CHAPTER IX
PLANNING THE GREAT MIGRATION
Stern rigged a tripod for the powerful field-glasses he hadrescued from the Metropolitan Building, and by an ingenious additionof a wooden tube and another lens carefully ground out of rockcrystal, succeeded in producing (on the right-hand barrel of thebinoculars) a telescope of reasonably high power. With this, of anevening, he often made long observations, after which he would spendhours figuring all over many sheets of the birch bark, which he thencarefully saved and bound up with leather strings for futurereference.
In Van's set of encyclopedias he found a fairly large celestial mapand thorough astronomic data. The results of his computations were ofvital interest to him.
He said to Beatrice one evening:
"Do you know, that wandering black patch in the sky moves in a regularorbit of its own? It's a solid body, dark, irregular in outline, andcertainly not over five hundred miles above the surface of the earth."
"What can it be, dear?"
"I don't know yet. It puzzles me tremendously. Now, if it would onlyappear in the daytime once in a while, we might be able to get someinformation or knowledge about it; but, coming only at night, all itrecords itself as is just a black, moving thing. I'm working on thesize of it now, making some careful studies. In a while I shallprobably know its area and mass and density. But what it is I cannotsay--not yet."
They both pondered a while, absorbed in wonder. At last the engineerspoke again.
"Beta," said he, "there's another curious fact to note. The axis ofthe earth itself has shifted more than six degrees, thirty minutes!"
"It has? Well--what about it?" And she went on with her platting ofreed cordage.
"You don't seem much concerned about it!"
"I'm not. Not in the least. It can shift all it wants to, for all ofme. What hurt does it do? Doesn't it run just as well that way?"
Stern looked at her a moment, then laughed.
"Oh, yes; it runs all right," he answered. "Only I thought theannouncement that the pole-star had thrown up its job might startleyou a bit. But I see it doesn't. So far as practical results go, itaccounts for the warmer climate and the decreased inclination to theplane of the ecliptic; or, rather, the decreased--"
"Please, please, don't!" she begged. "There's nothing really wrong, isthere?"
"Well, that depends on how you define it. Probably an astronomer mightthink there was something very much wrong. I make it that the orbit ofthe earth has altered its relative length and width by--"
"No figures, Allan, there's a dear. You know I'm awfully bad atarithmetic. Tell me what it means, won't you?"
"Well, it means, for one thing, that we've maybe spent a far longertime on this earth since the cataclysm than we even dare suspect. Itmay be that what we've been calculating as about a thousand years, istwice that, or even five times that--no telling. For another thing,I'm convinced by all these changes, and by the diminution of gravityand by the accelerated rate of revolution of the earth--"
"Allan dear, please hand me those scissors, won't you?"
Stern laughed again.
"Here!" said he. "I guess I'm not much good as a lecturer. But I tellyou one thing I'm going to do, and that's a one best bet. I'm going tohave a try at some really big telescope before a year's out, and knowthe truth of this thing!"
"A big telescope! Build one, you mean?"
"Not necessarily. All I need is a chance to make some accurateobservations, and I can find out all I need to know. Even though Ihave been out of college for--let's see--"
"Fifteen hundred years, at a guess," she suggested.
"Yes, all of that. Even so, I remember a good bit of astronomy. AndI've got my mind set on peeking through a first-class tube. If theearth has broken in two, or anything like that, and our part isskyhooting away toward the unknown regions of outer space beyond thegreat ring of the Milky Way and is getting into an unchartered placein the universe--as it seems to be--why, we ought to have a good lookat things. We ought to know what's what, eh?
"Then there's the moon I want to investigate, too. No living manexcept myself has even seen the side that's now turned toward theearth. No telling what a good glass mightn't show."
"That's so, dear," she answered. "But where can you find the sort oftelescope you need?"
"In Boston--in Cambridge, rather. The Harvard observatory has thebiggest one within striking distance. What do you say to our makingour trial trip in the boat, up the Sound and around Cape Cod, toBoston? We can spend a week there, then slant away for wherever we maydecide to pass the winter. How does that suit you, Beta?"
She put away her work, and for a moment sat looking in at the flamesthat went leaping up the huge boulder chimney. The room glowed withwarmth and light that drove away the cheerlessness of a foggy, lateAugust drizzle.
"Do you really think we're wise to--to leave our home, with wintercoming on?" she asked at length, pensively, the firelight casting itsglow across her cheek and glinting in her eyes.
"Wise? Yes. We can't stay here, that's certain. And what is there tofear out in the world? With our firearms and our knowledge of fireitself, our science and our human intelligence, we're far more than amatch for all enemies, whether of the beast-world or of that race ofthe Horde. I hate, in a way, to revisit the ruins of New York, formore ammunition and canned stuffs. The place is to o ghastly, toohideous, now, after the big fight.
"Boston will be a clean ground for us, with infinite resources. And asI said before, there's the Cambridge observatory. It's only two orthree miles back in the forest, from the coast; maybe not more thanhalf a mile from some part of the Charles River. We can sail up, campon Soldiers' Field, and visit it easily. Why not?"
