VIII.
Van Deventer was eying Arthur Chamberlain keenly.
"It isn't a question of your wanting pay in exchange for yourservices in putting us back, is it?" he asked coolly.
Arthur turned and faced him. His face began to flush slowly. VanDeventer put up one hand.
"I beg your pardon. I see."
"We aren't settling the things we came here for," Estelleinterrupted.
She had noted the threat of friction and hastened to put in adiversion. Arthur relaxed.
"I think that as a beginning," he suggested, "we'd better getsleeping arrangements completed. We can get everybody togethersomewhere, I dare say, and then secure volunteers for the work."
"Right." Van Deventer was anxious to make amends for his blunderof a moment before. "Shall I send the bank watchmen to go on eachfloor in turn and ask everybody to come down-stairs?"
"You might start them," Arthur said. "It will take a long timefor every one to assemble."
Van Deventer spoke into the telephone on his desk. In a moment hehung up the receiver.
"They're on their way," he said.
Arthur was frowning to himself and scribbling in a note-book.
"Of course," he announced abstractedly, "the pressing problemis food. We've quite a number of fishermen, and a few hunters.We've got to have a lot of food at once, and everything considered,I think we'd better count on the fishermen. At sunrise we'd betterhave some people begin to dig bait and wake our anglers. They'dbetter make their tackle to-night, don't you think?"
There was a general nod.
"We'll announce that, then. The fishermen will go to the river underguard of the men we have who can shoot. I think what Indians thereare will be much too frightened to try to ambush any of us, but we'dbetter be on the safe side. They'll keep together and fish at nearlythe same spot, with our hunters patrolling the woods behind them,taking pot-shots at game, if they see any. The fishermen should makemore or less of a success, I think. The Indians weren't extensivefishers that I ever heard of, and the river ought fairly to swarmwith fish."
He closed his note-book.
"How many weapons can we count on altogether?" Arthur asked VanDeventer.
"In the bank, about a dozen riot-guns and half a dozen repeatingrifles. Elsewhere I don't know. Forty or fifty men said they hadrevolvers, though."
"We'll give revolvers to the men who go with the fishermen. TheIndians haven't heard firearms and will run at the report, even ifthey dare attack our men."
"We can send out the gun-armed men as hunters," some one suggested,"and send gardeners with them to look for vegetables and suchthings."
"We'll have to take a sort of census, really," Arthur suggested,"finding what every one can do and getting him to do it."
"I never planned anything like this before," Van Deventer remarked,"and I never thought I should, but this is much more fun thanrunning a bank."
Arthur smiled.
"Let's go and have our meeting," he said cheerfully.
But the meeting was a gloomy and despairing affair. Nearly everyone had watched the sun set upon a strange, wild landscape. Hardlyan individual among the whole two thousand of them had ever beenout of sight of a house before in his or her life. To look outat a vast, untouched wilderness where hitherto they had seen themost highly civilized city on the globe would have been startlingand depressing enough in itself, but to know that they were alonein a whole continent of savages and that there was not, indeed,in all the world a single community of people they could greet asbrothers was terrifying.
Few of them thought so far, but there was actually--if Arthur'sestimate of several thousand years' drop back through time wascorrect--there was actually no other group of English-speaking peoplein the world. The English language was yet to be invented. EvenRome, the synonym for antiquity of culture, might still be anobscure village inhabited by a band of tatterdemalions under theleadership of an upstart Romulus.
Soft in body as these people were, city-bred and unaccustomed toface other than the most conventionalized emergencies of life, theywere terrified. Hardly one of them had even gone without a meal inall his life. To have the prospect of having to earn their food,not by the manipulation of figures in a book, or by expert jugglingof profits and prices, but by literal wresting of that food from itssource in the earth or stream was a really terrifying thing for them.
In addition, every one of them was bound to the life of moderntimes by a hundred ties. Many of them had families, a thousand yearsaway. All had interests, engrossing interests, in modern New York.
One young man felt an anxiety that was really ludicrous becausehe had promised to take his sweetheart to the theater that night,and if he did not come she would be very angry. Another was to havebeen married in a week. Some of the people were, like Van Deventerand Arthur, so situated that they could view the episode as anadventure, or, like Estelle, who had no immediate fear becauseall her family was provided for without her help and lived farfrom New York, so they would not learn of the catastrophe forsome time. Many, however, felt instant and pressing fear for thefamilies whose expenses ran always so close to their incomes thatthe disappearance of the breadwinner for a week would mean actualwant or debt. There are very many such families in New York.
The people, therefore, that gathered hopelessly at the call of VanDeventer's watchmen were dazed and spiritless. Their excitementafter Arthur's first attempt to explain the situation to them hadevaporated. They were no longer keyed up to a high pitch by thestartling thing that had happened to them.
Nevertheless, although only half comprehending what had actuallyoccurred, they began to realize what that occurrence meant.No matter where they might go over the whole face of the globe,they would always be aliens and strangers. If they had been carriedaway to some unknown shore, some wilderness far from their ownland, they might have thought of building ships to return to theirhomes. They had seen New York vanish before their eyes, however.They had seen their civilization disappear while they watched.
They were in a barbarous world. There was not, for example,a single sulfur match on the whole earth except those in therunaway skyscraper.
The Runaway Skyscraper Page 8