"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." And, giving them no further opportunity to talk of this new problem, he spoke of other matters, and so led them back to his hospitable hut of stone. But for a long time Allan could not sleep. Weird thoughts and new suspicions now aroused, he lay and pondered many things. What if, after all, this seeming friendliness and homage of the savage Folk were but a mask? A vision of the boiling geyser-pit rose to his memory. And the dreams he dreamed that night were filled with strange, confused, disquieting images. CHAPTER XXXII PREPARATIONS He woke to hear a drumming roar that seemed to fill the spaces of the Abyss with a wild tumult such as he had never known--a steady thunder, wonderful and wild. Starting up, he saw by the dim light that the patriarch was sitting there upon the stone, thoughtful and calm, apparently giving no heed to this singular tumult. But Stern, not understanding, put a hasty question. "What's all this uproar, father? I never heard anything like that up in the surface-world!" "That? Only the rain, my son," the old man answered. "Had you no rain there? Verily, traditions tell of rain among the people of that day!" "Rain? Merciful Heavens!" exclaimed the engineer. Two minutes later he was at the fortifications, gazing out across the beach at the sea. It would be hard to describe accurately the picture that met his eyes. The heaviest cloudburst that ever devastated a countryside was but a trickle compared with this monstrous, terrifying deluge.