He sat down on the tiger-rug before the fire, near the girl. She drewhis head down into her lap; then, when he was lying comfortably, beganplaying with his thick hair, as he loved so well to have her do.
"If you think it's all right, Allan," said she, "we'll go. I want whatyou want."
"That's my good girl!" exclaimed the engineer. "We'll be ready tostart in a few days now. The boat's next thing to finished. What withthe breadfruit, smoked steer and buffalo meat, hams and canned goodsnow on our shelves, we've certainly got enough supplies to stock her atwo months' trip.
"Even with less, we'd be safe in starting. You see, the world's lainuntouched by mankind for so many centuries that all the blightingeffect of man's folly and greed and general piracy has vanished.
"The soil's got back to its natural state, animal life abounds, and solong as I still have a good supply of cartridges, we can live almostanywhere. Anthropoids? I don't think there's much danger. Oh, yes, Iremember the line of blue smoke we saw yesterday over the hills towestward; but what does that prove? Lightning may have started afire--there's no telling. And we can't always stay here, Beta, justbecause there may be dangers out yonder!"
He flung one arm toward the vast night, beyond the panes where themist and storm were beating cheerlessly.
"No, we can't camp down here indefinitely. Now's the time to start. AsI say, we've got all of sixty days' of downright civilized food onhand, for a good cruise in the Adventure. The chance of finding otherpeople somewhere is too precious not to make any risk worth while."
Silence fell between them for a few minutes. Each saw visions in theflames. The man's thoughts dwelt, in particular, on this main factorof a possible rediscovery of other human beings somewhere.
More than the girl, he realized the prime importance of thispossibility. Though he and she loved each other very dearly, thoughthey were all in all each to the other, yet he comprehended theloneliness she felt rather than analyzed--the infinite need of man forman, of woman for woman--the old social, group-instinct of the racebeginning to reassert itself even in their Eden.
Each of them longed, with a longing they hardly realized as yet, tohear some other human voice, to see another face, clasp another handand again feel the comradeship of man.
During the past week o
r so, Stern had more than once caught himselflistening for some other sound of human life and activity. Once he hadfound the girl standing on a wooded point among the pines, shading hereyes with her hand and watching down-stream with an attitude of hopewhich spoke more fluently than words. He had stolen quietly away,saying nothing, careful not to break her mood. For he had understoodit; it had been his very own.
The mood expressed itself, at times, in long talks together of theseeming dream-age when there had been so many millions of men andwomen in the world. Beatrice and Stern found themselves dwelling witha peculiar pleasure on memories and descriptions of throngs.
They would read the population statistics in Van's encyclopedia, andwonder greatly at them, for now these figures seemed the unrealchimeras of wild imaginings.
They would talk of the crowded streets, the "L" crushes and the jamsat the Bridge entrance; of packed cars and trains and overflowingtheaters; of great concourses they had seen; of every kind andcondition of affairs where thousands of their kind had once rubbedelbows, all strangers to each other, yet all one vast kin and familyready in case of need to succor one another, to use the collectiveintelligence for the benefit of each.
Sometimes they indulged in fanciful comparisons, trying to make theirpresent state seem wholly blest.
"This is a pretty fine way to live, after all," Stern said one day,"even if it is a bit lonesome at times. There's no getting up in themorning and rushing to an office. It's a perpetual vacation! There areno appointments to keeps no angry clients kicking because I can't makewater run up-hill or make cast-iron do the work of tool-steel. Nosaloons or free-lunches, no subways to stifle the breath out of us, nobills to pay and no bill collectors to dodge; no laws except the lawsof nature, and such as we make ourselves; no bores and no bad shows;no politics, no yellow journals, no styles--"
"Oh, dear, how I'd like to see a milliner's window again!" criedBeatrice, rudely shattering his thin-spun tissue of optimism. "Theseskin-clothes, all the time, and no hats, and no chiffons and no--nonothing, at all--! Oh, I never half appreciated things till they wereall taken away!"
Stern, feeling that he had tapped the wrong vein, discreetly withdrew;and the sound of his calking-hammer from the beach, told that he wasexpending a certain irritation on the hull of the Adventure.
One day he found a relic that seemed to stab him to the heart with asudden realization of the tremendous gap between his own life and thatwhich he had left.
Hunting in the forest, to westward of the bungalow, he came upon whatat first glance seemed a very long, straight, level Indian mound orearthwork; but in a moment his trained eye told him it was a railwayembankment.
With an almost childish eagerness he hunted for some trace of thetrack; and when, buried under earth-mold and rubbish, he found somerotten splinters of metal, they filled him with mingled pleasure anddepression.
"My God!" he exclaimed, "is it possible that here, right where Istand, countless thousands of human beings once passed at tremendousvelocity, bent on business and on pleasure, now ages long vanished andmeaningless and void? That mighty engines whirled along this bank,where now the forest has been crowding for centuries? That all, allhas perished--forever?
