Despite his preoccupation with his errand, which was to find if
there were other signs of the continued activity of the strange
forces that had lowered the tower through the Fourth Dimension
into the dim and unrecorded years of aboriginal America, Arthur
could not escape the fascination of the sight that met his eyes. A
bright moon shone overhead and silvered the white sides of the tower,
while the brightly-lighted windows of the offices within glittered
like jewels set into the shining shaft.
From his position on the ground he looked into the dimness of the
forest on all sides. Black obscurity had gathered beneath the dark
masses of moonlit foliage. The tiny birch-bark teepees of the now
deserted Indian village glowed palely. Above, the stars looked
calmly down at the accusing finger of the tower pointing upward,
as if in reproach at their indifference to the savagery that reigned
over the whole earth.
Like a fairy tower of jewels the building rose. Alone among a
wilderness of trees and streams it towered in a strange beauty:
moonlit to silver, lighted from within to a mass of brilliant gems,
it stood serenely still.
Arthur, carrying his futile lantern about its base, felt his own
insignificance as never before. He wondered what the Indians must
think. He knew there must be hundreds of eyes fixed upon the strange
sight--fixed in awe-stricken terror or superstitious reverence upon
this unearthly visitor to their hunting grounds.
A tiny figure, dwarfed by the building whose base he skirted,
Arthur moved slowly about the vast pile. The earth seemed not to
have been affected by the vast weight of the tower.
Arthur knew, however, that long concrete piles reached far down to
bedrock. It was these piles that had sunk into the Fourth Dimension,
carrying the building with them.
Arthur had followed the plans with great interest when the
Metropolitan was constructed. It was an engineering feat, and in
the engineering periodicals, whose study was a part of Arthur's
business, great space had been given to the building and the methods
of its construction.
While examining the earth carefully he went over his theory of the
cause for the catastrophe. The whole structure must have sunk at
the same time, or it, too, would have disintegrated, as the other
buildings had appeared to disintegrate. Mentally, Arthur likened
the submergence of the tower in the oceans of time to an elevator
sinking past the different floors of an office building. All about
the building the other sky-scrapers of New York had seemed to
vanish. In an elevator, the floors one passes seem to rise upward.
Carrying out the analogy to its logical end, Arthur reasoned that the
building itself had no more cause to disintegrate, as the buildings
it passed seemed to disintegrate, than the elevator in the office
building would have cause to rise because its surroundings seemed
to rise.
Within the building, he knew, there were strange stirrings of
emotions. Queer currents of panic were running about, throwing
the people to and fro as leaves are thrown about by a current of
wind. Yet, underneath all those undercurrents of fear, was a rapidly
growing resolution, strengthened by an increasing knowledge of the
need to work.
Men were busy even then shifting all possible comfortable furniture
to a single story for the women in the building to occupy. The
men would sleep on the floor for the present. Beds of boughs could
be improvised on the morrow. At sunrise on the following morning
many men would go to the streams to fish, guarded by other men. All
would be frightened, no doubt, but there would be a grim resolution
underneath the fear. Other men would wander about to hunt.
There was little likelihood of Indians approaching for some days, at
least, but when they did come Arthur meant to avoid hostilities by
all possible means. The Indians would be fearful of their strange
visitors, and it should not be difficult to convince them that
friendliness was safest, even if they displayed unfriendly desires.
The pressing problem was food. There were two thousand people in
the building, soft-bodied and city-bred. They were unaccustomed
to hardship, and could not endure what more primitive people would
hardly have noticed.
They must be fed, but first they must be taught to feed
themselves. The fishermen would help, but Arthur could only hope
that they would prove equal to the occasion. He did not know what
to expect from them. From the hunters he expected but little. The
Indians were wary hunters, and game would be shy if not scarce.
The great cloud of birds he had seen at sunset was a hopeful
sign. Arthur vaguely remembered stories of great flocks of
wood-pigeons which had been exterminated, as the buffalo was
exterminated. As he considered the remembrance became more clear.
They had flown in huge flocks which nearly darkened the sky. As late
as the forties of the nineteenth century they had been an important
article of food, and had glutted the market at certain seasons of
the year.
Estelle had said the birds he had seen at sunset were
pigeons. Perhaps this was one of the great flocks. If it were really
so, the food problem would be much lessened, provided a way could be
found to secure them. The ammunition in the tower was very limited,
and a shell could not be found for every bird that was needed,
nor even for every three or four. Great traps must be devised, or
bird-lime might possibly be produced. Arthur made a mental note
to ask Estelle if she knew anything of bird-lime.
A vague, humming roar, altering in pitch, came to his ears. He
listened for some time before he identified it as the sound of the
wind playing upon the irregular surfaces of the tower. In the city
the sound was drowned by the multitude of other noises, but here
Arthur could hear it plainly.
He listened a moment, and became surprised at the number of
night noises he could hear. In New York he had closed his ears to
incidental sounds from sheer self-protection. Somewhere he heard
the ripple of a little spring. As the idea of a spring came into
his mind, he remembered Estelle's description of the deep-toned
roar she had heard.
He put his hand on the cold stone of the building. There was still
a vibrant quivering of the rock. It was weaker than before, but
was still noticeable.
He drew back from the rock and looked up into the sky. It seemed
to blaze with stars, far more stars than Arthur had ever seen in
the city, and more than he had dreamed existed.
As he looked, however, a cloud seemed to film a portion of the
heavens. The stars still showed through it, but they twinkled in
a peculiar fashion that Arthur could not understand.
He watched in growing perplexity. The cloud moved very swiftly. Thin
as it seemed to be, it should have been silvery from the moonlight,
but the sky was noticeably darker where it moved. It advanced toward
the tower and seemed to obscure the upper portion. A confused motion
became visible among its parts. Wisps of it whirled away from the
brilliantly lighted tower, and then returned swiftly toward it.
Arthur heard a faint tinkle, then a musical scraping, which became
louder. A faint scream sounded, then another. The tinkle developed
into the sound made by breaking glass, and the scraping sound became
that of the broken fragments as they rubbed against the sides of
the tower in their fall.
The scream came again. It was the frightened cry of a woman. A
soft body struck the earth not ten feet from where Arthur stood,
then another, and another.