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.
Some five hundred miles of dense and saturated vapors, suddenly condensing, were precipitating the water, not in drops but in great solid masses, thundering, bellowing, crashing as they struck the sea, which, churned to a deep and raging froth, flung mighty waves even against the massive walls of the village itself.
The fog was gone now; but in its place the rushing walls of water blotted out the scene. Yet not a drop was falling in the village itself. Stern wondered for a moment. But, looking up, he understood.
The vast cliff was now dimly visible in the glare of the great flame, the steady roar of which was drowned by the tumult of the rain.
Stern saw that the village was sheltered under a tremendous overhang of the black rock; he understood why the ancestors of the Folk, coming to these depths after incredible adventurings and long-forgotten struggles, had settled here. Any exposed location would have been fatal; no hut could have withstood the torrent, nor could any man, caught in it, have escaped drowning outright.
Amazed and full of wonder at this terrific storm, so different from those on the surface--for there was neither wind nor lightning, but just that steady, frightful sluicing down of solid tons of rain--Stern made his way back to the patriarch's house.
There he met Beatrice, just awakened.
"No chance to raise the machine to-day!" she called to him as he entered. "He says this is apt to last for hours and hours!" She nodded toward the old man, much distressed.
"Patience!" he murmured. "Patience, friends--and peace!"
Stern thought a moment.
"Well," said he, at last, making himself heard only with difficulty, "even so, we can spend the day in making ready."