FINDING THE BIPLANE
The way up the shores of Narragansett Bay was full of
experiences for them both. Animal life revealed itself far more
abundantly here than along the open sea.
"Some strange blight or other must lie in the proximity of that
terrific maelstrom," judged Stern, "something that repels all the
larger animals. But skirting this bay, there's life and to spare. How
many deer have we seen to-day? Three? And one bull-buffalo! With any
kind of a gun, or even a revolver, I could have had them all. And that
big-muzzled, shaggy old moose we saw drinking at the pool, back there,
would have been meat for us if we had had a rifle. No danger of
starving here, Beatrice, once we get our hands on something that'll
shoot again!"
The night they camped on the way, Stern kept constant guard by the
fire, in case of possible attack by wolves or other beasts. He slept
only an hour, when the girl insisted on taking his place; but when the
sun arose, red and huge through the mists upon the bay, he started out
again on the difficult trail as strong and confident as though he had
not kept nine hours of vigil.
Everywhere was change and desolation. As the travelers came into a
region which had at one time been more densely populated, they began
to find here and there mournful relics of the life that once had
been--traces of man, dim and all but obliterated, but now and then
puissant in their revocation of the distant past.
Twice they found the ruins of villages--a few vague hollows in the
earth, where cellars had been, hollows in which huge trees were
rooted, and where, perhaps, a grass-grown crumble of disintegrated
brick indicated the one-time presence of a chimney. They discovered
several farms, with a few stunted apple-trees, the distant descendants
of orchard growths, struggling against the larger forest strength, and
with perhaps a dismantled well-curb, a moss-covered fireplace or a few
bits of iron that had possibly been a stove, for all relics of the
other age. Mournful were the long stone walls, crumbling down yet
still discernible in places--walls that had cost the labor of
generations of farmers and yet now lay useless and forgotten in the
universal ruin of the world.
On the afternoon of the fifth day since having left their lean-to by
the shore of Long Island Sound, they came upon a canyon which split
the hills north of the site of Greenwich, a gigantic "fault" in the
rocks, richly striated and stratified with rose and red and umber, a
great cleft on the other side of which the forest lay somber and
repellent in the slanting rays of the September sun.
"By Jove, whatever it was that struck the earth," said Stern, "must
have been good and plenty. The whole planet seems to be ripped up and
broken and shattered. No wonder it knocked down New York and killed
everybody and put an end to civilization. Why, there's ten cubic miles
of material gouged out right here in sight; here's a regular Panama
Canal, or bigger, all scooped out in one piece! What the devil could
have happened?"
There was no answer to the question. After an hour spent in studying
the formations along the lip of the cleft they made a detour eastward
to the shore, crossed the fjord that ran into the canyon, and again
kept to the north. Soon after this they struck a railroad embankment,
and this they followed now, both because it afforded easier travel
than the shore, which now had grown rocky and broken, and also because
it promised to guide them surely to the place they sought.
It was on the sixth day of their exploration that they at last
penetrated the ruins of Providence. Here, as in New York, pavements
and streets and squares were all grassed over and covered with pines
and elms and oaks, rooting among the stones and shattered brickwork
that lay prone upon the earth. Only here or there a steel or concrete
building still defied the ravages of time.
"The wreckage is even more complete here than on Manhattan Island,"
Stern judged as he and the girl stood in front of the ruins of the
post-office surveying the debris. "The smaller area, of course, would
naturally be covered sooner with the inroads of the forest. I doubt
whether there's enough left in the whole place to be of any real
service to us."
"To-morrow will be time enough to see," answered the girl. "It's too
late now for any more work to-day."
They camped that night in an upper story of the Pequot National Bank
Building on Hampstead Street. Here, having cleared out the bats and
spiders, they made themselves an eerie secure from attack, and slept
long and soundly. Dawn found them at work among the overgrown ruins,
much as--three months before--they had labored in the Metropolitan
Tower and about it. Less, however, remained to salvage here. For the
smaller and lighter types of buildings had preserved far less of the
relics of civilization than had been left in the vast and solid
structures of New York.
In a few places, none the less, they still came upon the little piles
of the gray ash that marked where men and women had fallen and died;
but these occurred only in the most sheltered spots. Stern paid no
attention to them. His energies and his attention were now fixed on
the one task of getting skins, arms, ammunition and supplies. And
before nightfall, by a systematic looting of such shops as
remained--perhaps not above a score in all could even be entered--the
girl and he had gathered more than enough to last them on their way to
Boston. One find which pleased him immensely was a dozen sealed glass
jars of tobacco.
"As for a pipe," said he, "I can make that easily enough. What's more
I will!" More still, he did, that very evening, and the gloom was
redolent again of good smoke. Thereafter he slept as not for a long,
long time.
They spent the next day in fashioning new garments and sandals; in
putting to rights the two rifles Stern had chosen from the basement of
the State armory, and in making bandoliers to carry their supply of
cartridges. The possession of a knife once more, and of steel
wherewith readily to strike fire, delighted the man enormously. The
scissors they found in a hardware-shop, though rusty, enabled him to
trim his beard and hair. Beatrice hailed a warped hard-rubber comb
with joy.
But the great discovery still awaited them, the one supreme find which
in a moment changed every plan of travel, opened the world to them,
and at a single stroke increased their hopes ten thousandfold--the
discovery of the old Pauillac monoplane!
