V.
“We’ve got to fight starvation, and we’ve got to beat it,” Arthur continued doggedly. “I’m telling you this right at the outset, because I want you to begin right at the beginning and pitch in to help. We have very little food and a lot of us to eat it. First, I want some volunteers to help with rationing. Next, I want every ounce of food, in this place put under guard where it can be served to those who need it most. Who will help out with this?”
The swift succession of shocks had paralyzed the faculties of most of the people there, but half a dozen moved forward. Among them was a single gray-haired man with an air of accustomed authority. Arthur recognized him as the president of the bank on the ground floor.
“I don’t know who you are or if you’re right in saying what has happened,” said the gray-haired man. “But I see something’s got to be done, and—well, for the time being I’ll take your word for what that is. Later on we’ll thrash this matter out.”
Arthur nodded. He bent over and spoke in a low voice to the gray-haired man, who moved away.
“Grayson, Walters, Terhune, Simpson, and Forsythe come here,” the gray-haired man called at a doorway.
A number of men began to press dazedly toward him. Arthur resumed his harangue.
“You people—those of you who aren’t too dazed to think—are remembering there’s a restaurant in the building and no need to starve. You’re wrong. There are nearly two thousand of us here. That means six thousand meals a day. We’ve got to have nearly ten tons of food a day, and we’ve got to have it at once.”
“Hunt?” some one suggested.
“I saw Indians,” some one else shouted. “Can we trade with them?”
“We can hunt and we can trade with the Indians,” Arthur admitted, “but we need food by the ton—by the ton, people! The Indians don’t store up supplies, and, besides, they’re much too scattered to have a surplus for us. But we’ve got to have food. Now, how many of you know anything about hunting, fishing, trapping, or any possible way of getting food?”
There were a few hands raised—pitifully few. Arthur saw Estelle’s hand up.
“Very well,” he said. “Those of you who raised your hands then come with me up on the second floor and we’ll talk it over. The rest of you try to conquer your fright, and don’t go outside for a while. We’ve got some things to attend to before it will be quite safe for you to venture out. And keep away from the restaurant. There are armed guards over that food. Before we pass it out indiscriminately, we’ll see to it there’s more for to-morrow and the next day.”
He stepped down from the counter and moved toward the stairway. It was not worth while to use the elevator for the ride of only one floor. Estelle managed to join him, and they mounted the steps together.
“Do you think we’ll pull through all right?” she asked quietly.
“We’ve got to!” Arthur told her, setting his chin firmly. “We’ve simply got to.”
The gray-haired president of the bank was waiting for them at the top of the stairs.
“My name is Van Deventer,” he said, shaking hands with Arthur, who gave his own name.
“Where shall our emergency council sit?” he asked.
“The bank has a board room right over the safety vault. I dare say we can accommodate everybody there—everybody in the council, anyway.”
Arthur followed into the board-room, and the others trooped in after him.
“I’m just assuming temporary leadership,” Arthur explained, “because it’s imperative some things be done at once. Later on we can talk about electing officials to direct our activities. Right now we need food. How many of you can shoot?”
About a quarter of the hands were raised. Estelle’s was among the number.
“And how many are fishermen?”
A few more went up.
“What do the rest of you do?”
There was a chorus of “gardener,” “I have a garden in my yard,” “I grow peaches in New Jersey,” and three men confessed that they raised chickens as a hobby.
“We’ll want you gardeners in a little while. Don’t go yet. But the most important are huntsmen and fishermen. Have any of you weapons in your offices?”
A number had revolvers, but only one man had a shotgun and shells.
“I was going on my vacation this afternoon straight from the office,” he explained, “and have all my vacation tackle.”
“Good man!” Arthur exclaimed. “You’ll go after the heavy game.”
“With a shotgun?” the sportsman asked, aghast.
“If you get close to them a shotgun will do as well as anything, and we can’t waste a shell on every bird or rabbit. Those shells of yours are precious. You other fellows will have to turn fishermen for a while. Your pistols are no good for hunting.”
“The watchmen at the bank have riot guns,” said Van Deventer, “and there are one or two repeating-rifles there. I don’t know about ammunition.”
“Good! I don’t mean about the ammunition, but about the guns. We’ll hope for the ammunition. You fishermen get to work to improvise tackle out of anything you can get hold of. Will you do that?”
A series of nods answered his question.
“Now for the gardeners. You people will have to roam through the woods in company with the hunters and locate anything in the way of edibles that grows. Do all of you know what wild plants look like? I mean wild fruits and vegetables that are good to eat.”
A few of them nodded, but the majority looked dubious. The consensus of opinion seemed to be that they would try. Arthur seemed a little discouraged.
“I guess you’re the man to tell about the restaurant,” Van Deventer said quietly. “And as this is the food commission, or something of that sort, everybody here will be better for hearing it. Anyway, everybody will have to know it before night. I took over the restaurant as you suggested, and posted some of the men from the bank that I knew I could trust about the doors. But there was hardly any use in doing it.”
