CHAPTER XXI
LOST IN THE GREAT ABYSS
For two days they camped beside the chasm, resting, planning,discussing, while Stern, with improvised transits, pendulums and otherapparatus, made tests and observations to determine, if possible, theproperties of the great gap.
During this time they developed some theories regarding thecatastrophe which had swept the world a thousand years ago.
"It seems highly and increasingly probable to me," the engineer said,after long thought, "that we have here the actual cause of the vastblight of death that left us two alone in the world. I rather thinkthat at the time of the great explosion which produced this rent,certain highly poisonous gases were thrown off, to impregnate theentire atmosphere of the world. Everybody must have been killed atonce. The poison must have swept the earth clean of human life."
"But how did _we_ escape?" asked the girl.
"That's hard telling. I figure it this way: The mephitic gas probablywas heavy and dense, thus keeping to the lower air-strata, followingthem, over plain and hill and mountain, like a blanket of death.
"Just what happened to us, who can tell? Probably, tightly housed upthere in the tower, the very highest inhabited spot in the world, onlya very slight infiltration of the gas reached us. If my theory won'twork, can you suggest a better one? Frankly, I can't; and until wehave more facts, we've got to take what we have. No matter, thecondition remains--we're alive and all the rest are dead; and I'mpositive this cleft here is the cause of it."
"But if everybody's dead, as you say, why hunt for men?"
"Perhaps a handful may have survived among the highlands of theRockies. I imagine that after the first great explosion there followeda series of terrible storms, tornadoes, volcanic eruptions, tidalwaves and so on. You remember how I found the bones of a whale inlower Broadway; and many of the ruins in New York show the action ofthe sea--they're laid flat in such a manner as to indicate that theisland was washed on one or two occasions by monster waves.
"Well, all these disturbances probably finished up what few survivorsescaped, except possibly among the mountains of the West. A fewscattered colonies may have survived a while--mining camps, forinstance, or isolated prospectors, or what-not. They may all have diedout, or again, they may have come together and reestablished someprimitive form of barbarous or even savage life by this time. There'sno telling. Our imperative problem is to reach that section andexplore it thoroughly. For there, if anywhere, we'll find survivors ofour race."
"How about that great maelstrom that nearly got us?" asked the girl."Can you connect that with the catastrophe?"
"I think so. My idea is that, in some way or other, the sea is beingsucked down into the interior of the earth and then hurled out again;maybe there's a gradual residue being left; maybe a great central lakeor sea has formed. Who knows? At any rate all the drainage system ofthe country seems to have been changed and reversed in the mostcurious and unaccountable manner. I think we should find, if we couldinvestigate everything thoroughly, that this vast chasm here isintimately connected with the whole thing."
These and many other questions perplexed the travelers, but most ofall they sought to know the breadth of the vast gap and to determineif it had, as they hoped, another side, or if it were indeed the edgeof an enormous mass split bodily off the earth.
Stern believed he had an answer to this problem on the afternoon ofthe second day. For many hours he had hung his pendulums over thecliff, noted deflections, taken triangulations, and covered thesurface of the smooth stone with X's, Y's, Z's, sines and cosines andabstruse formulae--all scrawled with charcoal, his only means ofwriting.
At last he finished the final equation, and, with a smile of triumphand relief, got to his feet again.
Back to the girl, who was cooking over an odorous fire of cedar, hemade his way, rejoicing.
"I've got it!" he shouted gladly. "Making reasonable allowances fordepth, I've got it!"
"Got what?"
"The probable width!"
"Oh!" And she stood gazing at him in admiration, beautiful and strongand graceful. "You mean to say--"
"I'm giving the chasm a hundred miles' depth. That's more than anybodycould believe possible--twice as much. On that assumption, my testsshow the distance to the other side--and there is another side, by theway!--can't be over--"
"Five hundred miles?"
"Nonsense! Not over one hundred to one-fifty. I'm going on a liberalallowance for error, too. It may not be over seventy-five. The--"
"But if that's as far as it is, why can't we see the other side?"
"With all that chemicalized vapor rising constantly? Who knows whatelements may be in it? Or what polarization may be taking place?"
"Polarization?"
