CHAPTER XIX
WESTWARD HO!
Fate meant that they should live, those two lone wanderers onthe face of the great desolation; and, though night had gathered nowand all was cloaked in gloom, they landed with no worse than a hardshake-up on a level strip of beach that edged the confines of theunknown lake.
Exhausted by the strain and the long fight with death, chilled by thatsojourn in the upper air, drenched and stiffened and half dead, theyhad no strength to make a camp.
The most that they could do was drag themselves down to the water'sedge and--finding the water fresh, not salt--drink deeply fromhollowed palms. Then, too worn-out even to eat, they crawled under theshelter of the biplane's ample wings, and dropped instantly into thelong and dreamless sleep of utter weariness.
Mid-morning found them, still lame and stiff but rested, cookingbreakfast over a cheery fire on the beach near the machine. Save forhere and there a tree that had blown down in the forest, some deadbranches scattered on the sands, and a few washed-out places where thetorrent of yesterday's rain had gullied the earth, nature once moreseemed fair and calm.
The full force of the terrific wind-storm had probably passed tonorthward; this land where they now found themselves--whatever itmight be--had doubtless borne only a small part of the attack. Buteven so, and even through the sky gleamed clear and blue and sunlitonce again, Stern and the girl knew the hurricane had been no ordinarytempest.
"It must have been a cyclone, nothing less," judged the engineer, ashe finished his meal and reached for his comforting pipe. "And Godknows where it's driven us to! So far as judging distances goes, in ahurricane like that it's impossible. This may be any one of the GreatLakes; and, again, it may not. For all we know, we may be up in theHudson Bay region somewhere. This may be Winnipeg, Athabasca, or GreatSlave. With the kind of storms that happen nowadays, anything'spossible."
"Nothing matters, after all," the girl assured him, "except that we'realive and unhurt; and the machine can still travel, for--"
"Travel!" cried Stern. "With about a quart of fuel or less! How far,I'd like to know?"
"That's so; I never thought of that!" the girl replied, dismayed. "Oh,dear, what shall we do now?"
Stern laughed.
"Hunt for a town, of course," he reassured her. "There, there, don'tworry! If we find alcohol, we're all right, anyhow. If not, we'rebetter off than we were after the maelstrom almost got us, at anyrate. Then we had no arms, ammunition, tools, or means to make fire,while now we've got them all. Forgive my speaking as I did, littlegirl. Don't worry--everything will come right in the end."
Reassured, she sat before the fire, and for an hour or more they drewmaps and diagrams in the sand, made plans, and laid out their nextstep in this long campaign against the savage power of a desertedworld.
At last, their minds made up, they wheeled the plane back to theforest, where Stern cut out among the trees a space for itsprotection. And, leaving it here, covered with branches of thethick-topped fern-tree, they took provisions and once more set out ontheir exploration.
But this time they had an ax and their two rifles, and as they strodenorthward along the shore they felt a match for any peril.
An hour's walk brought them to the ruins of a steel recreation-pier,with numerous traces of a town along the lake behind it.
"That settles the Hudson Bay theory," Stern rejoiced, as they wanderedamong the debris. "This is certainly one of the Great Lakes, thoughwhich one, of course, we can't tell as yet. And now if we can round upsome alcohol we'll be on our way before very long."
They found no alcohol, for the only ruin where drugs or liquors hadevidently been sold had caved in, a mass of shattered brickwork,smashing every bottle in the place. Stern found many splintered shardsof glass; but that was all, so far as fuel was concerned. Hediscovered something else, however, that proved of tremendousvalue--the wreck of a printing-office.
Presses and iron of all kind had gone to pieces, but some of thelarger lead types and quads still were recognizable. And, the crucialthing, he turned up a jagged bit of stereotype-sheet from under theprotection of a concrete plinth that had fallen into the cellar.
All corroded and discolored though it was, he still could make out afew letters.
"A newspaper head, so help me!" he exclaimed, as with a tremblingfinger he pointed the letters out to Beatrice: "Here's an 'H'--here's'mbur'--here's 'aily,' and 'ronicl'! Eh, what? 'Chronicle,' it musthave been! By Jove, you're right! And the whole thing used to spell'Hamburg Daily Chronicle,' or I'm a liar!"
He thought a moment--thought hard--then burst out:
"Hamburg, eh? Hamburg, by a big lake? Well, the only Hamburg by a lakethat I know of used to be Hamburg, New York. I ought to remember. Idrew the plans for the New York Central bridge, just north of here,over the Spring Creek ravine.
"Yes, sir, this certainly is Hamburg, New York. And this lake must beErie. Now, if I'm correct, just back up there on that hill we'll findthe remains of the railway cut, and less than ten miles north of herelies all that's left of Buffalo. Some luck, eh? Cast away, onlyfifteen miles or so from a place like that. And we might have gone toGreat Bear Lake, or to--h-m!--to any other place, for all the cyclonecared.
"Well, come on now, let's see if the railway cut is still there, andmy old bridge; and if so, it's Buffalo for ours!"
It was all as he had said. The right-of-way of the railroad stillshowed distinctly, in spite of the fact that ties and rails had longsince vanished. Of the bridge nothing was left but some rusted steelstringers lying entangled about the disintegrated concrete piers. ButStern viewed them with a melancholy pride and interest--his ownhandiwork in the very long ago.
