WESTWARD HO!
Fate meant that they should live, those two lone wanderers on
the face of the great desolation; and, though night had gathered now
and all was cloaked in gloom, they landed with no worse than a hard
shake-up on a level strip of beach that edged the confines of the
unknown lake.
Exhausted by the strain and the long fight with death, chilled by that
sojourn in the upper air, drenched and stiffened and half dead, they
had no strength to make a camp.
The most that they could do was drag themselves down to the water's
edge and--finding the water fresh, not salt--drink deeply from
hollowed palms. Then, too worn-out even to eat, they crawled under the
shelter of the biplane's ample wings, and dropped instantly into the
long and dreamless sleep of utter weariness.
Mid-morning found them, still lame and stiff but rested, cooking
breakfast over a cheery fire on the beach near the machine. Save for
here and there a tree that had blown down in the forest, some dead
branches scattered on the sands, and a few washed-out places where the
torrent of yesterday's rain had gullied the earth, nature once more
seemed fair and calm.
The full force of the terrific wind-storm had probably passed to
northward; this land where they now found themselves--whatever it
might be--had doubtless borne only a small part of the attack. But
even so, and even through the sky gleamed clear and blue and sunlit
once again, Stern and the girl knew the hurricane had been no ordinary
tempest.
"It must have been a cyclone, nothing less," judged the engineer, as
he finished his meal and reached for his comforting pipe. "And God
knows where it's driven us to! So far as judging distances goes, in a
hurricane like that it's impossible. This may be any one of the Great
Lakes; and, again, it may not. For all we know, we may be up in the
Hudson Bay region somewhere. This may be Winnipeg, Athabasca, or Great
Slave. With the kind of storms that happen nowadays, anything's
possible."
"Nothing matters, after all," the girl assured him, "except that we're
alive 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't
worry! If we find alcohol, we're all right, anyhow. If not, we're
better off than we were after the maelstrom almost got us, at any
rate. 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, little
girl. Don't worry--everything will come right in the end."
Reassured, she sat before the fire, and for an hour or more they drew
maps and diagrams in the sand, made plans, and laid out their next
step in this long campaign against the savage power of a deserted
world.
At last, their minds made up, they wheeled the plane back to the
forest, where Stern cut out among the trees a space for its
protection. And, leaving it here, covered with branches of the
thick-topped fern-tree, they took provisions and once more set out on
their exploration.
But this time they had an ax and their two rifles, and as they strode
northward 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 wandered
among the debris. "This is certainly one of the Great Lakes, though
which one, of course, we can't tell as yet. And now if we can round up
some alcohol we'll be on our way before very long."
They found no alcohol, for the only ruin where drugs or liquors had
evidently been sold had caved in, a mass of shattered brickwork,
smashing every bottle in the place. Stern found many splintered shards
of glass; but that was all, so far as fuel was concerned. He
discovered something else, however, that proved of tremendous
value--the wreck of a printing-office.
Presses and iron of all kind had gone to pieces, but some of the
larger lead types and quads still were recognizable. And, the crucial
thing, he turned up a jagged bit of stereotype-sheet from under the
protection of a concrete plinth that had fallen into the cellar.
All corroded and discolored though it was, he still could make out a
few letters.
"A newspaper head, so help me!" he exclaimed, as with a trembling
finger he pointed the letters out to Beatrice: "Here's an 'H'--here's
'mbur'--here's 'aily,' and 'ronicl'! Eh, what? 'Chronicle,' it must
have 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 lake
that I know of used to be Hamburg, New York. I ought to remember. I
drew 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 be
Erie. Now, if I'm correct, just back up there on that hill we'll find
the remains of the railway cut, and less than ten miles north of here
lies all that's left of Buffalo. Some luck, eh? Cast away, only
fifteen miles or so from a place like that. And we might have gone to
Great Bear Lake, or to--h-m!--to any other place, for all the cyclone
cared.
"Well, come on now, let's see if the railway cut is still there, and
my old bridge; and if so, it's Buffalo for ours!"
It was all as he had said. The right-of-way of the railroad still
showed distinctly, in spite of the fact that ties and rails had long
since vanished. Of the bridge nothing was left but some rusted steel
stringers lying entangled about the disintegrated concrete piers. But
Stern viewed them with a melancholy pride and interest--his own
handiwork in the very long ago.
They had no time, however, for retrospection; but, once more taking
the shore, kept steadily northward. And before noon they reached the
debris of Buffalo, stark and deserted by the lake where once its busy
commerce and its noisy life had thronged. By four o'clock that
afternoon they had collected fuel enough for the plane to do that
distance on, and more. Late that night they were again back at the
spot where they had landed the night before.
