Too exhausted even to note it or to care, she staggered back to Cliff Villa, flung herself on the bed, and slept.
How long? She could not tell when she awoke again. Only she knew that a dim light, as of evening, was glimmering in at the doorway, and that her child was in the bed beside her.
"Gesafam!" she called, for she heard some one moving in the cave. "Bring me water!"
There came no answer. Beta repeated the command. A curious, sneering mockery startled her. Still clad in her loose brown cloak, belted at the waist--for she had thrown herself upon the bed fully clad--she sat up, peering by the light of the fireplace into the half dark of the room.
A third time she called the old woman.
"It is useless!" cried a voice. "She will not come to help you. See, I have bound her--and now she lies in that further chamber of the cave, helpless. For it is not with her I would speak, but with you. And you shall hear me."
"H'yemba!" cried Beatrice, startled, suddenly recognizing the squat and brutal figure that now, a threat in every gesture, approached the bed. "Out! Out of here, I say! How dare you enter my house? You shall pay heavily for this great insult when the master comes. Out and away!"
The ugly fellow only laughed menacingly.
"No, I shall not go, and there will be no payment," he retorted in his own speech. "And you must hear me, for now I, and not he, shall be the master here."
Beta sprang from the bed and faced him.
"Go, or I shoot you down like a dog!" she threatened.
He sneered.
"There will be no shooting," he answered coolly. "But there will be speech for you to hear. Now listen! This is what ye brought us here to? The man and you? This? To death and woe? To accidents and perishings?
"Ye brought us to hardship and to battle, not to peace! With lies, deceptions and false promises ye enticed us! We were safe and happy in our homes in the Abyss beside the sunless sea, till ye fell thither in your air-boat from these cursed regions. We--"
"For this speech ye shall surely die when the master comes!" cried she. "This is treason, and the penalty of it is death!"
He continued, paying no heed: "We had no need of you, your ways, or your place. But the man Allan would rule or he would ruin. He overthrew and killed our chief, the great Kamrou himself--Kamrou the Terrible! To us he brought dissensions. From us he bore the patriarch away and slew him, and then made us a great falsehood in that matter.