Authors: George England
The bay was, indeed, a factor neither Stern nor she had reckoned on.
To follow its detours all the way around would add seventy to a
hundred miles to their journey, according as they hugged the shore or
made straight cuts across some of the wooded promontories.
"And from Providence, at the head of the bay, to Boston, is only forty
miles in a direct line northwest-by-north," said he, poking the fire
contemplatively.
"But if we miss our way?"
"How can we, if we follow the remains of the railroad? The cuts and
embankments will guide us all the way."
"I know; but the forest is so thick!"
"Not so thick but we can make at least five miles a day. That is,
inside of eight days we can reach the Hub. And we shall have the help
of tools and guns, remember. In a place the size of Providence there
must be a few ruins still containing something of value. Yes, by all
means the overland route is best, from now on. It means forty miles
instead of probably two hundred."
Thus they agreed upon it; and, having settled matters, gave them no
more thought, but prepared for rest. And sunset came down once more;
it faded, smoldering along the forest-line to westward; it burned to
dull timbers and vague purples, then went out. And "the wind that runs
after the sun awoke and sang softly among the tree-tops, a while, like
the intoning of a choir invisible, and was silent again."
There by the firelight he half saw, half sensed her presence, vague
and beautiful despite the travel-worn, tattered skin that clothed her.
He felt her warm, vital nearness; his hand sought hers and pressed it,
and the pressure was returned. And with a thrill of overwhelming
tenderness he realized what this girl was to him and what his love
meant and what it all portended.
Until long after dark they sat and talked of the future, and of life
and death, and of the soul and of the great mystery that had swept the
earth clean of all of their kind and had left them, alone, of all
those fifteen hundred million human creatures.
And overhead, blotting out a patch of sky and stars, moved slowly the
dark object which had so puzzled Stern since the first time he had
observed it—the thing he meant to know about and solve, once he could
reach the Cambridge Observatory. And of this, too, they talked; but
neither he nor she could solve the riddle of its nature.
Their talk together, that night, was typical of the relationship that
had grown up between them in the long weeks since their awakening in
the Tower. Almost all, if not quite all, the old-time idea of sex had
faded—the old, false assumption on the part of the man that he was by
his very nature the superior of woman.
Stern and Beatrice now stood on a different footing; their friendship,
comradeship and love were based on the tacit recognition of absolute
equality, save for Stern's accidental physical superiority. It was as
though they had been two men, one a little stronger and larger than
the other, so far as the notion of equality went; though this by no
means destroyed that magnetic sex-emotion which, in other aspects,
thrilled and attracted and infused them both.
Their love never for a moment obscured Stern's recognition of the girl
as primarily a human being, his associate on even terms in this great
game that they were playing together, this tremendous problem they
were laboring to solve—the vastest and most vital problem that ever
yet had confronted the human race, now represented in its totality by
these two living creatures.
And as Beatrice recalled the world of other times, with all its false
conventions, limitations and pettily stupid gallantries, she shuddered
with repulsion. In her heart she knew that, had the choice been hers,
she would not have gone back to that former state of half-chattel
patronage, half-hypocritical homage and total misconception.
Contrasting her present state with her past one, and comparing this
man—all ragged, unshaven and long-haired as he was, yet a true man in
every inch of his lithe, virile body—with others she remembered, she
found up-welling in her a love so deep and powerful, grounded on such
broad bases of respect and gratitude, mutual interest and latent
passion, that she herself could not yet understand it in all its
phases and its moods.
The relation which had grown up between them, comrades and partners in
all things, partook of a fine tolerance, an exquisite and
never-failing tenderness, a wealth of all intimate, yet respectful
adoration. It held elements of brotherhood and parenthood; it was the
love of coworkers striving toward a common goal, of companions in life
and in learning, in striving, doing, accomplishing, even failing.
Failure mattered nothing; for still the comradeship was there.
And on this soil was growing daily and hourly a love such as never
since the world began had been equaled in purity and power, faith,
hope, integrity. It purified all things, made easy all things, braved
all things, pardoned all things; it was long-suffering and very kind.
They had no need to speak of it; it showed in every word and look and
act, even in the humblest and most commonplace of services each for
each. Their love was lived, not talked about.
All their trials and tremendous hardships, their narrow passes with
death, and their hard-won escapes, the vicissitudes of a savage life
in the open, with every imaginable difficulty and hard expedient,
could not destroy their illusions or do aught than bind them in closer
bonds of unity.
And each realized when the time should ripen for another and a more
vital love, that, too, would circle them with deeper tenderness,
binding them in still more intense and poignant bonds of joy.
The way up the shores of Narragansett Bay was full of
experiences for them both. Animal life revealed itself far more
abundantly here than along the open sea.
"Some strange blight or other must lie in the proximity of that
terrific maelstrom," judged Stern, "something that repels all the
larger animals. But skirting this bay, there's life and to spare. How
many deer have we seen to-day? Three? And one bull-buffalo! With any
kind of a gun, or even a revolver, I could have had them all. And that
big-muzzled, shaggy old moose we saw drinking at the pool, back there,
would have been meat for us if we had had a rifle. No danger of
starving here, Beatrice, once we get our hands on something that'll
shoot again!"
The night they camped on the way, Stern kept constant guard by the
fire, in case of possible attack by wolves or other beasts. He slept
only an hour, when the girl insisted on taking his place; but when the
sun arose, red and huge through the mists upon the bay, he started out
again on the difficult trail as strong and confident as though he had
not kept nine hours of vigil.
Everywhere was change and desolation. As the travelers came into a
region which had at one time been more densely populated, they began
to find here and there mournful relics of the life that once had
been—traces of man, dim and all but obliterated, but now and then
puissant in their revocation of the distant past.
