"Now for some power!" exclaimed the engineer. And with his lamp he went down to inspect the dynamos again and to assure himself that his belief was correct, his faith that one or two of them could be put into running order.
Three of the machines gave little promise, for water had dripped in on them and they were rusted beyond any apparent rehabilitation. The fourth, standing nearest Twenty-Third Street, had by some freak of chance been protected by a canvas cover.
This cover was now only a mass of rotten rags, but it had at least safeguarded the machine for so long that no very serious deterioration had set in.
Stern worked the better part of a week with such tools as he could find or make—he had to forge a wrench for the largest nuts—"taking down" the dynamo, oiling, filing, polishing and repairing it, part by part.
The commutator was in bad shape and the brushes terribly corroded. But he tinkered and patched, hammered and heated and filed away, and at last putting the machine together again with terrible exertion, decided that it would run.
"Steam now!" was his next watchword, when he had wired the dynamo to connect with the station on the roof. And this was on the eighth day since he had begun his labor.
An examination of the boiler-room, which he reached by moving a ton of fallen stone-work from the doorway into the dynamo-room, encouraged him still further. As he penetrated into this place, feeble-shining lamp held on high, eyes eager to behold the prospect, he knew that success was not far away.
Down in these depths, almost as in the interior of the great Pyramid of Gizeh—though the place smelled dank and close and stifling—time seemed to have lost much of its destructive power. He chose one boiler that looked sound, and began looking for coal.
Of this he found a plentiful supply, well-preserved, in the bunkers. All one afternoon he labored, wheeling it in a steel barrow and dumping it in front of the furnace.
Where the smoke-stack led to and what condition it was in he knew not. He could not tell where the gases of combustion would escape to; but this he decided to leave to chance.
He grimaced at sight of the rusted flues and the steam-pipes connecting with the dynamo-room-pipes now denuded of their asbestos packing and leaky at several joints.
A strange, gnome-like picture he presented as he poked and pried in those dim regions, by the dim rays of the lamp. Spiders, roaches and a great gray rat or two were his only companions—those, and hope.
"I don't know but I'm a fool to try and carry this thing out," said he, dubiously surveying the pipe. "I'm liable to start something here that I can't stop. Water-glasses leaky, gauges plugged up, safety-valve rusted into its seat—the devil!"
But still he kept on. Something drove him inexorably forward. For he was an engineer—and an American.
His next task was to fill the boiler. This he had to do by bringing water, two pails at a time from the spring. It took him three days.
Thus, after eleven days of heart-breaking lonely toil in that grimy dungeon, hampered for lack of tools, working with rotten materials, naked and sweaty, grimed, spent, profane, exhausted, everything was ready for the experiment—the strangest, surely, in the annals of the human race.
He lighted up the furnace with dry wood, then stoked it full of coal. After an hour and a half his heart thrilled with mingled fear and exultation at sight of the steam, first white, then blue and thin, that began to hiss from the leaks in the long pipe.
"No way to estimate pressure, or anything," remarked he. "It's bull luck whether I go to hell or not!" And he stood back from the blinding glare of the furnace. With his naked arm he wiped the sweat from his streaming forehead.
"Bull luck!" repeated he. "But by the Almighty, I'll send that Morse, or bust!"
Chapter XIV - The Moving Lights
*
Panting with exhaustion and excitement, Stern made his way back to the engine-room. It was a strangely critical moment when he seized the corroded throttle-wheel to start the dynamo. The wheel stuck, and would not budge.
Stern, with a curse of sheer exasperation, snatched up his long spanner, shoved it through the spokes, and wrenched.
Groaning, the wheel gave way. It turned. The engineer hauled again.
"Go on!" shouted the man. "Start! Move!"
With a hissing plaint, as though rebellious against this awakening after its age-long sleep, the engine creaked into motion.
In spite of all Stern's oiling, every journal and bearing squealed in anguish. A rickety tremble possessed the engine as it gained speed. The dynamo began to hum with wild, strange protests of racked metal. The ancient "drive" of tarred hemp strained and quivered, but held.
