"Wrecked? It looks that way," the engineer made answer, with a strong effort holding his emotions in control. "Why not be frank about this?
You"d better make up your mind at once to accept the very worst. I see no signs of anything else."
"The worst? You mean--"
"I mean just what we see out there. You can interpret it as well as I."
Again the silence while they looked, with emotions that could find no voicing in words. Instinctively the engineer pa.s.sed an arm about the frightened girl and drew her close to him.
"And the last thing I remember," whispered she, "was just--just after you"d finished dictating those Taunton Bridge specifications. I suddenly felt--oh, so sleepy! Only for a minute I thought I"d close my eyes and rest, and then--then--"
"_This?_"
She nodded.
"Same here," said he. "What the deuce _can_ have struck us? Us and everybody--and everything? Talk about your problems! Lucky I"m sane and sound, and--and--"
He did not finish, but fell once more to studying the incomprehensible prospect.
Their view was towards the east, but over the river and the reaches of what had once upon a time been Long Island City and Brooklyn, as familiar a scene in the other days as could be possibly imagined. But now how altered an aspect greeted them!
"It"s surely all wiped out, all gone, gone into ruins," said Stern slowly and carefully, weighing each word. "No hallucination about _that_." He swept the sky-line with his eyes, that now peered keenly out from beneath those bushy brows. Instinctively he brought his hand up to his breast. He started with surprise.
"What"s this?" he cried. "Why, I--I"ve got a full yard of whiskers. My good Lord! Whiskers on _me?_ And I used to say--"
He burst out laughing. At his beard he plucked with merriment that jangled horribly on the girl"s tense nerves. Suddenly he grew serious.
For the first time he seemed to take clear notice of his companion"s plight.
"Why, _what_ a time it must have been!" cried he. "Here"s some calculation all cut out for me, all right. But--you can"t go that way, Miss Kendrick. It--it won"t do, you know. Got to have something to put on. Great Heavens what a situation!"
He tried to peel off his remnant of a coat, but at the merest touch it tore to shreds and fell away. The girl restrained him.
"Never mind," said she, with quiet, modest dignity. "My hair protects me very well for the present. If you and I are all that"s left of the people in the world, this is no time for trifles."
A moment he studied her. Then he nodded, and grew very grave.
"Forgive me," he whispered, laying a hand on her shoulder. Once more he turned to the window and looked out.
"So then, it"s all gone?" he queried, speaking as to himself. "Only a skysc.r.a.per standing here or there? And the bridges and the islands--all changed.
"Not a sign of life anywhere; not a sound; the forests growing thick among the ruins? A dead world if--if all the world is like this part of it! All dead, save _you_ and _me!_"
In silence they stood there, striving to realize the full import of the catastrophe. And Stern, deep down in his heart, caught some glimmering insight of the future and was glad.
CHAPTER III
ON THE TOWER PLATFORM
Suddenly the girl started, rebelling against the evidence of her own senses, striving again to force upon herself the belief that, after all, it _could not_ be so.
"No, no, no!" she cried. "This can"t be true. It mustn"t be. There"s a mistake somewhere. This simply _must_ be all an illusion, a dream!
"If the whole world"s dead, how does it happen _we"re_ alive? How do we know it"s dead? Can we see it all from here? Why, all we see is just a little segment of things. Perhaps if we could know the truth, look farther, and know--"
He shook his head.
"I guess you"ll find it"s real enough," he answered, "no matter how far you look. But, just the same, it won"t do any harm to extend our radius of observation.
"Come, let"s go on up to the top of the tower, up to the observation-platform. The quicker we know all the available facts the better. Now, if I only had a telescope--!"
He thought hard a moment, then turned and strode over to a heap of friable disintegration that lay where once his instrument case had stood, containing his surveying tools.
Down on his ragged knees he fell; his rotten shreds of clothing tore and ripped at every movement, like so much water-soaked paper.
A strange, hairy, dust-covered figure, he knelt there. Quickly he plunged his hands into the rubbish and began pawing it over and over with eager haste.
"Ah!" he cried with triumph. "Thank Heaven, bra.s.s and lenses haven"t crumbled yet!"
Up he stood again. In his hand the girl saw a peculiar telescope.
"My "level," see?" he exclaimed, holding it up to view. "The wooden tripod"s long since gone. The fixtures that held it on won"t bother me much.
"Neither will the spirit-gla.s.s on top. The main thing is that the telescope itself seems to be still intact. Now we"ll see."
Speaking, he dusted off the eye-piece and the objective with a bit of rag from his coat-sleeve.
Beatrice noted that the bra.s.s tubes were all eaten and pitted with verdigris, but they still held firmly. And the lenses, when Stern had finished cleaning them, showed as bright and clear as ever.
"Come, now; come with me," he bade.
Out through the doorway into the hall he made his way while the girl followed. As she went she gathered her wondrous veil of hair more closely about her.
In this universal disorganization, this wreck of all the world, how little the conventions counted!
Together, picking their way up the broken stairs, where now the rust-bitten steel showed through the corroded stone and cement in a thousand places, they cautiously climbed.
Here, spider-webs thickly shrouded the way, and had to be brushed down. There, still more bats bung and chippered in protest as the intruders pa.s.sed.
A fluffy little white owl blinked at them from a dark niche; and, well toward the top of the climb, they flushed up a score of mud-swallows which had ensconced themselves comfortably along a broken bal.u.s.trade.
At last, however, despite all unforeseen incidents of this sort, they reached the upper platform, nearly a thousand feet above the earth.
Out through the relics of the revolving door they crept, he leading, testing each foot of the way before the girl. They reached the narrow platform of red tiling that surrounded the tower.
Even here they saw with growing amazement that the hand of time and of this maddening mystery had laid its heavy imprint.