CHAPTER XIII
ON THE CREST OF THE MAELSTROM
Stern's observation of the rising flood proved correct. Bywhatever theory it might or might not be explained, the fact waspositive that now the water there below them was rising fast, and thatinside of half an hour at the outside the torrent would engulf theirledge.
It seemed as though there must be some vast, rhythmic ebb and flux inthe unsounded abysses that yawned beneath them, some incalculableregurgitation of the sea, which periodically spewed forth a part, atleast, of the enormous torrent that for hours poured into that titanicgulf.
And it was upon this flux, stormy and wild and full of seethingwhirlpools, that Allan Stern and the girl now built their onlypossible hope of salvation and of life.
"Come, we must be at work!" he told her, as together they peered overthe edge and now beheld the weltering flood creeping up, up along thethunderous plunge of the waterfall till it was within no more than ahundred feet of their shelter.
As the depth of the fall decreased the spray-drive lessened, and now,with the full coming of day, some reflection of the golden morning skycrept through the spray. Yet neither to right nor left could they seeshore or anything save that long, swift, sliding wall of brine,foam-tossed and terrible.
"To work!" said he again. "If we're going to save ourselves out ofthis inferno we've got to make some kind of preparation. We can't justswim and trust to luck. We shall have to malice float of some sort orother, I think."
"Yes, but what with?" asked she.
"With what remains of the yawl!"
And even as he spoke he led the way to the crevice where thesplintered boards and the torn sail had been wedged fast.
"A slim hope, I know," he admitted, "but it's all we've got now."
Driven home as the wreckage was by the terrific impact of the blow,Stern had a man's work cut out for him to get it clear; but his was asthe strength of ten, and before half an hour had passed he had, withthe girl's help, freed all the planks and laid them out along therock-shelf, the most sheltered spot of the ledge.
Another hour later the planks had been lashed into a rough sort offloat with what cordage remained and with platted strips of the matsail.
"It's not half big enough to hold us up altogether," judged the man,"but if we merely use it to keep our heads out of water it will serve,and it's got the merit of being unsinkable, anyhow. God knows how longwe may have to be in the water, little girl. But whatever comes we'vegot to face it. There's no other chance at all!"
They waited now calmly, with the resignation of those who have noalternative to hardship. And steadily the flood mounted up, up, towardthe ledge, and now the seethe was very near. Now already the leapingfroth of the plunge was dashing up against their rock. In a fewmoments the shelter would be submerged.
He put his lips close to her ear, for now his voice could not carry.
"Let's jump for it!" he cried. "If we wait till the flood reaches ushere we'll be crushed against the rock. Come on, Beatrice, we've gotto plunge!"
She answered with her eyes; he knew the girl was ready. To him he drewher and their kiss was one that spoke eternal farewell. But of thisthought no word passed their lips.
"_Come!_" bade the man once more.
How they leaped into that vortex of mad waters, how they vanished inthat thunderous welter, rose, sank, fought, strangled, rose again andcaught the air, and once more were whirled down and buried in thatcrushing avalanche; how they clung to the lashed planks and with thesespiraled in mad sarabands among the whirlpools and green eddies; howthey were flung out into smoother water, blinded and deafened, yetwith still the spark of life and consciousness within them, and howthey let the frail raft bear them, fainting and dazed, all theirsenses concentrated just on gripping this support--all this they nevercould have told.
Stern knew at last, with something of clarity, that he was floatingeasily along an oily current which ran, undulating, beneath aslate-gray mist; he realized that with one hand he was grasping theplanks, with the other arm upbearing the girl.
Pale and with closed eyes, she lay there in the hollow of his arm, herface free from water, her long hair floating out upon the tide.
He saw her lids twitch and knew she lived. Yet even as he thanked Godand took a firmer hold on her, consciousness lapsed again, and with itall realization of time or of events.
Yet though the moments--or were they hours?--which followed left noimpress on his brain, some intelligence must have directed Stern. Forwhen once more he knew, he found the mist and fog all gone; he saw agolden sun that weltered all across the heaving flood in a bravesplendor; and, off to northward, a wooded line of hills, blue in thedistance, yet beautiful with their promise of salvation.