And like the one-hoss shay about to collapse, the whole fabric of the resuscitated plant, leaking at a score of joints, creaking, whistling, shaking, voicing a hundred agonized mechanic woes, revived in a grotesque, absurd and shocking imitation of its one-time beauty and power.
At sight of this ghastly resurrection, the engineer (whose whole life had been passed in the love and service of machinery) felt a strange and sad emotion.
He sat down, exhausted, on the floor. In his hand the lamp trembled. Yet, all covered with sweat and dirt and rust as he was, this moment of triumph was one of the sweetest he had ever known.
He realized that this was now no time for inaction. Much yet remained to be done. So up he got again, and set to work.
First he made sure the dynamo was running with no serious defect and that his wiring had been made properly. Then he heaped the furnace full of coal, and closed the door, leaving only enough draft to insure a fairly steady heat for an hour or so.
This done, he toiled back up to where Beatrice was eagerly awaiting him in the little wireless station on the roof.
In he staggered, all but spent. Panting for breath, wild-eyed, his coal-blackened arms stretching out from the whiteness of the bear-skin, he made a singular picture.
"It's going!" he exclaimed. "I've got current—it's good for a while, anyhow. Now—now for the test!"
For a moment he leaned heavily against the concrete bench to which the apparatus was clamped. Already the day had drawn close to its end. The glow of evening had begun to fade a trifle, along the distant skyline; and beyond the Palisades a dull purple pall was settling down.
By the dim light that filtered through the doorway, Beatrice looked at his deep-lined, bearded face, now reeking with sweat and grimed with dust and coal. An ugly face—but not to her. For through that mask she read the dominance, the driving force, the courage of this versatile, unconquerable man.
"Well," suddenly laughed Stern, with a strange accent in his voice, "well then, here goes for the operator in the Eiffel Tower, eh?"
Again he glanced keenly, in the failing light, at the apparatus there before him.
"She'll do, I guess," judged he, slipping on the rusted head-receiver. He laid his hand upon the key and tried a few tentative dots and dashes.
Breathless, the girl watched, daring no longer to question him. In the dielectric, the green sparks and spurts of living flame began to crackle and to hiss like living spirits of an unknown power.
Stern, feeling again harnessed to his touch the life-force of the world that once had been, exulted with a wild emotion. Yet, science-worshiper that he was, something of reverent awe tinged the keen triumph. A strange gleam dwelt within his eyes; and through his lips the breath came quick as he flung his very being into this supreme experiment.
He reached for the ondometer. Carefully, slowly, he "tuned up" the wave-lengths; up, up to five thousand metres, then back again; he ran the whole gamut of the wireless scale.
Out, ever out into the thickening gloom, across the void and vacancy of the dead world, he flung his lightnings in a wild appeal. His face grew hard and eager.
"Anything? Any answer?" asked Beatrice, laying a hand upon his shoulder—a hand that trembled.
He shook his head in negation. Again he switched the roaring current on; again he hurled out into ether his cry
of warning and distress, of hope, of invitation—the last lone call of man to man—of the last New Yorker to any other human being who, by the merest chance, might possibly hear him in the wreck of other cities, other lands. "S. O. S.!" crackled the green flame. "S. O. S.! S. O. S.!—"
Thus came night, fully, as they waited, as they called and listened; as, together there in that tiny structure on the roof of the tremendous ruin, they swept the heavens and the earth with their wild call—in vain.
Half an hour passed and still the engineer, grim as death, whirled the chained lightnings out and away.
"Nothing yet?" cried Beatrice at last, unable to keep silence any longer. "Are you quite sure you can't—"
The question was not finished.
For suddenly, far down below them, as though buried in the entrails of the earth, shuddered a stifled, booming roar.
Through every rotten beam and fiber the vast wreck of the building vibrated. Some wall or other, somewhere, crumbled and went crashing down with a long, deep droning thunder that ended in a sliding diminuendo of noise.
"The boiler!" shouted Stern.