Twice they found the ruins of villages—a few vague hollows in the
earth, where cellars had been, hollows in which huge trees were
rooted, and where, perhaps, a grass-grown crumble of disintegrated
brick indicated the one-time presence of a chimney. They discovered
several farms, with a few stunted apple-trees, the distant descendants
of orchard growths, struggling against the larger forest strength, and
with perhaps a dismantled well-curb, a moss-covered fireplace or a few
bits of iron that had possibly been a stove, for all relics of the
other age. Mournful were the long stone walls, crumbling down yet
still discernible in places—walls that had cost the labor of
generations of farmers and yet now lay useless and forgotten in the
universal ruin of the world.
On the afternoon of the fifth day since having left their lean-to by
the shore of Long Island Sound, they came upon a canyon which split
the hills north of the site of Greenwich, a gigantic "fault" in the
rocks, richly striated and stratified with rose and red and umber, a
great cleft on the other side of which the forest lay somber and
repellent in the slanting rays of the September sun.
"By Jove, whatever it was that struck the earth," said Stern, "must
have been good and plenty. The whole planet seems to be ripped up and
broken and shattered. No wonder it knocked down New York and killed
everybody and put an end to civilization. Why, there's ten cubic miles
of material gouged out right here in sight; here's a regular Panama
Canal, or bigger, all scooped out in one piece! What the devil could
have happened?"
There was no answer to the question. After an hour spent in studying
the formations along the lip of the cleft they made a detour eastward
to the shore, crossed the fjord that ran into the canyon, and again
kept to the north. Soon after this they struck a railroad embankment,
and this they followed now, both because it afforded easier travel
than the shore, which now had grown rocky and broken, and also because
it promised to guide them surely to the place they sought.
It was on the sixth day of their exploration that they at last
penetrated the ruins of Providence. Here, as in New York, pavements
and streets and squares were all grassed over and covered with pines
and elms and oaks, rooting among the stones and shattered brickwork
that lay prone upon the earth. Only here or there a steel or concrete
building still defied the ravages of time.
"The wreckage is even more complete here than on Manhattan Island,"
Stern judged as he and the girl stood in front of the ruins of the
post-office surveying the debris. "The smaller area, of course, would
naturally be covered sooner with the inroads of the forest. I doubt
whether there's enough left in the whole place to be of any real
service to us."
"To-morrow will be time enough to see," answered the girl. "It's too
late now for any more work to-day."
They camped that night in an upper story of the Pequot National Bank
Building on Hampstead Street. Here, having cleared out the bats and
spiders, they made themselves an eerie secure from attack, and slept
long and soundly. Dawn found them at work among the overgrown ruins,
much as—three months before—they had labored in the Metropolitan
Tower and about it. Less, however, remained to salvage here. For the
smaller and lighter types of buildings had preserved far less of the
relics of civilization than had been left in the vast and solid
structures of New York.
In a few places, none the less, they still came upon the little piles
of the gray ash that marked where men and women had fallen and died;
but these occurred only in the most sheltered spots. Stern paid no
attention to them. His energies and his attention were now fixed on
the one task of getting skins, arms, ammunition and supplies. And
before nightfall, by a systematic looting of such shops as
remained—perhaps not above a score in all could even be entered—the
girl and he had gathered more than enough to last them on their way to
Boston. One find which pleased him immensely was a dozen sealed glass
jars of tobacco.
"As for a pipe," said he, "I can make that easily enough. What's more
I will!" More still, he did, that very evening, and the gloom was
redolent again of good smoke. Thereafter he slept as not for a long,
long time.
They spent the next day in fashioning new garments and sandals; in
putting to rights the two rifles Stern had chosen from the basement of
the State armory, and in making bandoliers to carry their supply of
cartridges. The possession of a knife once more, and of steel
wherewith readily to strike fire, delighted the man enormously. The
scissors they found in a hardware-shop, though rusty, enabled him to
trim his beard and hair. Beatrice hailed a warped hard-rubber comb
with joy.
But the great discovery still awaited them, the one supreme find which
in a moment changed every plan of travel, opened the world to them,
and at a single stroke increased their hopes ten thousandfold—the
discovery of the old Pauillac monoplane!
They came upon this machine, pregnant with such vast possibilities, in
a concrete hangar back of the Federal courthouse on Anderson Street.
The building attracted Stern's attention by its unusual state of
preservation. He burst in one of the rusted iron shutters and climbed
through the window to see what might be inside.
A moment later Beatrice heard a cry of astonishment and joy.
"Great Heavens!" the man exclaimed, appearing at the window. "Come in!
Come in—see what I've found!"
And he stretched out his hands to help her up and through the
aperture.
"What is it, boy? More arms? More—"
"An aeroplane! Good God, think o' that, will you?"
"An aeroplane? But it's all to pieces, of course, and—"
"Come on in and look at it, I say!" Excitedly he lifted her through
the window. "See there, will you? Isn't that the eternal limit? And to
think I never even thought of trying to find one in New York!"
He gestured at the dust-laden old machine that, forlorn and in
sovereign disrepair, stood at the other end of the hangar. Together
they approached it.
"If it will work," the man exclaimed thickly; "
if it will only
work—
"
"But will it?" the girl exclaimed, her eyes lighting with the
excitement of the find, heart beating fast at thought of what it might
portend. "Can you put it in shape, boy? Or—"
"I don't know. Let me look! Who knows? Maybe—"
And already he was kneeling, peering at the mechanism, feeling the
frame, the gear, the stays, with hands that trembled more than ever
they had trembled since their great adventure had begun.
As he examined the machine, while Beatrice stood by, he talked to
himself.