"It shall not be!" he cried hotly, and flung his hands out inpassionate denial. "All shall be thus again! All shall return--onlyfar better! The world's death shall not, cannot be!"
Experiences such as these, leaving both of them increasingly irritatedand depressed as time went on, convinced Stern of the imperativenecessity for exploration. If human beings still existed anywhere inthe world, he and she must find them, even at the risk of losing lifeitself. Years of migration, he felt, would not be too high a price topay for the reward of coming once again in contact with his ownspecies. The innate gregariousness of man was torturing them both.
Now that the hour of departure was drawing nigh, a strange exultationfilled them both--the spirit of conquest and of victory.
Together they planned the last details of the trip.
"Is the sail coming along all right, Beta?" asked Stern, the nightwhen they decided to visit Cambridge. "You expect to have it done in aday or two?"
"I can finish it to-morrow. It's all woven now. Just as soon as Ifinish binding one edge with leather strips, it'll be ready for you."
"All right; then we can get a good, early start, on Monday morning.Now for the details of the freight."
They worked out everything to its last minutiae. Nothing wasforgotten, from ammunition to the soap which Stern had made out ofmoose-fat and wood-ashes and had pressed into cakes; fromfishing-tackle and canned goods to toothbrushes made of stiffvegetable fibers set in bone; from provisions even to a plentifulsupply of birch-bark leaves for taking notes.
"Monday morning we're off," Stern concluded, "and it will be thegrandest lark two people ever had since time began! Built and stockedas the Adventure is, she's safe enough for anything from here toEurope.
"Name the place you want to see, and it's yours. Florida? Bermuda?Mediterranean? With the compass I've made and adjusted to the newmagnetic variations, and with the maps out of Van's set of books, Ireckon we're good for anything, including a trip around the world.
"The survivors will be surprised to see a fully stocked yawl puttingin to rescue them from savagery, eh? Imagine doing the Captain Cookstunt, with white people for subjects!"
"Yes, but I'm not counting on their treating us the way Captain Cookwas; are you? And what if we shouldn't find anybody, dear? What then?"
"How can we help finding people? Could a billion and a half humanbeings die, all at once, without leaving a single isolated groupsomewhere or other?"
"But you never succeeded in reaching them with the wireless from theMetropolitan, Allan."
"Never mind--they weren't in a condition to pick up my messages;that's all. We surely must find somebody in all the big cities we canreach by water, either along He coast or by running up the Mississippior along the St. Lawrence and through the lakes. There's Boston, ofcourse, and Philadelphia, New Orleans, San Francisco, St. Louis,Chicago--dozens of others--no end of places!"
"Oh, if they're only not all like New York!"
"That remains to be seen. There's all of Europe, too, and Africa andAsia--why, the whole wide world is ours! We're so rich, girl, that itstaggers the imagination--we're the richest people that have everlived, you and I. The 'pluses' in the old days owned their millions;but we own--we own the whole earth!"
"Not if there's anybody else alive, dear."
"That's so. Well, I'll be glad to share it with 'em, for the sake of ahandshake and a 'howdy,' and a chance to start things going again. Doyou know, I rather count on finding a few scattered remnants of folkin London, or Paris, or Berlin?
"Just the same as in our day, a handful of ragged shepherds descendedfrom the Mesopotamian peoples extinct save for them--were tendingtheir sheep at Kunyunjik, on those Babylonian ruins where once amighty metropolis stood, and where five million people lived andmoved, trafficked, loved, hated, fought, conquered, died--so nowto-day, perhaps, we may run across a handful of white savagescrouching in caves or rude huts among the debris of the Place del'Opera, or Unter den Linden, or--"
"And civilize them, Allan? And bring them back and start a colony andmake the world again? Oh, Allan, do you think we could?" sheexclaimed, her eyes sparkling with excitement.
"My plans include nothing less," he answered. "It's mighty well worthtrying for, at any rate. Monday morning we start, then, little girl."
"Sunday, if you say so."
"Impatient, now?" he laughed. "No, Monday will be time enough. Lots ofthings yet to put in shape before we leave. And we'll have to trustour precious crops to luck, at that. Here's hoping the winter willbring nothing worse than rain. There's no help for it, whateverhappens. The larger venture calls us."
They sat there discussing many many other factors of the case, for along time. The fire burned low, fell together and dwindled to glowingembers on the hearth.
In t
he red gloom Allan felt her vague, warm, beautiful presence.Strong was she; vigorous, rosy as an Amazon, with the spirit and thebeauty of the great outdoors; the life lived as a part of nature's ownself. He realized that never had a woman lived like her.
Dimly he saw her face, so sweet, so gentle in its wistful strength,shadowed with the hope and dreams of a whole race--the type, thesymbol, of the eternal motherhood.
And from his hair he drew her hand down to his mouth and kissed it;and with a thrill of sudden tenderness blent with passion he knew allthat she meant to him--this perfect woman, his love, who sometime soonwas now to be his bride.
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