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.
CHAPTER XVI
FINDING THE BIPLANE
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 cañon 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 cañon, 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 débris. “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 e
xamined the machine, while Beatrice stood by, he talked to himself.
“Good thing the framework is aluminum,” said he, “or it wouldn’t be worth a tinker’s dam after all this time. But as it is, it’s taken no harm that I can see. Wire braces all gone, rusted out and disappeared. Have to be rewired throughout, if I can find steel wire; if not, I’ll use braided leather thongs. Petrol tank and feed pipe O. K. Girder boom needs a little attention. Steering and control column intact—they’ll do!”
Part by part he handled the machine, his skilled eye leaping from detail to detail.
“Canvas planes all gone, of course. Not a rag left; only the frame. But, no matter, we can remedy that. Wooden levers, skids, and so on, gone. Easily replaced. Main thing is the engine. Looks as though it had been carefully covered, but, of course, the covering has rotted away. No matter, we’ll soon see. Now, this carbureter—”
His inspection lasted half an hour, while the girl, lost among so many technicalities, sat down on the dusty concrete floor beside the machine and listened in a kind of dazed admiration.
He gave her, finally, his opinion.
“This machine will go if properly handled,” said he, rising triumphantly and slapping the dust off his palms. “The chassis needs truing up, the equilibrator has sagged out of plumb, and the ailerons have got to be readjusted, but it’s only a matter of a few days at the outside before she’ll be in shape.
“The main thing is the engine, and so far as I can judge, that’s pretty nearly O. K. The magneto may have to be gone over, but that’s a mere trifle. Odd, I never thought of either finding one of these machines in New York, or building one! When I think of all the weary miles we’ve tramped it makes me sick!”
“I know,” she answered; “but how about fuel? And another thing—have you ever operated one? Could you—”
“Run one?” He laughed aloud. “I’m the man who first taught Carlton Holmes to fly—you know Holmes, who won the Gordon-Craig cup for altitude record in 1916. I built the first—”
“I know, dear; but Holmes was killed at Schenectady, you remember, and this machine is different from anything you’re used to, isn’t it?” Beatrice asked.
“It won’t be when I’m through with it! I tell you, Beatrice, we’re going to fly. No more hiking through the woods or along beaches for us. From now on we travel in the air—and the world opens out to us as though by magic.
“Distance ceases to mean anything. The whole continent is ours. If there’s another human creature on it we find him! And if there isn’t then, perhaps we may find some in Asia or in Europe, who knows?”
“You mean you’d dare to attack the Atlantic with a patched-up machine more than a thousand years old?”
“I mean that eventually I can and will build one that’ll take us to Alaska, and so across the fifty-mile gap from Cape Prince of Wales to East Cape. The whole world lies at our feet, girl, with this new idea, this new possibility in mind!”
She smiled at his enthusiasm.
“But fuel?” asked she, practical even in her joy. “I don’t imagine there’s any gasoline left now, do you? A stuff as volatile as that, after all these centuries? What metal could contain it for a thousand years?”
“There’s alcohol,” he answered. “A raid on the ruins of a few saloons and drug-stores will give me all I need to carry me to Boston, where there’s plenty, never fear. A few slight adjustments of the engine will fit it for burning alcohol. And as for the planes, good stout buckskin, well sewn together and stretched on the frames, will do the trick as well as canvas—better, maybe.”
“But—”
“Oh, what a little pessimist it is to-day!” he interrupted. “Always coming at me with objections, eh?” He took her in his arms and kissed her. “I tell you Beta, this is no pipe-dream at all, or anything like it; the thing’s reality—we’re going to fly! But it’ll mean the most tremendous lot of sewing and stitching for you!”
“You’re a dear!” she answered inconsequentially. “I do believe if the whole world fell apart you could put it together again.”
“With your help, yes,” said he. “What’s more, I’m going to—and a better world at that than ever yet was dreamed of. Wait and see!”
Laughing, he released her.
“Well, now, we’ll go to work,” he concluded. “Nothing’s accomplished by mere words. Just lay hold of that lateral there, will you? And we’ll haul this old machine out where we can have a real good look at her, what do yore say? Now, then, one, two, three—”
CHAPTER XVII
ALL ABOARD FOR BOSTON!
Nineteen days from the discovery of the biplane, a singular happening for a desolate world took place on the broad beach that now edged the city where once the sluggish Providence River had flowed seaward.
For here, clad in a double suit of leather that Beatrice had made for him, Allan Stern was preparing to give the rehabilitated Pauillac a try-out.
