Fears and Hopes
I turned in my seat and grinned at Jim and he grinned back. This was
the first time that I had felt that life might still be worth living.
We were so near the north magnetic pole that a compass was almost
useless. I found myself thinking that I would be guided by the sun as
long as daylight lasted, and then suddenly realized that now the sun
was stationary in the heavens.
I knew there was not much chance of missing an island fourteen hundred
miles long if I flew anywhere in its general direction. I set a course
of north-north-east with the idea of striking land somewhere about the
settlement of Upernavik. I decided that it would be less likely to have
been affected by the catastrophe than Godhavn, the capital of North
Greenland. Godhavn was the largest town, but it was located on a small
island off the coast, and I thought it might have been swept away by
tidal waves. We found out later that every settlement on the coast had
disappeared, except Upernavik.
It must be remembered that the Greenland of those days was very
different from the present flourishing center of the world's government
and civilization. Eighty-six percent of its 826,000 square miles was
covered by an ice-cap which in some places was two thousand feet
thick. There were frowning cliffs coming down to the ocean's edge and
the center of the island was a high plateau. That was really all most
people knew about it.
It was entirely by accident that I knew a little more. I had once a
Danish mechanician working for me who had travelled from Iceland to
Greenland before he finally landed in New York looking for a job. There
is a mineral called _cryolite_ which is used in making a certain kind
of porcelain and is found only in Greenland. A Pennsylvania concern
held the mining concession and shipped the ore to Philadelphia.
Jens Jensen came down on one of their steamers and hired out as a
mechanician with the idea of getting a plane to fly back.
It seems he had discovered deposits of copper. He tried to interest me
in developing them and he told me about Greenland. At first I did not
believe him when he told of great stretches of country covered with
shrubs and flowering plants and dwarf trees. When he said that there
were four hundred varieties of plants and over a hundred types of
birds I was so openly skeptical that he gazed at me reproachfully and
then left the room. In a few minutes he came back with a volume of an
encyclopaedia open at the article on Greenland.
So Jensen was responsible for my knowing more about Greenland than most
people did. I knew there were about five hundred white people on the
island, as well as fifteen thousand natives. With radio warning of what
was about to happen, there was no reason why most of them should not
have retreated to the central plateau and have escaped destruction.
As we flew, hour after hour, without sight of land, I began to get
worried. The gasoline supply was getting low and there was nothing in
sight but the tumbling ocean. It finally dawned on me that I must have
set a course far south of the one I intended, unless Greenland had
disappeared beneath the waves.
I wrote a note and passed it to Jim, telling him that I had probably
made a mistake in direction and that I intended to turn at right angles
to our present course and fly directly north. He nodded his head in
approval after he had read the note, and I swept around in a wide curve
for a final desperate effort to reach land.
I am not sure what the result would have been if we had not got help.
I was staring steadily ahead when I felt a touch on my shoulder. I
glanced back and saw Jim pointing to an object in the sky a few miles
away, but approaching rapidly. For a moment I thought it was a bird,
and then I saw it was a gigantic Fokker monoplane. It circled above us
and I saw a man leaning out of the cabin window, making motions to us.
Jim handed me a piece of paper on which he had written, "I think he
wants us to follow them."
I silently nodded my head and started in their direction. As soon as
the observer noticed this he drew his head back into the cabin and the
last stage of our journey began.
Following the big Fokker was a simple matter, as long as our gas held
out. When an hour passed and then a second hour without sight of land,
I began to get nervous. If we dropped into the sea there was not much
chance of our being rescued.
When a blue haze appeared on the horizon and rapidly grew into a land
of great frowning mountains, I breathed a sigh of relief. Greenland
rose out of the ocean, with precipitous cliffs hundreds of feet high
against which we could see immense breakers dashing themselves into
spray.
* * * * *
We Start A Settlement
We continued to follow the Fokker, rising over range after range of
mountains. Some of the peaks must have been about eleven thousand feet
above the former sea level and stood out now bare and bleak with no
covering mantle of trees and vegetation. From the earliest history of
the world, they had been covered by the ice-cap, which had now melted.
There were great rivers and waterfalls in the valleys, and in sheltered
spots we could see masses of green which might be vegetation, though we
were too high in the air to distinguish details.
Suddenly Jim touched me on the arm and pointed ahead to a spot he had
been watching through field glasses. At first I could not see what had
attracted his attention in the wide valley down which a river flowed.
Then a moment later I saw houses.
The Fokker began to descend. We were passing over a fairly large
settlement and making for what was certainly a landing field. There
were hangars and dozens of planes in the open. Men began running toward
us as presently we taxied down the field.
