CHAPTER XVI
FINDING THE BIPLANE
The way up the shores of Narragansett Bay was full ofexperiences for them both. Animal life revealed itself far moreabundantly here than along the open sea.
"Some strange blight or other must lie in the proximity of thatterrific maelstrom," judged Stern, "something that repels all thelarger animals. But skirting this bay, there's life and to spare. Howmany deer have we seen to-day? Three? And one bull-buffalo! With anykind of a gun, or even a revolver, I could have had them all. And thatbig-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 ofstarving here, Beatrice, once we get our hands on something that'llshoot again!"
The night they camped on the way, Stern kept constant guard by thefire, in case of possible attack by wolves or other beasts. He sleptonly an hour, when the girl insisted on taking his place; but when thesun arose, red and huge through the mists upon the bay, he started outagain on the difficult trail as strong and confident as though he hadnot kept nine hours of vigil.
Everywhere was change and desolation. As the travelers came into aregion which had at one time been more densely populated, they beganto find here and there mournful relics of the life that once hadbeen--traces of man, dim and all but obliterated, but now and thenpuissant in their revocation of the distant past.
Twice they found the ruins of villages--a few vague hollows in theearth, where cellars had been, hollows in which huge trees wererooted, and where, perhaps, a grass-grown crumble of disintegratedbrick indicated the one-time presence of a chimney. They discoveredseveral farms, with a few stunted apple-trees, the distant descendantsof orchard growths, struggling against the larger forest strength, andwith perhaps a dismantled well-curb, a moss-covered fireplace or a fewbits of iron that had possibly been a stove, for all relics of theother age. Mournful were the long stone walls, crumbling down yetstill discernible in places--walls that had cost the labor ofgenerations of farmers and yet now lay useless and forgotten in theuniversal ruin of the world.
On the afternoon of the fifth day since having left their lean-to bythe shore of Long Island Sound, they came upon a canyon which splitthe hills north of the site of Greenwich, a gigantic "fault" in therocks, richly striated and stratified with rose and red and umber, agreat cleft on the other side of which the forest lay somber andrepellent in the slanting rays of the September sun.
"By Jove, whatever it was that struck the earth," said Stern, "musthave been good and plenty. The whole planet seems to be ripped up andbroken and shattered. No wonder it knocked down New York and killedeverybody and put an end to civilization. Why, there's ten cubic milesof material gouged out right here in sight; here's a regular PanamaCanal, or bigger, all scooped out in one piece! What the devil couldhave happened?"
There was no answer to the question. After an hour spent in studyingthe formations along the lip of the cleft they made a detour eastwardto the shore, crossed the fjord that ran into the canyon, and againkept to the north. Soon after this they struck a railroad embankment,and this they followed now, both because it afforded easier travelthan the shore, which now had grown rocky and broken, and also becauseit promised to guide them surely to the place they sought.
It was on the sixth day of their exploration that they at lastpenetrated the ruins of Providence. Here, as in New York, pavementsand streets and squares were all grassed over and covered with pinesand elms and oaks, rooting among the stones and shattered brickworkthat lay prone upon the earth. Only here or there a steel or concretebuilding 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 thepost-office surveying the debris. "The smaller area, of course, wouldnaturally be covered sooner with the inroads of the forest. I doubtwhether there's enough left in the whole place to be of any realservice to us."
"To-morrow will be time enough to see," answered the girl. "It's toolate now for any more work to-day."
They camped that night in an upper story of the Pequot National BankBuilding on Hampstead Street. Here, having cleared out the bats andspiders, they made themselves an eerie secure from attack, and sleptlong and soundly. Dawn found them at work among the overgrown ruins,much as--three months before--they had labored in the MetropolitanTower and about it. Less, however, remained to salvage here. For thesmaller and lighter types of buildings had preserved far less of therelics of civilization than had been left in the vast and solidstructures of New York.
In a few places, none the less, they still came upon the little pilesof the gray ash that marked where men and women had fallen and died;but these occurred only in the most sheltered spots. Stern paid noattention to them. His energies and his attention were now fixed onthe one task of getting skins, arms, ammunition and supplies. Andbefore nightfall, by a systematic looting of such shops asremained--perhaps not above a score in all could even be entered--thegirl and he had gathered more than enough to last them on their way toBoston. One find which pleased him immensely was a dozen sealed glassjars of tobacco.
