One shot sent it bounding and screaming with pain, out of view. Stern noted with satisfaction that blood followed its trail.
“Guess I haven’t forgotten how to shoot in all these x years!” he commented, stooping to examine the spoor. “That may come in handy later!”
Then, still wary and watchful, he continued his exploration.
He found that the city, as such, had entirely ceased to be.
“Nothing but lines and monstrous rubbish-heaps of ruins,” he sized up the situation, “traversed by lanes of forest and overgrown with every sort of vegetation.
“Every wooden building completely wiped out. Brick and stone ones practically gone. Steel alone standing, and that in rotten shape. Nothing at all intact but the few concrete structures.
“Ha! ha!” And he laughed satirically. “If the builders of the twentieth century could have foreseen this they wouldn’t have thrown quite such a chest, eh? And they talked of engineering!”
Useless though it was, he felt a certain pride in noting that the Osterhaut Building, on Seventeenth Street, had lasted rather better than the average.
“My work!” said he, nodding with grim satisfaction, then passed on.
Into the Subway he penetrated at Eighteenth Street, climbing with difficulty down the choked stairway, through bushes and over masses of ruin that had fallen from the roof. The great tube, he saw, was choked with litter.
Slimy and damp it was, with a mephitic smell and ugly pools of water settled in the ancient road-bed. The rails were wholly gone in places. In others only rotten fragments of steel remained.
A goggle-eyed toad stared impudently at him from a long tangle of rubbish that had been a train—stalled there forever by the final block-signal of death.
Through the broken arches overhead the rain and storms of ages had beaten down, and lush grasses flourished here and there, where sunlight could penetrate.
No human dust-heaps here, as in the shelter of the arcade. Long since every vestige of man had been swept away. Stern shuddered, more depressed by the sight here than at any other place so far visited.
“And they boasted of a work for all time!” whispered he, awed by the horror of it. “They boasted—like the financiers, the churchmen, the merchants, everybody! Boasted of their institutions, their city, their country. And now...”
Out he clambered presently, terribly depressed by what he had witnessed, and set to work laying in still more supplies from the wrecked shops. Now for the first time, his wonder and astonishment having largely abated, he began to feel the horror of this loneliness.
“No life here! Nobody to speak to—except the girl...” he exclaimed aloud, the sound of his own voice uncanny in that woodland street of death. “All gone, everything! My Heavens, suppose I didn’t have her? How long could I go on alone, and keep my mind?”
The thought terrified him. He put it resolutely away and went to work. Wherever he stumbled upon anything of value he eagerly seized it.
The labor, he found, kept him from the subconscious dread of what might happen to Beatrice or to himself if either should meet with any mishap. The consequences of either one dying, he knew, must be horrible beyond all thinking for the survivor.
Up Broadway he found much to keep—things which he garnered in the up-caught hem of his bearskin, things of all kinds and uses. He found a clay pipe—all the wooden ones had vanished from the shop—and a glass jar of tobacco.
These he took as priceless treasures. More jars of edibles he discovered, also a stock of rare wines. Coffee and salt he came upon. In the ruins of the little French brass-ware shop, opposite the Flatiron, he made a rich haul of cups and plates and a still serviceable lamp.
Strangely enough, it still had oil in it. The fluid hermetically sealed in, had not been able to evaporate.
At last, when the lengthening shadows in Madison Forest warned him that day was ending, he betook himself, heavy laden, once more back past the spring, and so through the path which already was beginning to be visible back to the shelter of the Metropolitan.
“Now for a great surprise for the girl!” thought he, laboriously toiling up the stair with his burden: “What will she say, I wonder, when she sees all these housekeeping treasures?” Eagerly he hastened.
But before he had reached the third story he heard a cry from above. Then a spatter of revolver-shots punctured the air.
He stopped, listening in alarm.
“Beatrice! Oh, Beatrice!” he hailed, his voice falling flat and stifled in those ruinous passages.
Another shot.
“Answer!” panted Stern. “What’s the matter now?”
Hastily he put down his burden, and, spurred by a great terror, bounded up the broken stairs.
Into their little shelter, their home, he ran, calling her name.
No reply came!
Stern stopped short, his face a livid gray.
“Merciful Heaven!” stammered he.
The girl was gone!
CHAPTER XI. A THOUSAND YEARS!
SICKENED with a numbing anguish of fear such as in all his life he had never known, Stern stood there a moment, motionless and lost.
Then he turned. Out into the hall he ran, and his voice, re-echoing wildly, rang through those long-deserted aisles.
All at once he heard a laugh behind him—a hail.
He wheeled about, trembling and spent. Out his arms went, in eager greeting. For the girl, laughing and flushed, and very beautiful, was coming down the stair at the end of the hall.
Never had the engineer beheld a sight so wonderful to him as this woman, clad in the Bengal robe; this girl who smiled and ran to meet him.
“What? Were you frightened?” she asked, growing suddenly serious, as he stood there speechless and pale. “Why—what could happen to me here?”
His only answer was to take her in his arms and whisper her name. But she struggled to be free.
“Don’t! you mustn’t!” she exclaimed. “I didn’t mean to alarm you. Didn’t even know you were here!”
“I heard the shots—I called—you didn’t answer. Then—”
“You found me gone? I didn’t hear you. It was nothing, after all. Nothing—much!”
He led her back into the room.
“What happened? Tell me!”
“It was really too absurd!”
“What was it?”
“Only this,” and she laughed again. “I was getting supper ready, as you see,” with a nod at their provision laid out upon the clean-brushed floor. “When—”
“Yes?”
“Why, a blundering great hawk swooped in through the window there, circled around, pounced on the last of our beef and tried to fly away with it.”
Stern heaved a sigh of relief. “So that was all?” asked he. “But the shots? And your absence?”
“I struck at him. He showed fight. I blocked the window. He was determined to get away with the food. I was determined he shouldn’t. So I snatched the revolver and opened fire.”
“And then?”
“That confused him. He flapped out into the hall. I chased him. Away up the stairs he circled. I shot again. Then I pursued. Went up two stories. But he must have got away through some opening or other. Our beef’s all gone!” And Beatrice looked very sober.
“Never mind, I’ve got a lot more stuff down-stairs. But tell me, did you wing him?”
“I’m afraid not,” she admitted. “There’s a feather or two on the stairs, though.”
“Good work!” cried he laughing, his fear all swallowed in the joy of having found her again, safe and unhurt. “But please don’t give me another such panic, will you? It’s all right this time, however.
“And now if you’ll just wait here and not get fighting with any more wild creatures, I’ll go down and bring my latest finds. I like your pluck,” he added slowly, gazing earnestly at her.