They had no time, however, for retrospection; but, once more takingthe shore, kept steadily northward. And before noon they reached thedebris of Buffalo, stark and deserted by the lake where once its busycommerce and its noisy life had thronged. By four o'clock thatafternoon they had collected fuel enough for the plane to do thatdistance on, and more. Late that night they were again back at thespot where they had landed the night before.
And here, in high spirits and with every hope of better fortune now tofollow evil, they cooked their meal and spent an hour in planningtheir next move, then slept the sleep of well-earned rest.
They had now decided to abandon the idea of visiting Boston. Thisseeming change of front was not without its good reasons.
"We're half-way to Chicago as it is," Stern summed up next morning."Conditions are probably similar all along the Atlantic coast; there'sno life to be found there: On the other hand, if we strike for theWest there's at least a chance of running across survivors. If wedon't find them there, then we probably sha'n't find them anywhere. InChicago we can live and restock for further explorations, and as forlocating a telescope, the University of Chicago ruins are as promisingas those of Harvard. Chicago, by all means!"
They set out at nine o'clock, and, having made a good start, reachedBuffalo by twenty minutes past, flying easily along the shore at notmore than five hundred feet elevation.
Gaily the lake sparkled and wimpled in the morning sun, unvexed now byany steamer's prow, unshaded by any smoke from cities or roaring millsalong its banks.
Despite the lateness of the season, the morning was warm; a mildbreeze swayed the treetops and set the little whitecaps foaming hereand there over the broad expanse of blue. Beatrice and Stern felt thejoy of life reborn in them at that sight.
"Magnificent!" cried the engineer. "Now for a swing up past Niagara,and we're off!"
The river, they found as the plane swept onward, had dwindled to abrook that they could almost leap across. The rapids now were but adreary waste of blackened rocks, and the Falls themselves, dry savefor a desolate trickle down past Goat Island, presented a spectacle ofdeath--the death of the world as Beatrice and Stern had known it,which depressed them both.
That this tremendous cataract could vanish thus; that the gorge andthe great Falls which for uncounted centuries had t
hundered to therush and tumult of the mighty waters could now lie mute and dry andlifeless, saddened them both beyond measure.
And they were glad when, with a wide sweep of her wings, the Pauillacveered to westward again along the north shore of Lake Erie andsettled into the long run of close on two hundred and fifty miles toDetroit, where Stern counted on making his first stop.
Without mishap, yet without sighting a single indication of thepresence of man, they coasted down the shore and ate their dinner onthe banks of Lake Saint Clair, near the ruins of Windsor, with thoseof Detroit on the opposite side. For some reason or other, impossibleto solve, the current now ran northward toward Huron, instead of southto Erie. But this phenomenon they could do little more than merelynote, for time lacked to give it any serious study.
Mid-afternoon found them getting under way again westbound.
"Chicago next," said Stern, making some slight but necessaryadjustment of the air-feed in the carburetor. "And here's hopingthere'll be some natives to greet us!"
"Amen to that!" answered the girl. "If any life has survived at all,it ought to be on the great central plain of the country, say fromIndiana out through Nebraska. But do you know, Allan, if it shouldcome right down to meeting any of our own kind of people--savages, ofcourse, I mean, but white--I really believe I'd be awfully afraid ofthem. Imagine white savages dressed in skins--"
"Like us!" interrupted Stern, laughing.
"And painted with woad, whatever woad is; I remember reading about itin the histories of England; all the early Britons used it. Andcarrying nice, knobby stone creeks to stave in our heads! It _would_be nice to meet a hundred or a thousand of them, eh? Rather adifferent matter from dealing with a horde of those anthropoidcreatures, I imagine."
Stern only smiled, then answered:
"Well, I'll take _my_ chances with 'em. Better a fight, say I, with myown kind, than solitude like this--you and I all alone, girl, gettingold some time and dying with never a hand-clasp save perhaps such asit may please fate to give us from whatever children are to be. Butcome, come, girl. No time for gloomy speculations of trouble. In youget now, and off we go--westward bound again."
Only half an hour out of Detroit it was that they first became awareof some strange disturbance of the horizon, some inexplicableappearance such as neither of them had ever seen, a phenomenon sopeculiar that, though both observed it at about the same time, neitherStern could believe his own senses nor Beatrice hers.
For all at once it seemed to them the sky-line was drawing suddenlynearer; it seemed that the horizon was approaching at high speed.
The dark, untrodden forest mass still stretched away, away, until itvanished against the dim blue of the sky; but now, instead of thatmeeting-line being forty miles off, it seemed no farther than twenty,and minute by minute it indubitably was rushing toward them with aspeed equal to their own.
Stern, puzzled and alarmed at this unusual sight, felt an impulse toslow, to swerve, to test the apparition in some way; but secondthought convinced him it must be deception of some sort.
"Some peculiar state of the atmosphere," thought he, "or perhaps we'reapproaching a high ridge, on the other side of which lie clouds thatcut away the farther view. Or else--no, hang it! the world seems toend right there, with no clouds to veil it--nothing, only--what?"
He saw the girl pointing in alarm. She, too, was clearly stirred bythe appearance.
What to do? Stern felt indecision for the first time since he hadstarted on this long, adventurous journey. Shut off and descend?Impossible among those forests. Swing about and return? Not to bethought of. Keep on and meet perils perhaps undreamed of? Yes--at allhazards he would keep on.
And with a tightening of the jaw he drove the Pauillac onward, everonward--toward the empty space that yawned ahead.
"End o' the world?" thought he. "All right, the old machine is goodfor it, and so are we. Here goes!"