CHAPTER V
DEADLY PERIL
Pages on pages would not tell the full details of the followingweek--the talks they had, the snaring and shooting of small game, thefishing, the cleaning out of the bungalow, and the beginnings of someorder in the estate, the rapid healing of Stern's arm, and all themultifarious little events of their new beginnings of life there bythe river-bank.
But there are other matters of more import than such homely things; sonow we come to the time when Stern felt the pressing imperative of areturn to the tower. For he lacked tools in every way; he needed themto build furniture, doors, shutters; to clear away the brush and makethe place orderly, rational and beautiful; to start work on hisprojected laboratory and power-plant; for a thousand purposes.
He wanted his binoculars, his shotgun and rifles, and much ammunition,as well as a boat-load of canned supplies and other goods.Instruments, above all, he had to have.
So, though Beatrice still, with womanly conservatism, preferred to letwell enough alone for the present, and stay away from the scene ofsuch ghastly deeds as had taken place on the last day of the invasionby the Horde, Stern eventually convinced and overargued her; and onwhat he calculated to be the 16th day of June, 2912--the tenth daysince the fight--they set sail for Manhattan. A favoring northerlybreeze, joined with a clear sky and sunshine of unusual brilliancy,made the excursion a gala time for both. As they put their supplies offish, squirrel-meat and breadfruit aboard the banca and shoved therude craft off the sand, both she and he felt like children on anouting.
Allan's arm was now so well that he permitted himself the luxury of amorning plunge. The invigoration of this was still upon him as, with asong, he raised the clumsy skin sail upon the rough-hewn mast.Beatrice curled down in her tiger-skin at the stern, took one of thepaddles, and made ready to steer. He settled himself beside her, thethongs of his sail in his hand. Thus happy in comradeship, they sailedaway to southward, down the blue wonder of the river, flanked byheadlands, wooded heights, crags, cliffs and Palisades, now all alikedeserted.
Noon found them opposite the fluted columns of gray granite that oncehad borne aloft the suburbs of Englewood. Stern recognized theconformation of the place; but though he looked hard, could find notrace of the Interstate Park road that once had led from top to bottomof the Palisades, nor any remnant of the millionaires' palaces alongthe heights there.
"Stone and brick have long since vanished as structures," hecommented. "Only steel and concrete have stood the gaff of uncountedyears! Where all that fashion, wealth and beauty once would havescorned to notice us, girl, now what's left? Hear the cry of thatgull? The barking of that fox? See that green flicker over thepinnacle? Some new, bright bird, never dreamed of in this country! Andeven with the naked eye I can make out the palms and the lianastangled over the verge of what must once have been magnificentgardens!"
He pointed at the heights.
"Once," said he, "I was consulted by a sausage-king named Breitkopf,who wanted to sink an elevator-shaft from the top to the bottom ofthis very cliff, so he could reach his hundred-thousand-dollar launchin ease. Breitkopf didn't like my price; he insulted me in severalrather unpleasant ways. The cliff is still here, I see. So am I. ButBreitkopf is--elsewhere."
He laughed, and swept the river with a glance.
"Steer over to the eastward, will you?" he asked. "We'll go in throughSpuyten Duyvil and the Harlem. That'll bring us much nearer the towerthan by landing on the west shore of Manhattan."
Two hours later they had run past the broken arches of Fordham,Washington, and High Bridges, and following the river--on both banksof which a few scattered ruins showed through the massed foliage--weredrawing toward Randall's and Ward's islands and Hell Gate.
Wind and tide still favored them. In safety they passed the uglyshoals and ledges. Here Stern took the paddle, while Beatrice went tothe bow and left all to his directing hand.
By three o'clock in the afternoon they were drawing past Blackwell'sIsland. The Queensboro Bridge still stood, as did the railway bridgesbehind them; but much wreckage had fallen into the river, and in oneplace formed an ugly whirlpool, which Stern had to avoid by some hardwork with the paddle.
The whole structure was sagging badly to southward, as though thefoundations had given way. Long, rusted masses of steel hung from thespans, which drooped as though to break at any moment. Though all theflooring had vanished centuries before, Stern judged an active mancould still make his way across the bridge.
"That's their engineering," gibed he, as the little boat sailed underand they looked up like dwarfs at the legs of a Colossus. "The oldRoman bridges are good for practically eternity, but these jerry steelthings, run up for profits, go to pieces in a mere thousand years!Well, the steel magnates are gone now, and their profits with them.But this junk remains as a lesson and a warning, Beta; the race tocome must build better than this, and sounder, every way!"
On, on they sailed, marveling at the terrific destruction on eitherhand--the dense forests now grown over Brooklyn and New York alike.
"We'll be there before long now," said Allan. "And if we have any luckat all, and nothing happens, we ought to be started for home bynightfall. You don't mind a moonlight sail up the Hudson, do you?"
