PLANNING THE GREAT MIGRATION
Stern rigged a tripod for the powerful field-glasses he had
rescued from the Metropolitan Building, and by an ingenious addition
of a wooden tube and another lens carefully ground out of rock
crystal, succeeded in producing (on the right-hand barrel of the
binoculars) a telescope of reasonably high power. With this, of an
evening, he often made long observations, after which he would spend
hours figuring all over many sheets of the birch bark, which he then
carefully saved and bound up with leather strings for future
reference.
In Van's set of encyclopedias he found a fairly large celestial map
and thorough astronomic data. The results of his computations were of
vital interest to him.
He said to Beatrice one evening:
"Do you know, that wandering black patch in the sky moves in a regular
orbit of its own? It's a solid body, dark, irregular in outline, and
certainly not over five hundred miles above the surface of the earth."
"What can it be, dear?"
"I don't know yet. It puzzles me tremendously. Now, if it would only
appear in the daytime once in a while, we might be able to get some
information or knowledge about it; but, coming only at night, all it
records itself as is just a black, moving thing. I'm working on the
size of it now, making some careful studies. In a while I shall
probably know its area and mass and density. But what it is I cannot
say--not yet."
They both pondered a while, absorbed in wonder. At last the engineer
spoke again.
"Beta," said he, "there's another curious fact to note. The axis of
the earth itself has shifted more than six degrees, thirty minutes!"
"It has? Well--what about it?" And she went on with her platting of
reed cordage.
"You don't seem much concerned about it!"
"I'm not. Not in the least. It can shift all it wants to, for all of
me. What hurt does it do? Doesn't it run just as well that way?"
Stern looked at her a moment, then laughed.
"Oh, yes; it runs all right," he answered. "Only I thought the
announcement that the pole-star had thrown up its job might startle
you a bit. But I see it doesn't. So far as practical results go, it
accounts for the warmer climate and the decreased inclination to the
plane of the ecliptic; or, rather, the decreased--"
"Please, please, don't!" she begged. "There's nothing really wrong, is
there?"
"Well, that depends on how you define it. Probably an astronomer might
think there was something very much wrong. I make it that the orbit of
the earth has altered its relative length and width by--"
"No figures, Allan, there's a dear. You know I'm awfully bad at
arithmetic. Tell me what it means, won't you?"
"Well, it means, for one thing, that we've maybe spent a far longer
time on this earth since the cataclysm than we even dare suspect. It
may be that what we've been calculating as about a thousand years, is
twice that, or even five times that--no telling. For another thing,
I'm convinced by all these changes, and by the diminution of gravity
and by the accelerated rate of revolution of the earth--"
"Allan dear, please hand me those scissors, won't you?"
Stern laughed again.
"Here!" said he. "I guess I'm not much good as a lecturer. But I tell
you one thing I'm going to do, and that's a one best bet. I'm going to
have a try at some really big telescope before a year's out, and know
the truth of this thing!"
"A big telescope! Build one, you mean?"
"Not necessarily. All I need is a chance to make some accurate
observations, and I can find out all I need to know. Even though I
have been out of college for--let's see--"
"Fifteen hundred years, at a guess," she suggested.
"Yes, all of that. Even so, I remember a good bit of astronomy. And
I've got my mind set on peeking through a first-class tube. If the
earth has broken in two, or anything like that, and our part is
skyhooting away toward the unknown regions of outer space beyond the
great ring of the Milky Way and is getting into an unchartered place
in the universe--as it seems to be--why, we ought to have a good look
at things. We ought to know what's what, eh?
"Then there's the moon I want to investigate, too. No living man
except myself has even seen the side that's now turned toward the
earth. No telling what a good glass mightn't show."
"That's so, dear," she answered. "But where can you find the sort of
telescope you need?"
"In Boston--in Cambridge, rather. The Harvard observatory has the
biggest one within striking distance. What do you say to our making
our trial trip in the boat, up the Sound and around Cape Cod, to
Boston? We can spend a week there, then slant away for wherever we may
decide to pass the winter. How does that suit you, Beta?"
She put away her work, and for a moment sat looking in at the flames
that went leaping up the huge boulder chimney. The room glowed with
warmth and light that drove away the cheerlessness of a foggy, late
August drizzle.
"Do you really think we're wise to--to leave our home, with winter
coming on?" she asked at length, pensively, the firelight casting its
glow across her cheek and glinting in her eyes.
"Wise? Yes. We can't stay here, that's certain. And what is there to
fear out in the world? With our firearms and our knowledge of fire
itself, our science and our human intelligence, we're far more than a
match for all enemies, whether of the beast-world or of that race of
the Horde. I hate, in a way, to revisit the ruins of New York, for
more ammunition and canned stuffs. The place is to o ghastly, too
hideous, now, after the big fight.
"Boston will be a clean ground for us, with infinite resources. And as
I said before, there's the Cambridge observatory. It's only two or
three miles back in the forest, from the coast; maybe not more than
half a mile from some part of the Charles River. We can sail up, camp
on Soldiers' Field, and visit it easily. Why not?"