"I mean, what deflection and alteration of light? No wonder we can'tsee! But we can fly! And we're going to, what's more!"
"Going to make a try for Chicago, then?" she asked, her eyes lightingup joyfully at thought of the adventure.
"To-morrow morning, sure!"
"But the alcohol?"
"We've still got what we started with from Detroit, minus only whatwe've burned reaching this place. And we reckoned when we set out thatit would far more than be enough. Oh, that part of it's all right!"
"Well, you know best," she answered. "I trust you in all things,Allan. But now just look at this roast partridge; come, dear, letto-morrow take care of itself. It's supper-time now!"
After the meal they went to the flat rock and sat for an hour whilethe sun went down beyond the void. Its disappearance seemed tosubstantiate the polarization theory. There was no sudden obliterationof the disk by a horizon. Rather the sun faded away, redder andduller; then slowly losing form and so becoming a mere blur ofcrimson, which in turn grew purple and so gradually died away tonothing.
For a long time they sat in the deepening gloom, their rifles close athand, saying little, but thinking much. The coming of night hadsobered them to a sense of what now inevitably lay ahead. The solemnpurple pall that adumbrated the world and the huge nothingness beforethem, so silent, so immutable and pregnant with terrible mysteries,brought them close together.
The vague, untrodden forest behind them, where the night-sounds of thewild dimly reechoed now and then, filled them with indefinableemotions. And that night sleep was slow in coming.
Each realized that, despite all calculations and all skill, the morrowmight be their last day of life. But the morning light, golden andclear above the eastern sky-line of tall conifers, dispelled allbrooding fears. They were both up early and astir, in preparation forthe crucial flight. Stern went over the edge of the chasm, whileBeatrice prepared breakfast, and made some final observations of wind,air currents and atmosphere density.
An eagle which he saw soaring over the abyss, more than half a milefrom its edge, convinced him a strong upward current existed to-day,as on the day when they had made their short flight over the void. Thebird soared and circled and finally shot away to northward, without awing-flap, almost in the manner of a vulture. Stern knew an eaglecould not imitate the feat without some aid in the way of an up-draft.
"And if that draft is steady and constant all the way across," thoughthe, "it will result in a big saving of fuel. Given a sufficient risingcurrent, we could volplane all the way across with a very slightexpenditure of alcohol. It looks now as though everything were comingon first-rate. Couldn't be better. And what a day for an excursion!"
By nine o'clock all was ready. Along the land a mild south wind wasblowing. Though the day was probably the 5th of October or thereabout,no signs of autumn yet were blazoned in the forest. The morning wasperfect, and the travelers' spirits rose in unison with the aboundingbeauty of the day.
Stern had given the Pauillac another final going over, tightening thestays and laterals, screwing up here a loosened nut, there a bolt,making certain all was in perfect order.
At nine-fifteen, after he had had a comforting pipe, they made a cleangetaway, rising along th
e edge of the chasm, then soaring in hugespirals.
"I want all the altitude I can get," Stern shouted at the girl as theyclimbed steadily higher. "We may need it to coast on. And from a mileor two up maybe we can get a glimpse of the other side."
But though they ascended till the aneroid showed eight thousand fivehundred feet, nothing met their gaze but the same pearly blue vaporwhich veiled the mystery before them. And Stern, satisfied now thatnothing could be gained by any further ascent, turned the machine duewest, and sent her skimming like a swallow out over the tremendousnothingness below.
As the earth faded behind them they began to feel distinctly a warmand pungent wind that rose beneath--a steady current, as from somehuge chimney that lazily was pouring out its monstrous volume of hotvapors.
Away and away behind them slid the lip of this gigantic gash acrossthe world; and now already with the swift rush of the plane the solidearth had begun to fade and to grow dim.
Stern only cast a glance at the sun and at his compass, hung there ingimbals before him, and with firm hand steadied the machine for thelong problematical flight to westward. Behind them the sun kept evenwith their swift pace; and very far below and ahead, at times theythought to see the fleeing shadow of the biplane cast now and then onmasses of formless vapor that rose from the unsounded deeps.
