“Don’t go now!” pleaded Beatrice. She, too, stood up, and out she stretched her hands to him. “Don’t, please! We can get along some way or other till morning. At least, I can!”
“No, no, it isn’t right! Down in the shops and stores, who knows but we might find—”
“But you’re unarmed! And in the streets—in the forest, rather—”
“Listen!” he commanded rather abruptly. “This is no time for hesitating or for weakness. I know you’ll stand your share of all that we must suffer, dare and do together.
“Some way or other I’ve got to make you comfortable. I’ve got to locate food and drink immediately. Got to get my bearings. Why, do you think I’m going to let you, even for one night, go fasting and thirsty, sleep on bare cement, and all that sort of thing?
“If so, you’re mistaken! No, you must spare me for an hour or two. Inside of that time I ought to make a beginning!”
“A whole hour?”
“Two would probably be nearer it. I promise to be back inside of that time.”
“But,” and her voice quivered just a trifle, “but suppose some wolf or bear—”
“Oh, I’m not quite so foolhardy as all that!” he retorted. “I’m not going to venture outside till to-morrow. My idea is that I can find at least a few essentials right here in this building.
“It’s a city in itself—or was. Offices, stores, shops, everything right here together in a lump. It can’t possibly take me very long to go down and rummage out something for your comfort.
“Now that the first shock and surprise of our awakening are over, we can’t go on in this way, you know—h’m!—dressed in—well, such exceedingly primitive garb!”
Silently she looked at his dim figure in the dusk. Then she stretched out her hand.
“I’ll go too,” said she quite simply.
“You’d better stay. It’s safer here.”
“No, I’m going.”
“But if we run into dangers?”
“Never mind. Take me with you.”
Over to her he came. He took her hand. In silence he pressed it. Thus for a moment they stood. Then, arousing himself to action, he said: “First of all, a light.”
“A light? How can you make a light? Why, there isn’t a match left anywhere in this whole world.”
“I know, but there are other things. Probably my chemical flasks and vials aren’t injured. Glass is practically imperishable. And if I’m not mistaken, the bottles must be lying somewhere in that rubbish heap over by the window.”
He left her wondering, and knelt among the litter. For a while he silently delved through the triturated bits of punky wood and rust-red metal that now represented the remains of his chemical cabinet.
All at once he exclaimed: “Here’s one! And here’s another! This certainly is luck! H-m! I shouldn’t wonder if I got almost all of them back.”
One by one he found a score of thick, ground-glass vials. Some were broken, probably by the shock when they and the cabinet had fallen, but a good many still remained intact.
Among these were the two essential ones. By the last dim ghost of light through the window, and by the sense of touch, Stern was able to make out the engraved symbols “P” and “S” on these bottles.
“Phosphorus and sulphur,” he commented. “Well, what more could I reasonably ask? Here’s alcohol, too, hermetically sealed. Not too bad, eh?”
While the girl watched, with wondering admiration, Stern thought hard a moment. Then he set to work.
First he took a piece of the corroded metal framework of the cabinet, a steel strip about eighteen inches long, frail in places, but still sufficiently strong to serve his purpose.
Tearing off some rags from his coat-sleeve, he wadded them together into a ball as big as his fist. Around this ball he twisted the metal strip, so that it formed at once a holder and a handle for the rag-mass.
With considerable difficulty he worked the glass stopper out of the alcohol bottle, and with the fluid saturated the rags. Then, on a clear bit of the floor, he spilled out a small quantity of the phosphorus and sulphur.
“This beats getting fire by friction all hollow,” he cheerfully remarked. “I’ve tried that, too, and I guess it’s only in books a white man ever succeeds at it. But this way you see, it’s simplicity itself.”
Very moderate friction, with a bit of wood from the wreckage of the door, sufficed to set the phosphorus ablaze. Stern heaped on a few tiny lumps of sulphur. Then, coughing as the acrid fumes arose from the sputter of blue flame, he applied the alcohol-soaked torch.