Stern understood, then, what must have happened. He saw that theupfilling of the abyss, whatever might have caused it, had flung themforth; he perceived that the temporary flood which had taken placebefore once more another terrific down-draft should pour into thegaping chasm, had cast them out, floated by their raft of planks, evenas match-straws might be flung and floated on the outburst of ageyser.
He understood; he knew that, fortune favoring, life still beckonedthere ahead.
And in his heart resolve leaped up.
"Life! Life!" he cried. "Oh, Beatrice, look! See! There's land ahead,there--_land!_"
But the girl, still circled by his arm, lay senseless. Allan knew hecould make no progress in that manner. So by dint of great labor, hemanaged to draw her somewhat onto the float and there to lash her witha loose end of cordage in such wise that she could breathe with nodanger of drowning.
Himself he summoned all his forces, and now began to swim through thesmooth tides, which, warm with some grateful heat, vastly unlike theusual ocean chill, stretched lazily rolling away and away to that faroff shore.
That day was long and bitter, an agony of toil, hope, despair, laborand struggle, and the girl, reviving, shared it toward the end. Onlytheir frail raft fenced death away, but so long as the buoyant planksheld together they could not drown.
Thirst and exhaustion tortured them, but there was no hope of appealto any help. In this manless world there could be no rescue. Here,there, a few gulls wheeled and screamed above the flood; and once aschool of porpoises, glistening as they curved their shining backs inlong leaps through the brine, played past. Allan and the girl enviedthe creatures, and renewed their fight for life.
The south wind favored, and what seemed a landward current drew themon. Their own strength, too, in spite of the long fast and theincredible hardships, held out well. For now that civilization was athing of the oblivious past, they shared the vital forces and the verypowers of Mother Nature herself. And, like two favored children ofthat all-mother, they slowly made their way to land.
Night found them utterly exhausted and soaked to the marrow, yetalive, stretched out at full length, inert, upon the warm sands of avirgin beach. There they lay, supine, above high tide, whither theyhad dragged themselves with terrible exertion. And the stars wheeledoverhead; and down upon them the strange-featured moon wondered withher pallid gleam.
Fireless, foodless and without shelter, unprotected in every way,possessing nothing now save just their own bodies and the draggledgarments that they wore, they lay and slept. In their supremeexhaustion they risked attack from wild beasts and from anthropoids.Sleep to them was now the one vital, inevitable necessity.
Thus the long night hours passed and strength revived in them,up-welling like fresh tides of life; and once more a new day grayedthe east, then transmuted to bright gold and blazoned its insignia allup the eastern sky.
Stern woke first, dazed with the long sleep, toward mid-morning. Alittle while he lay as though adream, trying to realize what hadhappened; but soon remembrance knitted up the fabric of the peril andthe close escape. And, arising stiffly from the sand, he stretched hissplendid muscles, rubbed his eyes, and stared about him.
A burning thirst was tormenting him. His tongue clave to the roof of
his mouth; he found, by trial, that he could scarcely swallow.
"Water!" gasped he, and peered at the deep green woods, which promisedabundant brooks and streams.
But before he started on that quest he looked to see that Beatrice wassafe and sound. The girl still slept. Bending above her he made surethat she was resting easily and that she had taken no harm. But thesun, he saw, was shining in her face.
"That won't do at all!" he thought; and now with a double motive hestrode off up the beach, toward the dense forest that grew down to theline of shifting sands.
Ten minutes and he had discovered a spring that bubbled out beneath amoss-hung rock, a spring whereof he drank till renewed life ranthrough his vigorous body. And after that he sought and found with nogreat labor a tree of the same species of breadfruit that grew allabout their bungalow on the Hudson.
Then, bearing branches of fruit, and a huge, fronded tuft of the giantfern-trees that abounded there, he came back down the beach to thesleeping girl, who still lay unconscious in her tiger-skin, her heavyhair spread drying on the sands, her face buried in the warm, softhollow of her arm.
