly much troubled. It was evident her mind was far from following his analysis. At last she spoke.
"Allan!" she suddenly exclaimed.
"Well?"
"It's still out there somewhere, isn't it? Out there, in those black, unsounded depths--the biplane?"
"You mean--"
"Why couldn't we raise it again, and--"
"Of course! You know I mean to try as soon as I have these people under some control so I can get them to cooperate with me--get them to understand!"
"Not till then? No escape till then? But, Allan, it may be too late!" she burst out with passionate eagerness.
Puzzled, he turned and peered at her in the bluish gloom.
"Escape?" he queried. "Too late? Why, what do you mean? Escape from what? You mean that we should leave these people, here, before we've even begun to teach them? Before we've discovered some way out of the Abyss for them? Leave everything that means the regeneration of the human race, the world? Why--"
A touch upon his arm interrupted him.
He turned quickly to find the patriarch standing at his side. Silent and dim through the fog, he had come thither with sandaled feet, and now stood with a strange, inscrutable smile on his long-bearded lips.
"What keeps my children here," asked he, "when already it is long past the sleeping-hour? Verily, this should not be! Come," he commanded. "Come away! To-morrow will be time for speech."