Instantly a puff of fire shot up, colorless and clear, throwing no very satisfactory light, yet capable of dispelling the thickest of the gloom.
The blaze showed Stern’s eager face, long-bearded and dusty, as he bent over this crucial experiment.
The girl, watching closely, felt a strange new thrill of confidence and solace. Some realization of the engineer’s resourcefulness came to her, and in her heart she had confidence that, though the whole wide world had crumbled into ruin, yet he would find a way to smooth her path, to be a strength and refuge for her.
But Stern had no time for any but matters of intensest practicality. From the floor he arose, holding the flambeau in one hand, the bottle of alcohol in the other.
“Come now,” bade he, and raised the torch on high to light her way, “You’re still determined to go?”
For an answer she nodded. Her eyes gleamed by the uncanny light.
And so, together, he leading out of the room and along the wrecked hall, they started on their trip of exploration out into the unknown.
CHAPTER VI
TREASURE-TROVE
Never before had either of them realized just what the meaning of forty-eight stories might be. For all their memories of this height were associated with smooth-sliding elevators that had whisked them up as though the tremendous height had been the merest trifle.
This night, however, what with the broken stairs, the débris-cumbered hallways, the lurking darkness which the torch could hardly hold back from swallowing them, they came to a clear understanding of the problem.
Every few minutes the flame burned low and Stern had to drop on more alcohol, holding the bottle high above the flame to avoid explosion.
Long before they had compassed the distance to the ground floor the girl lagged with weariness and shrank with nameless fears.
Each black doorway that yawned along their path seemed ominous with memories of life that had perished there, of death that now reigned all-supreme.
Each corner, every niche and crevice, breathed out the spirit of the past and of the mystic tragedy which in so brief a time had wiped the human race from earth, “as a mother wipes the milky lips of her child.”
And Stern, though he said little save to guide Beatrice and warn her of unusual difficulties, felt the somber magic of the place. No poet, he; only a man of hard and practical details. Yet he realized that, were he dowered with the faculty, here lay matter for an Epic of Death such as no Homer ever dreamed, no Virgil ever could have penned.
Now and then, along the corridors and down the stairways, they chanced on curious little piles of dust, scattered at random in fantastic shapes.
These for a few minutes puzzled Stern, till stooping, he stirred one with his hand. Something he saw there made him start back with a stifled exclamation.
“What is it?” cried the girl, startled. “Tell me!”
But he, realizing the nature of his discovery—for he had seen a human incisor tooth, gold-filled, there in the odd little heap—straightened up quickly and assumed to smile.
“It’s nothing, nothing at all!” he answered. “Come, we haven’t got any time to waste. If we’re going to provide ourselves with even a few necessaries before the alcohol’s all gone, we’ve got to be at work!”
And onward, downward, ever farther and farther, he led her through the dark maze of ruin, which did not even echo to their barefoot tread.
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br /> Like disheveled wraiths they passed, soundlessly, through eerie labyrinths and ways which might have served as types of Coleridge’s “caverns measureless to man,” so utterly drear they stretched out in their ghostly desolation.
At length, after an eternal time of weariness and labor, they managed to make their way down into the ruins of the once famous and beautiful arcade which had formerly run from Madison Avenue to the square.
“Oh, how horrible!” gasped Beatrice, shrinking, as they clambered down the stairs and emerged into this scene of chaos, darkness, death.
Where long ago the arcade had stretched its path of light and life and beauty, of wealth and splendor, like an epitome of civilization all gathered in that constricted space, the little light disclosed stark horror.
Feeble as a will-o’-the-wisp in that enshrouding dark, the torch showed only hints of things—here a fallen pillar, there a shattered mass of wreckage where a huge section of the ceiling had fallen, yonder a gaping aperture left by the disintegration of a wall.