"As for a pipe," said he, "I can make that easily enough. What's moreI will!" More still, he did, that very evening, and the gloom wasredolent 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; inputting to rights the two rifles Stern had chosen from the basement ofthe State armory, and in making bandoliers to carry their supply ofcartridges. The possession of a knife once more, and of steelwherewith readily to strike fire, delighted the man enormously. Thescissors they found in a hardware-shop, though rusty, enabled him totrim his beard and hair. Beatrice hailed a warped hard-rubber combwith joy.
But the great discovery still awaited them, the one supreme find whichin a moment changed every plan of travel, opened the world to them,and at a single stroke increased their hopes ten thousandfold--thediscovery of the old Pauillac monoplane!
They came upon this machine, pregnant with such vast possibilities, ina concrete hangar back of the Federal courthouse on Anderson Street.The building attracted Stern's attention by its unusual state ofpreservation. He burst in one of the rusted iron shutters and climbedthrough 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 theaperture.
"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 throughthe window. "See there, will you? Isn't that the eternal limit? And tothink I never even thought of trying to find one in New York!"
He gestured at the dust-laden old machine that, forlorn and insovereign disrepair, stood at the other end of the hangar. Togetherthey approached it.
"If it will work," the man exclaimed thickly; "_if it will onlywork--_"
"But will it?" the girl exclaimed, her eyes lighting with theexcitement of the find, heart beating fast at thought of what it mightportend. "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 theframe, the gear, the stays, with hands that trembled more than everthey had trembled since their great adventure had begun.
As he examined the machine, while Beatrice stood by, he talked tohimself.
"Good thing the framework is aluminum," said he, "or it wouldn't beworth a tinker's dam after all this time. But as it is, it's taken noharm 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'lluse braided leather thongs. Petrol tank and feed pipe O. K. Girderboom needs a little a
ttention. Steering and control columnintact--they'll do!"
Part by part he handled the machine, his skilled eye leaping fromdetail 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 ithad been carefully covered, but, of course, the covering has rottedaway. No matter, we'll soon see. Now, this carbureter--"
His inspection lasted half an hour, while the girl, lost among so manytechnicalities, sat down on the dusty concrete floor beside themachine and listened in a kind of dazed admiration.
He gave her, finally, his opinion.
"This machine _will go_ if properly handled," said he, risingtriumphantly and slapping the dust off his palms. "The chassis needstruing up, the equilibrator has sagged out of plumb, and the aileronshave got to be readjusted, but it's only a matter of a few days at theoutside before she'll be in shape.
"The main thing is the engine, and so far as I can judge, that'spretty nearly O. K. The magneto may have to be gone over, but that's amere trifle. Odd, I never thought of either finding one of thesemachines in New York, or building one! When I think of all the wearymiles we've tramped it makes me sick!"
"I know," she answered; "but how about fuel? And another thing--haveyou ever operated one? Could you--"
"Run one?" He laughed aloud. "I'm the man who first taught CarltonHolmes to fly--you know Holmes, who won the Gordon-Craig cup foraltitude record in 1916. I built the first--"
"I know, dear; but Holmes was killed at Schenectady, you remember, andthis 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'regoing to fly. No more hiking through the woods or along beaches forus. From now on we travel in the air--and the world opens out to us asthough by magic.
"Distance ceases to mean anything. The whole continent is ours. Ifthere's another human creature on it we find him! And if there isn'tthen, 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 machinemore than a thousand years old?"
"I mean that eventually I can and will build one that'll take us toAlaska, and so across the fifty-mile gap from Cape Prince of Wales toEast 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 imaginethere's any gasoline left now, do you? A stuff as volatile as that,after all these centuries? What metal could contain it for a thousandyears?"
"There's alcohol," he answered. "A raid on the ruins of a few saloonsand drug-stores will give me all I need to carry me to Boston, wherethere's plenty, never fear. A few slight adjustments of the enginewill fit it for burning alcohol. And as for the planes, good stoutbuckskin, well sewn together and stretched on the frames, will do thetrick as well as canvas--better, maybe."
"But--"
"Oh, what a little pessimist it is to-day!" he interrupted. "Alwayscoming at me with objections, eh?" He took her in his arms and kissedher. "I tell you Beta, this is no pipe-dream at all, or anything likeit; the thing's reality--we're going to fly! But it'll mean the mosttremendous lot of sewing and stitching for you!"
"You're a dear!" she answered inconsequentially. "I do believe if thewhole world fell apart you could put it together again."
"With your help, yes," said he. "What's more, I'm going to--and abetter 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 accomplishedby mere words. Just lay hold of that lateral there, will you? Andwe'll haul this old machine out where we can have a real good look ather, what do yore say? Now, then, one, two, three--"
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