Off he flung the head-piece. He leaped up; he seized the girl.
Out of the place he dragged her. She screamed as a huge weight from high aloft on the tower smashed bellowing through the roof, and with a shower of stones ripped its way down through the rubbish of the floors below, as easily as a bullet would pierce a newspaper.
The crash sent them recoiling. The whole roof shook and trembled like honey-combed ice in a spring thaw.
Down below, something rumbled, jarred, and came to rest.
Both of them expected nothing but that the entire structure would collapse like a card-house and shatter down in ruins that would be their death.
But though it swayed and quivered, as in the grasp of an earthquake, it held.
Stern circled Beatrice with his arm.
"Courage, now! Steady now, steady!" cried he.
The grinding, the booming of down-hurled stones and walls died away; the echoes ceased. A wind-whipped cloud of steam and smoke burst up, fanlike, beyond the edge of the roof. It bellied away, dim in the night, upon the stiff northerly breeze.
"Fire?" ventured the girl.
"No! Nothing to burn. But come, come; let's get out o' this anyhow. There's nothing doing, any more. All through! Too much risk staying up here, now."
Silent and dejected, they made their cautious way over the shaken roof. They walked with the greatest circumspection, to avoid falling through some new hole or freshly opened crevasse.
To Stern, especially, this accident was bitter. After nearly a fortnight's exhausting toil, the miserable fiasco was maddening.
"Look!" suddenly exclaimed the engineer, pointing. A vast, gaping canyon of blackness opened at their very feet—a yawning gash forty feet long and ten or twelve broad, with roughly jagged edges, leading down into unfathomed depths below.
Stern gazed at it, puzzled, a moment, then peered up into the darkness above.
"H-m!" said he. "One of the half-ton hands of the big clock up there has just taken a drop, that's all. One drop too much, I call it. Now if we—or our rooms—had just happened to be underneath? Some excitement, eh?"
They circled the opening and approached the tower wall. Stern picked up the rough ladder, which had been shaken down from its place, and once more set it to the window through which they were to enter.
But even as Beatrice put her foot on the first rung, she started with a cry. Stern felt the grip of her trembling hand on his arm.
"What is it?" exclaimed he.
"Look! Look!"
Immobile with astonishment and fear, she stood pointing out and away, to westward, toward the Hudson.
Stern's eyes followed her hand.
He tried to cry out, but only stammered some broken, unintelligible thing.
There, very far away and very small, yet clearly visible in swarms upon the inky-black expanse of waters, a hundred, a thousand little points of light were moving.
Chapter XV - Portents of War
*
Stern and Beatrice stood there a few seconds at the foot of the ladder, speechless, utterly at a loss for any words to voice the turmoil of confused thoughts awakened by this inexplicable apparition.
But all at once the girl, with a wordless cry, sank on her knees beside the vast looming bulk of the tower. She covered her face with both hands, and through her fingers the tears of joy began to flow.
"Saved—oh, we're saved!" cried she. "There are people—and they're coming for us!"
Stern glanced down at her, an inscrutable expression on his face, which had grown hard and set and ugly. His lips moved, as though he were saying something to himself; but no sound escaped them.
Then, quite suddenly, he laughed a mirthless laugh. To him vividly flashed back the memory of the flint spear-head and the gnawed leg-bone, cracked open so the marrow could be sucked out, all gashed with savage tooth-marks.
A certain creepy sensation began to develop along his spine. He felt a prickling on the nape of his neck, as the hair stirred there. Instinctively he reached for his revolver.
"So, then," he sneered at himself, "we're up against it, after all? And all my calculations about the world being swept clear, were so much punk? Well, well, this is interesting! Oh, I see it coming, all right—good and plenty—and soon!"
But the girl interrupted his ugly thoughts as he stood there straining his eyes out into the dark.
"How splendid! How glorious!" cried she. "Only to think that we're going to see people again! Can you imagine it?"
"Hardly."
"Why, what's the matter? You—speak as though you weren't—saved!"