Day by day, working incessantly when not occupied in hunting or fishing, the man had rebuilt and overhauled the entire mechanism. Tools he had found a-plenty in the ruins, tools which he had ground and readjusted with consummate care and skill. Alcohol he had gathered together from a score of sources. All the wooden parts, such as skids and levers and propellers, long since vanished and gone, he had cleverly rebuilt.
And now the machine, its planes and rudders covered with strongly sewn buckskin, stretched as tight as drum heads, its polished screw of the Chauvière type gleaming in the morning sun, stood waiting on the sands, while Stern gave it a painstaking inspection.
“I think,” he judged, as he tested the last stay and gave the engine its final adjustment. “I think, upon my word, this machine’s better to-day than when she was first built. If I’m not mistaken, buckskin’s a better material for planes than ever canvas was—it’s far stronger and less porous, for one thing—and as for the stays, I prefer the braided hide. Wire’s so liable to snap.
“This compass I’ve rigged on gimbals here, beats anything Pauillac himself ever had. What’s the matter with my home-made gyrostat and anemometer? And hasn’t this aneroid barometer got cards and spades over the old-style models?”
Enthusiastic as a boy, Stern shook his head and smiled delightedly at Beatrice as he expounded the merits of the biplane and its fittings. She, half glad, half anxious at the possible outcome of the venture, stood by and listened and nodded as though she understood all the minutiae he explained.
“So then, you’re ready to go up this morning?” she asked, with just a quiver of nervousness in her voice. “You’re quite certain everything’s all right—no chance of accident? For if anything happened—”
“There, there, nothing can happen, nothing will!” he reassured her. “This motor’s been run three hours in succession already without skipping an explosion. Everything’s in absolute order, I tell you. And as for the human, personal equation, I can vouch for that myself!”
Stern walked around to the back of the machine, picked up a long, stout stake he had prepared, took his ax, and at a distance of about twelve feet behind the biplane drove the stake very deep into the hard sand.
He knotted a strong leather cord to the stake, brought it forward and secured it to the frame of the machine.
“Now, Beatrice,” he directed, “when I’m ready you cut the cord. I haven’t any corps of assistants to hold me back till the right moment and then give me a shove, so the best I can do is this. Give a quick slash right here when I shout. And whatever happens don’t be alarmed. I’ll come back to you safe and sound, never fear. And this afternoon it’s ‘All Aboard for Boston!’”
Smiling and confident, he cranked the motor. It caught, and now a chattering tumult filled the air, rising, falling, as Stern manipulated throttle and spark to test them once again.
Into the driver’s seat he climbed, strapped himself in and turned to smile at Beatrice.
Then with a practiced hand he threw the lever operating the friction-clutch on the propeller-sh
aft. And now the great blades began to twirl, faster, faster, till they twinkled and buzzed in the sunlight with a hum like that of a gigantic electric fan.
The machine, yielding to the urge, tugged forward, straining at its bonds like a whippet eager for a race. Beatrice, her face flushed with excitement, stood ready with the knife.
Louder, faster whirled the blades, making a shiny blur; a breeze sprang out behind them; it became a wind, blowing the girl’s hair back from her beautiful face.
Stern settled himself more firmly into the seat and gripped the wheel.
The engine was roaring like a battery of Northrup looms. Stern felt the pull, the power, the life of the machine. And his heart leaped within him at his victory over the dead past, his triumph still to be!
“All right!” he cried. “Let go—let go!”
The knife fell. The parted rope jerked back, writhing, like a wounded serpent.
Gently at first, then with greater and greater speed, shaking and bouncing a little on the broad, flat wheels that Stern had fitted to the alighting gear, the plane rolled off along the firm-beaten sands.
Stern advanced the spark and now the screw sang a louder, higher threnody. With ever-accelerating velocity the machine tooled forward down the long stretch, while Beatrice stood gazing after it in rapt attention.
Then all at once, when it had sped some three hundred feet, Stern rotated the rising plane; and suddenly the machine lifted. In a long smooth curve, she slid away up the air as though it had been a solid hill—up, up, up—swifter and swifter now, till a suddenly accelerated rush cleared the altitude of the tallest pines in the forest edging the beach, and Stern knew his dream was true!
With a great shout of joy, he leaped the plane aloft! Its rise had all the exhilarating suddenness of a seagull flinging up from the foam-streaked surface of the breakers. And in that moment Stern felt the bliss of conquest.
Behind him, the spruce propellers were making a misty haze of humming energy. In front, the engine spat and clattered. The vast spread of the leather wings, sewn, stretched and tested, crackled and boomed as the wind got under them and heaved them skyward.
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