“The restaurant stocks up in the afternoon, as most of its business is in the morning and at noon. It only carries a day’s stock of foodstuffs, and the—the cataclysm, or whatever it was, came at three o’clock. There is practically nothing in the place. We couldn’t make sandwiches for half the women that are caught with us, let alone the men. Everybody will go hungry to-night. There will be no breakfast to-morrow, nor anything to eat until we either make arrangements with the Indians for some supplies or else get food for ourselves.”
Arthur leaned his jaw on his hand and considered. A slow flush crept over his cheek. He was getting his fighting blood up.
At school, when he began to flush slowly his schoolmates had known the symptom and avoided his wrath. Now he was growing angry with mere circumstances, but it would be none the less unfortunate for those circumstances.
“Well,” he said at last deliberately, “we’ve got to—What’s that?”
There was a great creaking and groaning. Suddenly a sort of vibration was felt under foot. The floor began to take on a slight slant.
“Great Heaven!” some one cried. “The building’s turning over and we’ll be buried in the ruins!”
The tilt of the floor became more pronounced. An empty chair slid to one end of the room. There was a crash.
VI.
Arthur woke to find some one tugging at his shoulders, trying to drag him from beneath the heavy table, which had wedged itself across his feet and pinned him fast, while a flying chair had struck him on the head and knocked him unconscious.
“Oh, come and help,” Estelle’s voice was calling deliberately. “Somebody come and help! He’s caught in here!”
She was sobbing in a combination of panic and some unknown emotion.
“Help me, please!” she gasped, then her voice broke despondently, but she never ceased to tug ineffectually at Chamberlain, trying to drag him out of the mass of wreckage.
Arthur moved a little, dazedly.
“Ar
e you alive?” she called anxiously. “Are you alive? Hurry, oh, hurry and wriggle out. The building’s falling to pieces!”
“I’m all right,” Arthur said weakly. “You get out before it all comes down.”
“I won’t leave you,” she declared “Where are you caught? Are you badly hurt? Hurry, please hurry!”
Arthur stirred, but could not loosen his feet. He half-rolled over, and the table moved as if it had been precariously balanced, and slid heavily to one side. With Estelle still tugging at him, he managed to get to his feet on the slanting floor and stared about him.
Arthur continued to stare about.
“No danger,” he said weakly. “Just the floor of the one room gave way. The aftermath of the rock-flaw.”
He made his way across the splintered flooring and piled-up chairs.
“We’re on top of the safe-deposit vault,” he said. “That’s why we didn’t fall all the way to the floor below. I wonder how we’re going to get down?”
Estelle followed him, still frightened for fear of the building falling upon them. Some of the long floor-boards stretched over the edge of the vault and rested on a tall, bronze grating that protected the approach to the massive strong-box. Arthur tested them with his foot.
“They seem to be pretty solid,” he said tentatively.
His strength was coming back to him every moment. He had been no more than stunned. He walked out on the planking to the bronze grating and turned.
“If you don’t get dizzy, you might come on,” he said. “We can swing down the grille here to the floor.”
Estelle followed gingerly and in a moment they were safely below. The corridor was quite empty.
“When the crash came,” Estelle explained, her voice shaking with the reaction from her fear of a moment ago, “every one thought the building was coming to pieces, and ran out. I’m afraid they’ve all run away.”
“They’ll be back in a little while,” Arthur said quietly.
They went along the big marble corridor to the same western door, out of which they had first gone to see the Indian village. As they emerged into the sunlight they met a few of the people who had already recovered from their panic and were returning.
A crowd of respectable size gathered in a few moments, all still pale and shaken, but coming back to the building which was their refuge. Arthur leaned wearily against the cold stone. It seemed to vibrate under his touch. He turned quickly to Estelle.
“Feel this,” he exclaimed.
She did so.
“I’ve been wondering what that rumble was,” she said. “I’ve been hearing it ever since we landed here, but didn’t understand where it came from.”
“You hear a rumble?” Arthur asked, puzzled. “I can’t hear anything.”
“It isn’t as loud as it was, but I hear it,” Estelle insisted. “It’s very deep, like the lowest possible bass note of an organ.”
“You couldn’t hear the shrill whistle when we were coming here,” Arthur exclaimed suddenly, “and you can’t hear the squeak of a bat. Of course your ears are pitched lower than usual, and you can hear sounds that are lower than I can hear. Listen carefully. Does it sound in the least like a liquid rushing through somewhere?”
“Y-yes,” said Estelle hesitatingly. “Somehow, I don’t quite understand how, it gives me the impression of a tidal flow or something of that sort.”
Arthur rushed indoors. When Estelle followed him she found him excitedly examining the marble floor about the base of the vault.
“It’s cracked,” he said excitedly. “It’s cracked! The vault rose all of an inch!”
Estelle looked and saw the cracks.
“What does that mean?”
“It means we’re going to get back where we belong,” Arthur cried jubilantly. “It means I’m on the track of the whole trouble. It means everything’s going to be all right.”
He prowled about the vault exultantly, noting exactly how the cracks in the flooring ran and seeing in each a corroboration of his theory.