Definitely committed now to this tremendous venture, both Stern andthe girl settled themselves more firmly in their seats. No time tofeel alarm, no time for introspection, or for thoughts of what mightlie below, what fate theirs must be if the old Pauillac failed themnow!
No time save for confidence in the stout mechanism and in the skill ofhand and brain that was driving the great planes, with a roaring rushlike a gigantic gull, a swooping rise and fall in long arcs over thehills of air, across the vast enigma of that space!
Stern's whole attention was fixed on driving, just on the manipulationof the swift machine. Exhaust and interplay, the rhythm of eachwhirling cam and shaft, the chatter of the cylinders, the droningdiapason of the blades, all blent into one intricate yet perfectharmony of mechanism; and as a leader knows each instrument in thegreat orchestra and follows each, even as his eye reads the score, soStern's keen ear analyzed each sound and action and reaction and knewall were in perfect tune and resonance.
The machine--no early and experimental model, such as were used in thefirst days of flying, from 1900 to 1915, but one of the perfected andself-balancing types developed about 1920, the year when the GreatDeath had struck the world--responded nobly to his skill and care.From her landing-skids to the farthest tip of her ailerons she seemedalive, instinct with conscious and eager intelligence.
Stern blessed her mentally with special pride and confidence in hermercury equalizing balances. Proud of his machine and of his skill,superb like Phaeton whirling the sun-chariot across the heavens, hegave her more and still more speed.
Below nothing, nothing save vapors, with here and there an open spacewhere showed the strange dull purple of the abyss. Above, to right, toleft, nothing--absolute vacant space.
Gone now was all sight of the land that they had left. Unlikeballoonists who always see dense clouds or else the earth, they nowsaw nothing. All alone with the sun that rushed behind them in theirskimming flight, they fled like wraiths across the emptiness of thegreat void.
Stern glanced at the barometer, and grunted with surprise.
"H'm! Twelve thousand four hundred and fifty feet--and I've beenjockeying to come down at least five hundred feet already!" thoughthe. "How the devil can _that_ be?"
The explanation came to him. But it surprised him almost as much asthe noted fact.
"Must be one devil of a wind blowing up out of that place," hepondered, "to carry us up nearly four thousand feet, when I've beentrying to descend. Well, it's all right, anyhow--it all helps."
He looked at the spinning anemometer. It registered a speed ofninety-seven miles an hour. Yet now that they were out of sight of anyland, only the rush of the wind and the enormous vibration of theplane conveyed an idea of motion. They might as well have been hung inmid-space, like Mohammed's tomb, as have been rushing forward; therewas no visible means of judging what their motion really might be.
"Unique experience in the history of mankind!" shouted Stern to thegirl. "The world's invisible to us."
She nodded and smiled back at him, her white teeth gleaming in thestrange, bluish light that now enveloped them.
Stern, keenly attentive to the engine, advanced the spark anothernotch, and now the needle crept to 102 1/2.
"We'll be across before we know it," thought he. "At this rate, Ishouldn't be surprised to sight land any minute now."
A quarter-hour more the Pauillac swooped along, cradling in her swiftflight to westward.
But all at once the man started violently. Forward he bent, staringwith widened eyes at the tube of the fuel-gage.
He blinked, as though to convince himself he had not seen aright, thenstared again; and as he looked a sudden grayness overspread his face.
"_What?_" he exclaimed, then raised his head and for a moment sniffed,as though to catch some odor, elusive yet ominous, which he had forsome time half sensed yet paid no heed to.
Then suddenly he knew the truth; and with a cry of fear bent, peeringat the fuel-tank.
There, quivering suspended from the metal edge of the aluminum tank,hung a single clear white drop--_alcohol!_
Even as Stern looked it fell, and at once another took its place, andwas shaken off only to be succeeded by a third, a fourth, a fifth!
The man understood. The ancient metal, corroded almost through fromthe inside, had been eaten away. That very morning a hole had formedin the tank. And now a leak--existing since what moment he could nottell--was draining the very life-blood of the machine.
"The alcohol!" cried Stern in a hoarse, terrible voice, his wide eyesdenoting his agitation. With a quivering hand he pointed.
"My God! It's all leaked out--there's not a quart left in the tank!We're lost--lost in the bottomless abyss!"
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