He sat down on the tiger-rug before the fire, near the girl. She drew
his head down into her lap; then, when he was lying comfortably, began
playing with his thick hair, as he loved so well to have her do.
"If you think it's all right, Allan," said she, "we'll go. I want what
you want."
"That's my good girl!" exclaimed the engineer. "We'll be ready to
start in a few days now. The boat's next thing to finished. What with
the breadfruit, smoked steer and buffalo meat, hams and canned goods
now on our shelves, we've certainly got enough supplies to stock her a
two months' trip.
"Even with less, we'd be safe in starting. You see, the world's lain
untouched by mankind for so many centuries that all the blighting
effect of man's folly and greed and general piracy has vanished.
"The soil's got back to its natural state, animal life abounds, and so
long as I still have a good supply of cartridges, we can live almost
anywhere. Anthropoids? I don't think there's much danger. Oh, yes, I
remember the line of blue smoke we saw yesterday over the hills to
westward; but what does that prove? Lightning may have started a
fire--there's no telling. And we can't always stay here, Beta, just
because there may be dangers out yonder!"
He flung one arm toward the vast night, beyond the panes where the
mist and storm were beating cheerlessly.
"No, we can't camp down here indefinitely. Now's the time to start. As
I say, we've got all of sixty days' of downright civilized food on
hand, for a good cruise in the Adventure. The chance of finding other
people somewhere is too precious not to make any risk worth while."
Silence fell between them for a few minutes. Each saw visions in the
flames. The man's thoughts dwelt, in particular, on this main factor
of a possible rediscovery of other human beings somewhere.
More than the girl, he realized the prime importance of this
possibility. Though he and she loved each other very dearly, though
they were all in all each to the other, yet he comprehended the
loneliness she felt rather than analyzed--the infinite need of man for
man, of woman for woman--the old social, group-instinct of the race
beginning to reassert itself even in their Eden.
Each of them longed, with a longing they hardly realized as yet, to
hear some other human voice, to see another face, clasp another hand
and again feel the comradeship of man.
During the past week or so, Stern had more than once caught himself
listening for some other sound of human life and activity. Once he had
found the girl standing on a wooded point among the pines, shading her
eyes with her hand and watching down-stream with an attitude of hope
which spoke more fluently than words. He had stolen quietly away,
saying nothing, careful not to break her mood. For he had understood
it; it had been his very own.
The mood expressed itself, at times, in long talks together of the
seeming dream-age when there had been so many millions of men and
women in the world. Beatrice and Stern found themselves dwelling with
a peculiar pleasure on memories and descriptions of throngs.
They would read the population statistics in Van's encyclopedia, and
wonder greatly at them, for now these figures seemed the unreal
chimeras of wild imaginings.
They would talk of the crowded streets, the "L" crushes and the jams
at the Bridge entrance; of packed cars and trains and overflowing
theaters; of great concourses they had seen; of every kind and
condition of affairs where thousands of their kind had once rubbed
elbows, all strangers to each other, yet all one vast kin and family
ready in case of need to succor one another, to use the collective
intelligence for the benefit of each.
Sometimes they indulged in fanciful comparisons, trying to make their
present state seem wholly blest.
"This is a pretty fine way to live, after all," Stern said one day,
"even if it is a bit lonesome at times. There's no getting up in the
morning and rushing to an office. It's a perpetual vacation! There are
no appointments to keeps no angry clients kicking because I can't make
water run up-hill or make cast-iron do the work of tool-steel. No
saloons or free-lunches, no subways to stifle the breath out of us, no
bills to pay and no bill collectors to dodge; no laws except the laws
of nature, and such as we make ourselves; no bores and no bad shows;
no politics, no yellow journals, no styles--"
"Oh, dear, how I'd like to see a milliner's window again!" cried
Beatrice, rudely shattering his thin-spun tissue of optimism. "These
skin-clothes, all the time, and no hats, and no chiffons and no--no
nothing, at all--! Oh, I never half appreciated things till they were
all taken away!"
Stern, feeling that he had tapped the wrong vein, discreetly withdrew;
and the sound of his calking-hammer from the beach, told that he was
expending a certain irritation on the hull of the Adventure.
One day he found a relic that seemed to stab him to the heart with a
sudden realization of the tremendous gap between his own life and that
which he had left.
Hunting in the forest, to westward of the bungalow, he came upon what
at first glance seemed a very long, straight, level Indian mound or
earthwork; but in a moment his trained eye told him it was a railway
embankment.
With an almost childish eagerness he hunted for some trace of the
track; and when, buried under earth-mold and rubbish, he found some
rotten splinters of metal, they filled him with mingled pleasure and
depression.
"My God!" he exclaimed, "is it possible that here, right where I
stand, countless thousands of human beings once passed at tremendous
velocity, bent on business and on pleasure, now ages long vanished and
meaningless and void? That mighty engines whirled along this bank,
where now the forest has been crowding for centuries? That all, all
has perished--forever?