They paid no attention to the big Fokker, which made a good landing a
hundred yards away, but raced toward us. Almost before we had stopped
I threw open the cabin door and Jim and I climbed out. We had felt for
some time the possibility that we were the only men left alive in the
world. Now the mere sight of other men had become a wildly exciting
adventure.
There was something familiar about the man nearest to us when we
landed. I looked at him again.
"Billy Matthews!" I shouted. "How did you get here?"
I had gone to college with Billy and we had been in the same company
in France. He had been connected with the government air mail service
during the past few years.
He threw his arm around my shoulders. "I was afraid you'd gone like
most of the boys, young fella." He stood off and looked me over. "You
look pretty fit," he said.
"Oh, I'm all right," I said impatiently. "I want to know what happened?
I've been stuck up in Labrador and don't know anything. This is Jimmy
Nelson, by the way. He was wireless operator where I was stationed."
The two men shook hands. Meanwhile a crowd had gathered around us.
"There's no time to talk about that now. You come with me and get a
little sleep, and then we'll have to put you to work."
I laughed. "All right. What kind of work?"
"Finding people who escaped the catastrophe and are now starving to
death.
"No, not here, of course. We have plenty of supplies and are getting
more all the time. This settlement is practically part of Upernavik.
The town proper was too near the coast to be quite safe. All of us
who could get away from the United States made for this point. The
scientists agreed that there would be more chance of escaping here than
any place else we could reach."
"How many got away?"
He shook his head. "No way of telling. People started in everything
that could fly and came down all over. Most of them are done for. Those
who succeeded in landing in out-of-the-way places are the ones we are
trying to rescue now."
"How many reached here?"
"About three thousand."
"Everybody else in the United States dead?"
"Most of them, I'm afraid, though we don't know definitely yet. There
are six hundred planes here, and we're using them to locate any people
still living. That is, we're using about half of them for that. The
others we have to use in getting fuel and supplies."
"Where are you getting them from?"
"Iceland and Spitzbergen. Neither island was seriously hurt. Of course
there was no danger of our starving, even if we hadn't been able to
get anything from outside. Greenland had a population of about twenty
thousand people. They could easily take care of us."
"What's happened to Europe? I suppose it wasn't hurt as badly as the
United States?"
Billy shook his head gravely. "We're not absolutely certain yet, of
course, but we think it's all gone except northern Norway, Sweden and
northern Russia."
By this time we had reached a house that had apparently not been
damaged by the earthquakes. It was curious to see furniture again and
a bed with mattresses and sheets. I wanted to hear more, but Billy
insisted that we must get some sleep before we did anything else. I was
inclined to rebel, but it did no good.
* * * * *
A New Danger
"There's something I didn't intend to tell you until tomorrow. We have
a few astronomers and scientists here, and they brought some of their
instruments. The seismographs have been acting funny for the past
forty-eight hours."
"Well, what about it? What's another earthquake after all we've been
through?" I asked flippantly.
Billy remained grave. "It's something more than that, but what we don't
know. Two days ago the seismographs began to record a steady vibration
which has been increasing in intensity hour by hour. We're probably all
right for the next twelve hours. After that--" he paused significantly.
"Anyhow, I want you fellows to get three hours' sleep. You'll need to
be in good shape. I'll call you if things get worse."
I did not realize how tired I was until I threw myself on the bed. I
had a vivid dream of hunting lions in Africa and wounding one. The lion
was not killed and springing at me, caught my shoulder in his jaws. He
was shaking me to and fro when I awoke and found Billy standing over me.
"I thought I'd never get you awake. Get up and come to the flying
field."
I was suddenly conscious of a trembling beneath me, as if I were on the
deck of a boat near the engine. Jim was already up and we both looked
questioningly at Billy's grave face.
"What is it?" I asked.
"Possibly a new cataclysm that will wipe all surviving human beings
from the face of the earth. You know about as much as any of us."
By this time I was wide awake. "What are we to do when we get to the
flying field?"
"There is a dispute among the fliers as to whether it would be better
to take to the air in the machines with as many passengers as they can
carry, or wait developments here with the planes sheltered as much as
possible. They want your advice."
A few minutes later we were making our way to the center of a
gesticulating crowd of men. The majority seemed to think that the best
thing to do was to take to the air and trust to luck that there would
be no wind storms, as there had been during the previous calamity.
I had done considerable writing on aeronautics and had a certain
reputation as an expert. Both parties had agreed that my decision as to
the best course of action would be accepted by all concerned.