"I didn't mean to. It's—just surprise, I guess."
"Come! Let's signal them with a fire from the tower top. I'll help carry wood. Let's hurry down and run and meet them!"
Highly excited, the girl had got to her feet again, and now, clutched the engineer's arm in burning eagerness.
"Let's go! Go—at once! This minute!"
But he restrained her.
"You don't really think that would be quite prudent, do you?" asked he. "Not just yet?"
"Why not?"
"Why, can't you see? We—that is, there is no way to tell—"
"But they're coming to save us, can't you see? Somehow, somewhere, they must have caught that signal! And shall we wait, and perhaps let them lose us, after all?"
"Certainly not. But first we—why, we ought to make quite sure, you understand. Sure that they—they're really civilized, you know."
"But they must be, to have read the wireless!"
"Oh, you're counting on that, are you? Well, that's a big assumption. It won't do. No, we've got to go slow in this game. Got to wait. Wait, and see. Easy does it!"
He tried to speak boldly and with nonchalance, but the girl's keen ear detected at least a little of the emotion that was troubling him. She kept a moment's silence, while the quivering lights drew on and on, steadily, slowly, like a host of fireflies on the bosom of the night.
"Why don't you get the telescope, and see?" she asked, at length.
"No use. It isn't a night-glass. Couldn't see a thing."
"But anyhow, those lights mean men, don't they?"
"Naturally. But until we know what kind, we're better off right where we are. I'm willing to welcome the coming guest, all right, if he's peaceful. Otherwise, it's powder and ball, hot water, stones and things for him!"
The girl stared a moment at the engineer, while this new idea took root within her brain.
"You—you don't mean," she faltered at last, "that these may be—savages!"
He started at the word. "What makes you think that?" he parried, striving to spare her all needless alarm.
She pondered a moment, while the fire-dots, like a shoal of swimming stars, drew slowly nearer, nearer the Manhattan shore.
"Tell me, are they savages?"
"How do I know?"
; "It's easy enough to see you've got an opinion about it. You think they're savages, don't you?"
"I think it's very possible."
"And if so—what then?"
"What then? Why, in case they aren't mighty nice and kind, there'll be a hot time in the old town, that's all. And somebody'll get hurt. It won't be us!"
Beatrice asked no more, for a minute or two, but the engineer felt her fingers tighten on his arm.
"I'm with you, till the end!" she whispered.
Another pregnant silence, while the nightwind stirred her hair and wafted the warm feminine perfume of her to his nostrils. Stern took a long, deep breath. A sort of dizziness crept over him, as from a glass of wine on an empty stomach. The Call of Woman strove to master him, but he repelled it. And, watching the creeping lights, he spoke; spoke to himself as much as to the girl; spoke, lest he think too much.
"There's a chance, a mere possibility," said he, "that those boats, canoes, coracles or whatever they may be, belong to white people, far descendants of the few suppositions survivors of the cataclysm. There's some slight chance that these people may be civilized, or partly so.
"Why they're coming across the Hudson, at this time o' night, with what object and to what place, we can't even guess. All we can do is wait, and watch and—be ready for anything."
"For anything!" she echoed. "You've seen me shoot! You know!"
He took her hand, and pressed it. And silence fell again, as the long vigil started, there in the shadow of the tower, on the roof.
For some quarter of an hour, neither spoke. Then at last, said Stern:
"See, now! The lights seem to be winking out. The canoes must have come close in toward the shore of the island. They're being masked behind the trees. The people—whoever they are—will be landing directly now!"
"And then?"
"Wait and see!"
They resigned themselves to patience. The girl's breath came quickly, as she watched. Even the engineer felt his heart throb with accelerated haste.
Now, far in the east, dim over the flat and dreary ruins of Long Island, the sky began to silver, through a thin veil of cirrus cloud. A pallid moon was rising. Far below, a breeze stirred the tree-fronds in Madison Forest. A bat staggered drunkenly about the tower, then reeled away into the gloom; and, high aloft, an owl uttered its melancholy plaint.
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