Through all this rubbish and confusion, over and through a score of the little dust-piles which Stern had so carefully avoided explaining to Beatrice, they climbed and waded, and with infinite pains slowly advanced.
“What we need is more light!” exclaimed the engineer presently. “We’ve got to have a bonfire here!”
And before long he had collected a considerable pile of wood, ripped from the doorways and window-casings of the arcade. This he set fire to, in the middle of the floor.
Soon a dull, wavering glow began to paint itself upon the walls, and to fling the comrades’ shadows, huge and weird, in dancing mockery across the desolation.
Strangely enough, many of the large plate-glass windows lining the arcade still stood intact. They glittered with the uncanny reflections of the fire as the man and woman slowly made way down the passage.
“See,” exclaimed Stern, pointing. “See all these ruined shops? Probably almost everything is worthless. But there must be some things left that we can use.
“See the post-office, down there on the left? Think of the millions in real money, gold and silver, in all these safes here and all over the city—in the banks and vaults! Millions! Billions!
“Jewels, diamonds, wealth simply inconceivable! Yet now a good water supply, some bread, meat, coffee, salt, and so on, a couple of beds, a gun or two and some ordinary tools would outweigh them all!”
“Clothes, too,” the girl suggested. “Plain cotton cloth is worth ten million dollars an inch now.”
“Right,” answered Stern, gazing about him with wonder.
“And I offer a bushel of diamonds for a razor and a pair of scissors.” Grimly he smiled as he stroked his enormous beard.
“But come, this won’t do. There’ll be plenty of time to look around and discuss things in the morning. Just now we’ve got a definite errand. Let’s get busy!”
Thus began their search for a few prime necessities of life, there in that charnel-house of civilization, by the dull reflections of the firelight and the pallid torch glow.
Though they forced their way into ten or twelve of the arcade shops, they found no clothing, no blankets or fabric of any kind that would serve for coverings or to sleep upon. Everything at all in the nature of cloth had either sunk back into moldering annihilation or had at best grown far too fragile to be of the slightest service.
They found, however, a furrier’s shop, and this they entered eagerly.
From rusted metal hooks a few warped fragments of skins still hung, moth-eaten, riddled with holes, ready to crumble at the merest touch.
“There’s nothing in any of these to help us,” judged Stern. “But maybe we might find something else in here.”
Carefully they searched the littered place, all dust and horrible disarray, which made sad mockery of the gold-leaf sign still visible on the window: “Lange, Importer. All the Latest Novelties.”
On the floor Stern discovered three more of those little dust-middens which meant human bodies, pitiful remnants of an extinct race, of unknown people in the long ago. What had he now in common with them? The remains did not even inspire repugnance in him. All at once Beatrice uttered a cry of startled gladness. “Look here! A storage chest!”
True enough, there stood a cedar box, all seamed and cracked and bulging, yet still retaining a semblance of its original shape.
The copper bindings and the lock were still quite plainly to be seen, as the engineer held the torch close, though green and corroded with incredible age.
One effort of Stern’s powerful arms sufficed to tip the chest quite over. As it fell it burst. Down in a mass of pulverized, worm-eaten splinters it disintegrated.
Out rolled furs, many and many of them, black, and yellow, and striped—the pelts of the grizzly, of the leopard, the chetah, the royal Bengal himself.
“Hurray!” shouted the man, catching up first one, then another, and still a third. “Almost intact. A little imperfection here and there doesn’t matter. Now we’ve got clothes and beds.
“What’s that? Yes, maybe they are a trifle warm for this season of the year, but this is no time to be particular. See, now, how do you like that?”
Over the girl’s shoulders, as he spoke, he flung the tiger-skin.
“Magnificent!” he judged, standing back a pace or two and holding up the torch to see her better. “When I find you a big gold pin or clasp to fasten that with at the throat you’ll make a picture of another and more splendid Boadicea!”