“I’ll have to make some inspections in the cellar,” he went on happily, “but I’m nearly sure I’m on the right track and can figure out a corrective.”
“How soon can we hope to start back?” asked Estelle eagerly.
Arthur hesitated, then a great deal of the excitement ebbed from his face, leaving it rather worried and stern.
“It may be a month, or two months, or a year,” he answered gravely. “I don’t know. If the first thing I try will work, it won’t be long. If we have to experiment, I daren’t guess how long we may be. But”—his chin set firmly—”we’re going to get back.”
Estelle looked at him speculatively. Her own expression grew a little worried, too.
“But in a month,” she said dubiously, “we—there is hardly any hope of our finding food for two thousand people for a month, is there?”
“We’ve got to,” Arthur declared. “We can’t hope to get that much food from the Indians. It will be days before they’ll dare to come back to their village, if they ever come. It will be weeks before we can hope to have them earnestly at work to feed us, and that’s leaving aside the question of how we’ll communicate with them, and how we’ll manage to trade with them. Frankly, I think everybody is going to have to draw his belt tight before we get through—if we do. Some of us will get along, anyway.”
Estelle’s eyes opened wide as the meaning of his last sentence penetrated her mind.
“You mean—that all of us won’t—”
“I’m going to take care of you,” Arthur said gravely, “but there are liable to be lively doings around here when people begin to realize they’re really in a tight fix for food. I’m going to get Van Deventer to help me organize a police band to enforce martial law. We mustn’t have any disorder, that’s certain, and I don’t trust a city-bred man in a pinch unless I know him.”
He stooped and picked up a revolver from the floor, left there by one of the bank watchmen when he fled, in the belief that the building was falling.
VII.
Arthur stood at the window of his office and stared out toward the west. The sun was setting, but upon what a scene!
Where, from this same window Arthur had seen the sun setting behind the Jersey hills, all edged with the angular roofs of factories, with their chimneys emitting columns of smoke, he now saw the same sun sinking redly behind a mass of luxuriant foliage. And where he was accustomed to look upon the tops of high buildings—each entitled to the name of “skyscraper”—he now saw miles and miles of waving green branches.
The wide Hudson flowed on placidly, all unruffled by the arrival of this strange monument upon its shores—the same Hudson Arthur knew as a busy thoroughfare of puffing steamers and chugging launches. Two or three small streams wandered unconcernedly across the land that Arthur had known as the most closely built-up territory on earth. And far, far below him—Arthur had to lean well out of his window to see it—stood a collection of tiny wigwams. Those small bark structures represented the original metropolis of New York.
His telephone rang. Van Deventer was on the wire. The exchange in the building was still working. Van Deventer wanted Arthur to come down to his private office. There were still a great many things to be settled—the arrangements for commandeering offices for sleeping quarters for the women, and numberless other details. The men who seemed to have best kept their heads were gathering there to settle upon a course of action.
Arthur glanced out of the window again before going to the elevator. He saw a curiously compact dark cloud moving swiftly across the sky to the west.
“Miss Woodward,” he said sharply, “What is that?”
Estelle came to the window and looked.
“They are birds,” she told him. “Birds flying in a group. I’ve often seen them in the country, though never as many as that.”
“How do you catch birds?” Arthur asked her. “I know about shooting them, and so on, but we haven’t guns enough to count. Could
we catch them in traps, do you think?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” said Estelle thoughtfully. “But it would be hard to catch many.”
“Come down-stairs,” directed Arthur. “You know as much as any of the men here, and more than most, apparently. We’re going to make you show us how to catch things.”
Estelle smiled, a trifle wanly. Arthur led the way to the elevator. In the car he noticed that she looked distressed.
“What’s the matter?” he asked. “You aren’t really frightened, are you?”
“No,” she answered shakily, “but—I’m rather upset about this thing. It’s so—so terrible, somehow, to be back here, thousands of miles, or years, away from all one’s friends and everybody.”
“Please”—Arthur smiled encouragingly at her—”please count me your friend, won’t you?”
She nodded, but blinked back some tears. Arthur would have tried to hearten her further, but the elevator stopped at their floor. They walked into the room where the meeting of cool heads was to take place.
No more than a dozen men were in there talking earnestly but dispiritedly. When Arthur and Estelle entered Van Deventer came over to greet them.
“We’ve got to do something,” he said in a low voice. “A wave of homesickness has swept over the whole place. Look at those men. Every one is thinking about his family and contrasting his cozy fireside with all that wilderness outside.”
“You don’t seem to be worried,” Arthur observed with a smile.
Van Deventer’s eyes twinkled.
“I’m a bachelor,” he said cheerfully, “and I live in a hotel. I’ve been longing for a chance to see some real excitement for thirty years. Business has kept me from it up to now, but I’m enjoying myself hugely.”
Estelle looked at the group of dispirited men.
“We’ll simply have to do something,” she said with a shaky smile. “I feel just as they do. This morning I hated the thought of having to go back to my boarding-house to-night, but right now I feel as if the odor of cabbage in the hallway would seem like heaven.”
The Murray Leinster Megapack Page 3