CHAPTER XIII
THE GREAT EXPERIMENT
The idea that there might possibly be others of their kind infar-distant parts of the earth worked strongly on the mind of thegirl. Next day she broached the subject again to her companion.
"Suppose," theorized she, "there might be a few score of others, maybea few hundred, scattered here and there? They might awaken one by one,only to die, if less favorably situated than we happen to be. Perhapsthousands may have slept, like us, only to wake up to starvation!"
"There's no telling, of course," he answered seriously. "Undoubtedlythat may be very possible. Some may have escaped the great death, onhigh altitudes--on the Eiffel Tower, for instance, or on certainmountains or lofty plateaus. The most we can do for the moment is justto guess at the probabilities. And--"
"But if there _are_ people elsewhere?" she interrupted eagerly, hereyes glowing with hope, "isn't there any way to get in touch withthem? Why don't _we_ hunt? Suppose only one or two in each countryshould have survived; if we could get them all together again in asingle colony--don't you see?"
"You mean the different languages and arts and all the rest mightstill be preserved? The colony might grow and flourish, and mankindagain take possession of the earth and conquer it, in a few decades?Yes, of course. But even though there shouldn't be anybody else,there's no cause for despair. Of that, however, we won't speak now."
"But why don't we try to find out about it?" she persisted. "If therewere only the remotest chance--"
"By Jove, I _will_ try it!" exclaimed the engineer, fired with a newthought, a fresh ambition. "How? I don't know just yet, but I'll see.There'll be a way, right enough, if I can only think it out!"
That afternoon he made his way down Broadway, past the copper-shop, tothe remains of the telegraph office opposite the Flatiron.
Into it he penetrated with some difficulty. A mournful sight it was,this one-time busy ganglion of the nation's nerve-system. Benches andcounters were quite gone, instruments corroded past recognition,everything in hideous disorder.
But in a rear room Stern found a large quantity of copper wire. Thewooden drums on which it had been wound were gone; the insulation hadvanished, but the coils of wire still remained.
"Fine!" said the explorer, gathering together several coils. "Now whenI get this over to the Metropolitan, I think the first step towardsuccess will have been taken."
By nightfall he had accumulated enough wire for his tentativeexperiments. Next day he and the girl explored the remains of the oldwireless station on the roof of the building, overlooking MadisonAvenue.
They reached the roof by climbing out of a window on the east side ofthe tower and descending a fifteen-foot ladder that Stern had builtfor the purpose out of rough branches.
"You see it's fairly intact as yet," remarked the engineer, gesturingat the bread expanse. "Only, falling stones have made holes here andthere. See how they yawn down into the rooms below! Well, come on,follow me. I'll tap with the ax, and if the roof holds me you'll besafe."
Thus, after a little while, they found a secure path to the littlestation.
This diminutive building, fortunately constructed of concrete, stillstood almost unharmed. Into it they penetrated through the crumblingdoor. The winds of heaven had centuries ago swept away all trace ofthe ashes of the operator.
But there still stood the apparatus, rusted and sagging anddisordered, yet to Stern's practiced eye showing signs of promise. Anhour's careful overhauling convinced the engineer that something mightyet be accomplished.
And thus they set to work in earnest.
First, with the girl's help, he strung his copper-wire antennae fromthe tiled platform of the tower to the roof of the wireless station.Rough work this was, but answering the purpose as well as though ofthe utmost finish.
He connected up the repaired apparatus with these antennae, and madesure all was well. Then he dropped the wires over the side of thebuilding to connect with one of the dynamos in the sub-basement.
All this took two and a half days of severe labor, in intervals offood-getting, cooking and household tasks. At last, when it was done--
"Now for some power!" exclaimed the engineer. And with his lamp hewent down to inspect the dynamos again and to assure himself that hisbelief was correct, his faith that one or two of them could be putinto running order.
Three of the machines gave little promise, for water had dripped in onthem and they were rusted beyond any apparent rehabilitation. Thefourth, standing nearest Twenty-Third Street, had by some freak ofchance been protected by a canvas cover.
This cover was now only a mass of rotten rags, but it had at leastsafeguarded the machine for so long that no very serious deteriorationhad set in.
Stern worked the better part of a week with such tools as he couldfind or make--he had to forge a wrench for the largest nuts--"takingdown" the dynamo, oiling, filing, polishing and repairing it, part bypart.
The commutator was in bad shape and the brushes terribly corroded. Buthe tinkered and patched, hammered and heated and filed away, and atlast putting the machine together again with terrible exertion,decided that it would run.
"Steam now!" was his next watchword, when he had wired the dynamo toconnect with the station on the roof. And this was on the eighth daysince he had begun his labor.
An examination of the boiler-room, which he reached by moving a ton offallen stone-work from the doorway into the dynamo-room, encouragedhim still further. As he penetrated into this place, feeble-shininglamp held on high, eyes eager to behold the prospect, he knew thatsuccess was not far away.
Down in these depths, almost as in the interior of the great Pyramidof Gizeh--though the place smelled dank and close and stifling--timeseemed to have lost much of its destructive power. He chose one boilerthat looked sound, and began looking for coal.
Of this he found a plentiful supply, well-preserved, in the bunkers.All one afternoon he labored, wheeling it in a steel barrow anddumping it in front of the furnace.
Where the smoke-stack led to and what condition it was in he knew not.He could not tell where the gases of combustion would escape to; butthis he decided to leave to chance.
He grimaced at sight of the rusted flues and the steam-pipesconnecting with the dynamo-room-pipes now denuded of their asbestospacking and leaky at several joints.
A strange, gnome-like picture he presented as he poked and pried inthose dim regions, by the dim rays of the lamp. Spiders, roaches and agreat gray rat or two were his only companions--those, and hope.
"I don't know but I'm a fool to try and carry this thing out," saidhe, dubiously surveying the pipe. "I'm liable to start something herethat I can't stop. Water-glasses leaky, gauges plugged up,safety-valve rusted into its seat--the devil!"
But still he kept on. Something drove him inexorably forward. For hewas an engineer--and an American.
His next task was to fill the boiler. This he had to do by bringingwater, two pails at a time from the spring. It took him three days.
Thus, after eleven days of heart-breaking lonely toil in that grimydungeon, hampered for lack of tools, working with rotten materials,naked and sweaty, grimed, spent, profane, exhausted, everything wasready for the experiment--the strangest, surely, in the annals of thehuman race.
He lighted up the furnace with dry wood, then stoked it full of coal.After an hour and a half his heart thrilled with mingled fear andexultation at sight of the steam, first white, then blue and thin,that began to hiss from the leaks in the long pipe.
"No way to estimate pressure, or anything," remarked he. "It's bullluck whether I go to hell or not!" And he stood back from the blindingglare of the furnace. With his naked arm he wiped the sweat from hisstreaming forehead.
"Bull luck!" repeated he. "But by the Almighty, I'll send that Morse,or bust!"