I stood there bracing my feet firmly as the trembling of the earth
increased and the rumbling became louder. I looked at the sky which had
become overcast with fast hurrying clouds. If any sky ever indicated
wind, that one did. I made my decision.
"Get the planes to sheltered valleys immediately. We won't be safe on
land, but we'll be safer than we would be in the air, with the wind
that's coming. Quick! There's no time to waste."
The crowd scattered, some of them joyously and more with sullen
resentment expressed in their gloomy faces.
Jim and I hurried over to our place. The wind was rapidly rising as I
started the motor, but it was a relief to get in the air away from the
swaying earth.
We flew over the town and followed a number of other planes to make a
rather hazardous landing in a narrow transverse valley which was almost
like a ravine. The precipitous sides rose perpendicularly and it would
be a bad place to be in a cloud-burst, but it afforded almost perfect
shelter from wind. There was a chance that the rocky walls might
precipitate themselves on us if the earth tremblings became much more
violent.
The other aviators gathered around and we consulted as to the next
thing to do. The planes were as safe as they could be anywhere, but
none of us liked the idea of staying in the valley ourselves.
Finally after considerable discussion, one of the men who had his wife
and a ten-year-old youngster with him announced, "You fellows can do
what you want to, but it looks to me as if hell was going to break
loose any minute now. If I get killed, it's going to be on top of this
mountain instead of underneath it."
"There's nothing more we can do here now," I answered. "I guess we'd
better all try to reach the top before things get any worse."
It was a hard climb, especially for the women, most of whom were pretty
badly frightened. Both men and women were a selected lot, but all
had been through so much recently that nerves had gone back on them.
Besides, it was a very terrifying situation.
* * * * *
A New World Arises
We had got used to the constant light and heat of the sun. It was
now covered by heavy clouds which were scurrying across the sky at
hurricane speed. They had become so heavy and dark that we could
hardly see one another a few feet apart. All heat from the sun seemed
to have been shut off and the temperature had fallen so rapidly that we
were suffering from the cold.
The roaring of the wind was now so loud that we could not hear each
other's voices, unless we shouted. The trembling and swaying of the
earth was becoming more pronounced every minute, and some of the people
actually became seasick.
Jim and I lay flat on our faces on the highest point we could reach.
The swaying of the earth had made even my stomach feel a little uneasy.
My scientific ardor was momentarily dampened by my physical discomfort.
Therefore Jim got the first glimpse of what was happening.
"Good Lord, look!" he suddenly exclaimed in an awed voice.
I raised my head and then rubbed my eyes. The whole central Greenland
plateau seemed to be rapidly sinking, and all around the horizon great
mountain ranges were lifting themselves toward the sky. We were lying
on a rock, two infinitely small insects, watching a new continent being
born.
As far as scientists have since been able to determine, the central
Greenland plateau was not lowered, but the effect was caused by the
entire surrounding region being forced out of the ocean high into
the air. Then we did not know what was happening. It was at least a
week later before the first trip in a plane showed us that the entire
ocean floor, extending from Labrador to Norway and northward to the
pole, had been elevated to an average height of ten thousand feet
above sea level. The continent thus formed is the seat of present day
civilization.
The swaying of the earth gradually ceased and all went back to the
town. Again we took hope that the worst was over and we were going to
survive. This time, our faith seems to have been justified. The final
upheaval was a successful effort of the mass of the earth to attain a
position of equilibrium. Five years have passed, and there have been no
evidences of further convulsions.
We have organized our life on the assumption that terrestrial
conditions are now reasonably stable. Our country is a great island
extending from the region of the former Ural mountains to the former
Hudson Bay. It includes northern Russia, Finland, northern Norway and
Sweden, Iceland and Greenland and part of Canada. It extends northward
to the pole and it is bounded on all sides by the great mountain
ranges which rose from the sea.
Our civilization is largely English speaking, and the seat of
government is Upernavik in Greenland. Our population is small,
considering the geographical extent of the country, and we are
encouraging in every way the production of large families.
The catastrophe which destroyed our old world was so overwhelming that
it is impossible to grieve over the smaller things that we have lost.
We are all working cheerfully to build a better world.
The world we are living in is a very interesting one. Even the most
adventurous among us have learned little about it as yet. The entire
Pacific region has never been visited since the moon crashed. Jim and
I often speculate about the conditions on the other side of the earth.
We are having a huge metallic dirigible constructed, and when it is
completed we intend to go on an exploring expedition. We expect to be
the first to look upon the destroyed world.
Of course, no one can tell what dangers we may encounter, or even
whether we will survive. It is for that reason I have related our
experiences at the time of the great catastrophe, so they may be
preserved in case neither Jim nor I return.
THE END.