And here, in high spirits and with every hope of better fortune now to
follow evil, they cooked their meal and spent an hour in planning
their next move, then slept the sleep of well-earned rest.
They had now decided to abandon the idea of visiting Boston. This
seeming 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's
no life to be found there: On the other hand, if we strike for the
West there's at least a chance of running across survivors. If we
don't find them there, then we probably sha'n't find them anywhere. In
Chicago we can live and restock for further explorations, and as for
locating a telescope, the University of Chicago ruins are as promising
as those of Harvard. Chicago, by all means!"
They set out at nine o'clock, and, having made a good start, reached
Buffalo by twenty minutes past, flying easily along the shore at not
more than five hundred feet elevation.
Gaily the lake sparkled and wimpled in the morning sun, unvexed now by
any steamer's prow, unshaded by any smoke from cities or roaring mills
along its banks.
Despite the lateness of the season, the morning was warm; a mild
breeze swayed the treetops and set the little whitecaps foaming here
and there over the broad expanse of blue. Beatrice and Stern felt the
joy 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 a
brook that they could almost leap across. The rapids now were but a
dreary waste of blackened rocks, and the Falls themselves, dry save
for a desolate trickle down past Goat Island, presented a spectacle of
death--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 and
the great Falls which for uncounted centuries had thundered to the
rush and tumult of the mighty waters could now lie mute and dry and
lifeless, saddened them both beyond measure.
And they were glad when, with a wide sweep of her wings, the Pauillac
veered to westward again along the north shore of Lake Erie and
settled into the long run of close on two hundred and fifty miles to
Detroit, where Stern counted on making his first stop.
Without mishap, yet without sighting a single indication of the
presence of man, they coasted down the shore and ate their dinner on
the banks of Lake Saint Clair, near the ruins of Windsor, with those
of Detroit on the opposite side. For some reason or other, impossible
to solve, the current now ran northward toward Huron, instead of south
to Erie. But this phenomenon they could do little more than merely
note, 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 necessary
adjustment of the air-feed in the carburetor. "And here's hoping
there'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 from
Indiana out through Nebraska. But do you know, Allan, if it should
come right down to meeting any of our own kind of people--savages, of
course, I mean, but white--I really believe I'd be awfully afraid of
them. Imagine white savages dressed in skins--"
"Like us!" interrupted Stern, laughing.
"And painted with woad, whatever woad is; I remember reading about it
in the histories of England; all the early Britons used it. And
carrying nice, knobby stone creeks to stave in our heads! It _would_
be nice to meet a hundred or a thousand of them, eh? Rather a
different matter from dealing with a horde of those anthropoid
creatures, I imagine."
Stern only smiled, then answered:
"Well, I'll take _my_ chances with 'em. Better a fight, say I, with my
own kind, than solitude like this--you and I all alone, girl, getting
old some time and dying with never a hand-clasp save perhaps such as
it may please fate to give us from whatever children are to be. But
come, come, girl. No time for gloomy speculations of trouble. In you
get now, and off we go--westward bound again."
Only half an hour out of Detroit it was that they first became aware
of some strange disturbance of the horizon, some inexplicable
appearance such as neither of them had ever seen, a phenomenon so
peculiar that, though both observed it at about the same time, neither
Stern could believe his own senses nor Beatrice hers.
For all at once it seemed to them the sky-line was drawing suddenly
nearer; it seemed that the horizon was approaching at high speed.
The dark, untrodden forest mass still stretched away, away, until it
vanished against the dim blue of the sky; but now, instead of that
meeting-line being forty miles off, it seemed no farther than twenty,
and minute by minute it indubitably was rushing toward them with a
speed equal to their own.
Stern, puzzled and alarmed at this unusual sight, felt an impulse to
slow, to swerve, to test the apparition in some way; but second
thought convinced him it must be deception of some sort.
"Some peculiar state of the atmosphere," thought he, "or perhaps we're
approaching a high ridge, on the other side of which lie clouds that
cut away the farther view. Or else--no, hang it! the world seems to
end right there, with no clouds to veil it--nothing, only--what?"
He saw the girl pointing in alarm. She, too, was clearly stirred by
the appearance.
What to do? Stern felt indecision for the first time since he had
started on this long, adventurous journey. Shut off and descend?
Impossible among those forests. Swing about and return? Not to be
thought of. Keep on and meet perils perhaps undreamed of? Yes--at all
hazards he would keep on.
And with a tightening of the jaw he drove the Pauillac onward, ever
onward--toward the empty space that yawned ahead.
"End o' the world?" thought he. "All right, the old machine is good
for it, and so are we. Here goes!"