He thrust the stalk of the fern-tree branch far down into the sand,bending it so that the thick leaves shaded her. He ate plentifully ofthe fruit and left much for her. Then he knelt and kissed her foreheadlightly, and with a smile upon his lips set off along the beach.
A rocky point that rose boldly against the morning, a quarter-mile tosouthward, was his objective.
"Whatever's to be seen round here can be seen from there," said he."I've got _my_ job cut out for me, all right--here we are, stranded,without a thing to serve us, no tools, weapons or implements orsupplies of any kind--nothing but our bare hands to work with, andhundreds of miles between us and the place we call home. No boat, noconveyance at all. Unknown country, full of God knows what perils!"
Thinking, he strode along the fine, smooth, even sands, where neveryet a human foot had trodden. For the first time he seemed to realizejust what this world now meant--a world devoid of others of his kind.While the girl and he had been among the ruins of Manhattan, or evenon the Hudson, they had felt some contact with the past; but here,Stern's eye looked out over a world as virgin as on the primal morn.And a vast loneliness assailed him, a yearning almost insupportable.that made him clench his fists and raise them to the impassive, emptysky that mocked him with its deep and azure calm.
But from the rocky point, when he had scaled its height, he saw faroff to westward a rising column of vapor which for a while divertedhis thoughts. He recognized the column, even though he could not hearthe distant roaring of the cataract he knew lay under it. And,standing erect and tall on the topmost pinnacle, eyes shaded under hislevel hand, he studied the strange sight.
"Yes, the flood's rushing in again, down that vast chasm," heexclaimed. "The chasm that nearly proved a grave to us! And every daythe same thing happens--but how and why? By Jove, here's a problemworthy a bigger brain than mine!
"Well, I can't solve it now. And there's enough to do, withoutbothering about the maelstrom--except to avoid it!"
He swept the sea with his gaze. Far off to southward lay a dim, darkline, which at one time must have been Long Island; but it wasirregular now and faint, and showed that the island had beenpractically submerged or swept away by the vast geodetic changes ofthe age since the catastrophe.
A broken shore-line, heavily wooded, stretched to east and west. Sternsought in vain for any landmark which might give him position on ashore once so familiar to him. Whether he now stood near the formersite of New Haven, whether he was in the vicinity of the one-timemouth of the Connecticut River, or whether the shore where he nowstood had once been Rhode Island, there was no means of telling. Eventhe far line of land on the horizon could not guide him.
"If that _is_ some remnant of Long Island," he mused, "it wouldindicate that we're no further east than the Connecticut; but there'sno way to be sure. Other islands may have been heaved up from theocean floor. There's nothing definite or certain about anything now,except that we're both alive, without a thing to help us but our witsand that I'm starving for something more substantial than thatbreadfruit!"
Wherewith he went back to Beatrice.
He found her, awake at last, sitting on the beach under the shadow ofthe fern-tree branch, shaking out her hair and braiding it in twothick plaits. He brought her water in a cup deftly fashioned from ahuge leaf; and when she had drunk and eaten some of the fruit they satand talked a while in the grateful warmth of the sun.
She seemed depressed and disheartened, at last, as they discussed whathad happened and spoke of the future.
"This last misfortune, Allan," said she, "is too much. There's nothingnow except life--"
"Which is everything!" he interrupted, laughing. "If we can weather atime like that, nothing in store for us can have any terrors!" His ownspirits rose fast while he cheered the girl.
He drew his arm about her as they sat together on the beach.
"Just be patient, that's all," bade he. "Just give me a day or so tofind out our location, and I'll get things going again, never fear. Aweek from now we may be sailing into Boston Harbor--who knows?"
And, shipwrecked and destitute though they were, alone in the vastemptiness of that deserted world, yet with his optimism and his faithhe coaxed her back to cheerfulness and smiles again.
"The whole earth is ours, and the fulness thereof!" he cried, andflung his arms defiantly outward. "This is no time for hesitance orfear. Victory lies all before us yet. To work! To work!"