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Rondah; or, thirty-three years in a star cover

Rondah; or, thirty-three years in a star

Chapter 10: CHAPTER VII. THE TORCH.
By Florence Carpenter Dieudonné
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Science-Fiction & Fantasy

About This Book

The narrative follows a small group of four people who are hurled from Earth during a storm to a nearby incandescent planet still cooling; part of their thirty-three-year sojourn is spent under a prolonged winter during which native birdlike, plant-derived inhabitants enter dormancy. Told through journals and chronicle-like sections, the story traces survival amid volcanic landscapes and boiling seas, interpersonal tensions of love and jealousy, strange societies and marvels such as the Sun Island, and efforts to understand the star’s mysteries and whether return to Earth is possible.

PART II.
ISABELLA’S CHRONICLE.

CHAPTER VII.
THE TORCH.

I did not know what had happened. I did not see the walls fall down. It was very dark, and some one held my arm. Then I saw the flare of a torch.

I could hear no voice in the commotion, but it was upon Roy Lee’s face that the light of the torch fell. I saw his steel blue eyes in quick search for the cave look swiftly around.

Above our heads the tunnel walls were roofed with trees laid crosswise. These were coated with ice; long icicles depended like white swords, gleaming above our heads.

When the torch expired we should die in darkness!

Roy fastened it carefully among the frozen boughs. Then he came to my side and pushed away from my face the fur cloak.

“Come where I can look upon your face, Isabella, for I love you! I have loved you always! When the torch dies out we shall not see again until we see in Heaven!”

Then I sat beside him and we watched the torch and spoke of the drear years which had passed, in which we might have been so happy if we had known!

And then I remember nothing!

END OF ISABELLA’S CHRONICLE.