They came upon this machine, pregnant with such vast possibilities, in
a concrete hangar back of the Federal courthouse on Anderson Street.
The building attracted Stern's attention by its unusual state of
preservation. He burst in one of the rusted iron shutters and climbed
through the window to see what might be inside.
A moment later Beatrice heard a cry of astonishment and joy.
"Great Heavens!" the man exclaimed, appearing at the window. "Come in!
Come in--see what I've found!"
And he stretched out his hands to help her up and through the
aperture.
"What is it, boy? More arms? More--"
"An aeroplane! Good God, think o' that, will you?"
"An aeroplane? But it's all to pieces, of course, and--"
"Come on in and look at it, I say!" Excitedly he lifted her through
the window. "See there, will you? Isn't that the eternal limit? And to
think I never even thought of trying to find one in New York!"
He gestured at the dust-laden old machine that, forlorn and in
sovereign disrepair, stood at the other end of the hangar. Together
they approached it.
"If it will work," the man exclaimed thickly; "_if it will only
work--_"
"But will it?" the girl exclaimed, her eyes lighting with the
excitement of the find, heart beating fast at thought of what it might
portend. "Can you put it in shape, boy? Or--"
"I don't know. Let me look! Who knows? Maybe--"
And already he was kneeling, peering at the mechanism, feeling the
frame, the gear, the stays, with hands that trembled more than ever
they had trembled since their great adventure had begun.
As he examined the machine, while Beatrice stood by, he talked to
himself.
"Good thing the framework is aluminum," said he, "or it wouldn't be
worth a tinker's dam after all this time. But as it is, it's taken no
harm that I can see. Wire braces all gone, rusted out and disappeared.
Have to be rewired throughout, if I can find steel wire; if not, I'll
use braided leather thongs. Petrol tank and feed pipe O. K. Girder
boom needs a little attention. Steering and control column
intact--they'll do!"
Part by part he handled the machine, his skilled eye leaping from
detail to detail.
"Canvas planes all gone, of course. Not a rag left; only the frame.
But, no matter, we can remedy that. Wooden levers, skids, and so on,
gone. Easily replaced. Main thing is the engine. Looks as though it
had been carefully covered, but, of course, the covering has rotted
away. No matter, we'll soon see. Now, this carbureter--"
His inspection lasted half an hour, while the girl, lost among so many
technicalities, sat down on the dusty concrete floor beside the
machine and listened in a kind of dazed admiration.
He gave her, finally, his opinion.
"This machine _will go_ if properly handled," said he, rising
triumphantly and slapping the dust off his palms. "The chassis needs
truing up, the equilibrator has sagged out of plumb, and the ailerons
have got to be readjusted, but it's only a matter of a few days at the
outside before she'll be in shape.
"The main thing is the engine, and so far as I can judge, that's
pretty nearly O. K. The magneto may have to be gone over, but that's a
mere trifle. Odd, I never thought of either finding one of these
machines in New York, or building one! When I think of all the weary
miles we've tramped it makes me sick!"
"I know," she answered; "but how about fuel? And another thing--have
you ever operated one? Could you--"
"Run one?" He laughed aloud. "I'm the man who first taught Carlton
Holmes to fly--you know Holmes, who won the Gordon-Craig cup for
altitude record in 1916. I built the first--"
"I know, dear; but Holmes was killed at Schenectady, you remember, and
this machine is different from anything you're used to, isn't it?"
Beatrice asked.
"It won't be when I'm through with it! I tell you, Beatrice, we're
going to fly. No more hiking through the woods or along beaches for
us. From now on we travel in the air--and the world opens out to us as
though by magic.
"Distance ceases to mean anything. The whole continent is ours. If
there's another human creature on it we find him! And if there isn't
then, perhaps we may find some in Asia or in Europe, who knows?"
"You mean you'd dare to attack the Atlantic with a patched-up machine
more than a thousand years old?"
"I mean that eventually I can and will build one that'll take us to
Alaska, and so across the fifty-mile gap from Cape Prince of Wales to
East Cape. The whole world lies at our feet, girl, with this new idea,
this new possibility in mind!"
She smiled at his enthusiasm.
"But fuel?" asked she, practical even in her joy. "I don't imagine
there's any gasoline left now, do you? A stuff as volatile as that,
after all these centuries? What metal could contain it for a thousand
years?"
"There's alcohol," he answered. "A raid on the ruins of a few saloons
and drug-stores will give me all I need to carry me to Boston, where
there's plenty, never fear. A few slight adjustments of the engine
will fit it for burning alcohol. And as for the planes, good stout
buckskin, well sewn together and stretched on the frames, will do the
trick as well as canvas--better, maybe."
"But--"
"Oh, what a little pessimist it is to-day!" he interrupted. "Always
coming at me with objections, eh?" He took her in his arms and kissed
her. "I tell you Beta, this is no pipe-dream at all, or anything like
it; the thing's reality--we're going to fly! But it'll mean the most
tremendous lot of sewing and stitching for you!"
"You're a dear!" she answered inconsequentially. "I do believe if the
whole world fell apart you could put it together again."
"With your help, yes," said he. "What's more, I'm going to--and a
better world at that than ever yet was dreamed of. Wait and see!"
Laughing, he released her.
"Well, now, we'll go to work," he concluded. "Nothing's accomplished
by mere words. Just lay hold of that lateral there, will you? And
we'll haul this old machine out where we can have a real good look at
her, what do yore say? Now, then, one, two, three--"