"It shall not be!" he cried hotly, and flung his hands out in
passionate denial. "All shall be thus again! All shall return--only
far better! The world's death shall not, cannot be!"
Experiences such as these, leaving both of them increasingly irritated
and depressed as time went on, convinced Stern of the imperative
necessity for exploration. If human beings still existed anywhere in
the world, he and she must find them, even at the risk of losing life
itself. Years of migration, he felt, would not be too high a price to
pay for the reward of coming once again in contact with his own
species. The innate gregariousness of man was torturing them both.
Now that the hour of departure was drawing nigh, a strange exultation
filled them both--the spirit of conquest and of victory.
Together they planned the last details of the trip.
"Is the sail coming along all right, Beta?" asked Stern, the night
when they decided to visit Cambridge. "You expect to have it done in a
day or two?"
"I can finish it to-morrow. It's all woven now. Just as soon as I
finish binding one edge with leather strips, it'll be ready for you."
"All right; then we can get a good, early start, on Monday morning.
Now for the details of the freight."
They worked out everything to its last minutiae. Nothing was
forgotten, from ammunition to the soap which Stern had made out of
moose-fat and wood-ashes and had pressed into cakes; from
fishing-tackle and canned goods to toothbrushes made of stiff
vegetable fibers set in bone; from provisions even to a plentiful
supply of birch-bark leaves for taking notes.
"Monday morning we're off," Stern concluded, "and it will be the
grandest lark two people ever had since time began! Built and stocked
as the Adventure is, she's safe enough for anything from here to
Europe.
"Name the place you want to see, and it's yours. Florida? Bermuda?
Mediterranean? With the compass I've made and adjusted to the new
magnetic variations, and with the maps out of Van's set of books, I
reckon we're good for anything, including a trip around the world.
"The survivors will be surprised to see a fully stocked yawl putting
in to rescue them from savagery, eh? Imagine doing the Captain Cook
stunt, with white people for subjects!"
"Yes, but I'm not counting on their treating us the way Captain Cook
was; are you? And what if we shouldn't find anybody, dear? What then?"
"How can we help finding people? Could a billion and a half human
beings die, all at once, without leaving a single isolated group
somewhere or other?"
"But you never succeeded in reaching them with the wireless from the
Metropolitan, Allan."
"Never mind--they weren't in a condition to pick up my messages;
that's all. We surely must find somebody in all the big cities we can
reach by water, either along He coast or by running up the Mississippi
or along the St. Lawrence and through the lakes. There's Boston, of
course, and Philadelphia, New Orleans, San Francisco, St. Louis,
Chicago--dozens of others--no end of places!"
"Oh, if they're only not all like New York!"
"That remains to be seen. There's all of Europe, too, and Africa and
Asia--why, the whole wide world is ours! We're so rich, girl, that it
staggers the imagination--we're the richest people that have ever
lived, you and I. The 'pluses' in the old days owned their millions;
but we own--we own the whole earth!"
"Not if there's anybody else alive, dear."
"That's so. Well, I'll be glad to share it with 'em, for the sake of a
handshake and a 'howdy,' and a chance to start things going again. Do
you know, I rather count on finding a few scattered remnants of folk
in London, or Paris, or Berlin?
"Just the same as in our day, a handful of ragged shepherds descended
from the Mesopotamian peoples extinct save for them--were tending
their sheep at Kunyunjik, on those Babylonian ruins where once a
mighty metropolis stood, and where five million people lived and
moved, trafficked, loved, hated, fought, conquered, died--so now
to-day, perhaps, we may run across a handful of white savages
crouching in caves or rude huts among the debris of the Place de
l'Opera, or Unter den Linden, or--"
"And civilize them, Allan? And bring them back and start a colony and
make the world again? Oh, Allan, do you think we could?" she
exclaimed, her eyes sparkling with excitement.
"My plans include nothing less," he answered. "It's mighty well worth
trying for, at any rate. Monday morning we start, then, little girl."
"Sunday, if you say so."
"Impatient, now?" he laughed. "No, Monday will be time enough. Lots of
things yet to put in shape before we leave. And we'll have to trust
our precious crops to luck, at that. Here's hoping the winter will
bring nothing worse than rain. There's no help for it, whatever
happens. The larger venture calls us."
They sat there discussing many many other factors of the case, for a
long time. The fire burned low, fell together and dwindled to glowing
embers on the hearth.
In the red gloom Allan felt her vague, warm, beautiful presence.
Strong was she; vigorous, rosy as an Amazon, with the spirit and the
beauty of the great outdoors; the life lived as a part of nature's own
self. He realized that never had a woman lived like her.
Dimly he saw her face, so sweet, so gentle in its wistful strength,
shadowed with the hope and dreams of a whole race--the type, the
symbol, of the eternal motherhood.
And from his hair he drew her hand down to his mouth and kissed it;
and with a thrill of sudden tenderness blent with passion he knew all
that she meant to him--this perfect woman, his love, who sometime soon
was now to be his bride.