He tried to laugh at his own words, but merriment sat ill there in that place, and with such a subject. For the woman, thus clad, had suddenly assumed a wild, barbaric beauty.
Bright gleamed her gray eyes by the light of the flambeau; limpid, and deep, and earnest, they looked at Stern. Her wonderful hair, shaken out in bewildering masses over the striped, tawny savagery of the robe, made colorful contrasts, barbarous, seductive.
Half hidden, the woman’s perfect body, beautiful as that of a wood-nymph or a pagan dryad, roused atavistic passions in the engineer.
He dared speak no other word for the moment, but bent beside the shattered chest again and fell to looking over the furs.
A polar-bear skin attracted his attention, and this he chose. Then, with it slung across his shoulder, he stood up.
“Come,” said he, steadying his voice with an effort; “come, we must be going now. Our light won’t hold out very much longer. We’ve got to find food and drink before the alcohol’s all gone; got to look out for practical affairs, whatever happens. Let’s be going.”
Fortune favored them.
In the wreck of a small fancy grocer’s booth down toward the end of the arcade, where the post-office had been, they came upon a stock of goods in glass jars.
All the tinned foods had long since perished, but the impermeable glass seemed to have preserved fruits and vegetables of the finer sort, and chipped beef and the like, in a state of perfect soundness.
Best of all, they discovered the remains of a case of mineral water. The case had crumbled to dust, but fourteen bottles of water were still intact.
“Pile three or four of these into my fur robe here,” directed Stern. “Now, a few of the other jars—that’s right. To-morrow we’ll come down and clean up the whole stock. But we’ve got enough for now.”
“We’d best be getting back up the stairs again,” said he. And so they started.
“Are you going to leave that fire burning?” asked the girl, as they passed the middle of the arcade.
“Yes. It can’t do any harm. Nothing to catch here; only old metal and cement. Besides, it would take too much time and labor to put it out.”
Thus they abandoned the gruesome place and began the long, exhausting climb.
It must have taken them an hour and a half at least to reach their eerie. Both found their strength taxed to the utmost.
Before they were much more than halfway up, the ultimate drop of alcohol had been burned.
; The last few hundred feet had to be made by slow, laborious feeling, aided only by such dim reflections of the gibbous moon as glimmered through a window, cobweb-hung, or through some break in the walls.
At length, however—for all things have an end—breathless and spent, they found their refuge. And soon after that, clad in their savage robes, they supped.
Allan Stern, consulting engineer, and Beatrice Kendrick, stenographer, now king and queen of the whole wide world domain (as they feared), sat together by a little blaze of punky wood fragments that flickered on the eroded floor.
They ate with their fingers and drank out of the bottles, sans apology. Strange were their speculations, their wonderings, their plans—now discussed specifically, now half-voiced by a mere word that thrilled them both with sudden, poignant emotion.
An so an hour passed, and the night deepened toward the birth of another day. The fire burned low and died, for they had little to replenish it with.
Down sank the moon, her pale light dimming as she went, her faint illumination wanly creeping across the disordered, wrack-strewn floor.
And at length Stern, in the outer office, Beatrice in the other, they wrapped themselves within their furs and laid them down to sleep.
Despite the age-long trance from which they both had but so recently emerged, a strange lassitude weighed on them.
Yet long after Beatrice had lost herself in dreams, Stern lay and thought strange thoughts, yearning and eager thoughts, there in the impenetrable gloom.
CHAPTER VII
THE OUTER WORLD
Before daybreak the engineer was up again, and active. Now that he faced the light of morning, with a thousand difficult problems closing in on every hand, he put aside his softer moods, his visions and desires, and—like the scientific man he was—addressed himself to the urgent matters in hand.
“The girl’s safe enough alone, here, for a while,” thought he, looking in upon her where she lay, calm as a child, folded within the clinging masses of the tiger-skin.
“I must be out and away for two or three hours, at the very least. I hope she’ll sleep till I get back. If not—what then?”
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