It was past four by the time the banca nosed her way slowly in amongthe rotten docks and ruined hulks of steamships, and with a gentlerustling came to rest among the reeds and rushes now growing rank atthe foot of what had once been Twenty-Third Street.
A huge sea-tortoise, disturbed, slid off the sand-bank where he hadbeen sunning himself and paddled sulkily away. A blue heron flapped upfrom the thicket, and with a frog in its bill awkwardly took flight,its long neck crooked, legs dangling absurdly.
"Some mighty big changes, all right," commented Stern. "Yes, there'sgot to be a deal of work done here before things are right again. Butthere's time enough, time enough--there's all the time we need, we andthe people who shall come after us!"
They made the banca fast, noting that the tide was high and that theleather cord was securely tied to a gnarled willow that grew at thewater's edge. Half an hour later they had made their way across townto Madison Avenue.
It was with strange feelings they once more approached the scene oftheir battle against such frightful odds with the Horde. Stern wasespecially curious to note the effect of his Pulverite, not only onthe building itself but on the square.
This effect exceeded his expectations. Less than two hundred feet ofthe tower now stood and the whole western facade was but a mass ofcracked and gaping ruin.
Out on the Square the huge elms and pines had been uprooted and flungin titanic confusion, like a game of giants' jack-straws. And vastconical excavations showed, here and there, where vials of theexplosive had struck the earth. Gravel and rocks had even been thrownover the Metropolitan Building itself into the woodland glades ofMadison Avenue. And, worse, bits of bone--a leg-bone, ashoulder-blade, a broken skull with flesh still adhering--here orthere met the eye.
"Mighty good thing the vultures have been busy here," commented Stern."If they hadn't, the place wouldn't be even approachable. Gad! I thankmy stars what we've got to do won't take more than an hour. If we hadto stay here after dark I'd surely have the creeps, in spite of all myscientific materialism! Well, no use being retrospective. We're livingin the present and future now; not the past. Got the plaited cordsBeatrice? We'll need them before long to make up our bundle with."
Thus talking, Stern kept the girl from seeing too much or broodingover what she saw. He engaged her actively on the work in hand. Untilhe had assured himself there was no danger from falling fragments inthe shattered halls and stairways that led up to the gaping ruin atthe truncated top of the tower he would not let her enter thebuilding, but set her to fashioning a kind of puckered bag with a hugeskin taken from the furrier's shop in the Arcade, while he explored.
He returned after a while, and together they climbed over the debrisand ruins to the upper rooms which had been thei
r home during thefirst few days after the awakening.
The silence of death that lay over the place was appalling--that andthe relics of the frightful battle. But they had their work to do;they had to face the facts.
"We're not children, Beta," said the man. "Here we are for a purpose.The quicker we get our work done the better. Come on, let's get busy!"
Stifling the homesick feeling that tried to win upon them they set towork. All the valuables they could recover they collected--cannedsupplies, tools, instruments, weapons, ammunition and a hundred andone miscellaneous articles they had formerly used.
This flotsam of a former civilization they carried down and piled inthe skin bag at the broken doorway. And darkness began to fall ere thetask was done.
Still trickled the waters of the fountain in Madison Forest throughthe dim evening aisles of the shattered forest. A solemn hush fellover the dead world; night was at hand.
"Come, let's be going," spoke the man, his voice lowered in spite ofhimself, the awe of the Infinite Unknown upon him. "We can eat in thebanca on the way. With the tide behind us, as it will be, we ought toget home by morning. And I'll be mighty glad never to see this placeagain!"
He slung a sack of cartridges over his shoulder and picked up one ofthe cord loops of the bag wherein lay their treasure-trove. Beatricetook the other.
"I'm ready," said she. Thus they started.
All at once she stopped short.
"Hark! What's that?" she exclaimed under her breath.
Far off to northward, plaintive, long-drawn and inexpressiblymournful, a wailing cry reechoed in the wilderness--fell, rose, diedaway, and left the stillness even more ghastly than before.
Stern stood rooted. In spite of all his aplomb and matter-of-factpracticality, he felt a strange thrill curdle through his blood, whileon the back of his neck the hair drew taut and stiff.
"What is it?" asked Beatrice again.
"That? Oh, some bird or other, I guess. It's nothing. Come on!"
Again he started forward, trying to make light of the cry; but in hisheart he knew it well.
A thousand years before, far in the wilds near Ungava Bay, inLabrador, he had heard the same plaintive, starving call--and heremembered still the deadly peril, the long fight, the horror that hadfollowed.
He knew the cry; and his soul quivered with the fear of it; fear notfor himself, but for the life of this girl whose keeping lay withinthe hollow of his hand.
For the long wail that had trembled across the vague spaces of theforest, affronting the majesty and dignity of night and the comingstars with its blood-lusting plaint of famine, had been none otherthan the summons to the hunt, the news of quarry, the signal of agathering wolf-pack on their trail.