Each of them longed, with a longing they hardly realized as yet, to hear some other human voice, to see another face, clasp another hand and again feel the comradeship of man.
During the past week or so, Stern had more than once caught himself listening for some other sound of human life and activity. Once he had found the girl standing on a wooded point among the pines, shading her eyes with her hand and watching downstream with an attitude of hope which spoke more fluently than words. He had stolen quietly away, saying nothing, careful not to break her mood. For he had understood it; it had been his very own.
The mood expressed itself, at times, in long talks together of the seeming dream-age when there had been so many millions of men and women in the world. Beatrice and Stern found themselves dwelling with a peculiar pleasure on memories and descriptions of throngs.
They would read the population statistics in Van’s encyclopedia, and wonder greatly at them, for now these figures seemed the unreal chimeras of wild imaginings.
They would talk of the crowded streets, the “L” crushes and the jams at the Bridge entrance; of packed cars and trains and overflowing theaters; of great concourses they had seen; of every kind and condition of affairs where thousands of their kind had once rubbed elbows, all strangers to each other, yet all one vast kin and family ready in case of need to succor one another, to use the collective intelligence for the benefit of each.
Sometimes they indulged in fanciful comparisons, trying to make their present state seem wholly blest.
“This is a pretty fine way to live, after all,” Stern said one day, “even if it is a bit lonesome at times. There’s no getting up in the morning and rushing to an office. It’s a perpetual vacation! There are no appointments to keeps no angry clients kicking because I can’t make water run up-hill or make cast-iron do the work of tool-steel. No saloons or free-lunches, no subways to stifle the breath out of us, no bills to pay and no bill collectors to dodge; no laws except the laws of nature, and such as we make ourselves; no bores and no bad shows; no politics, no yellow journals, no styles—”
“Oh, dear, how I’d like to see a milliner’s window again!” cried Beatrice, rudely shattering his thin-spun tissue of optimism. “These skin-clothes, all the time, and no hats, and no chiffons and no—no nothing, at all—! Oh, I never half appreciated things till they were all taken away!”
Stern, feeling that he had tapped the wrong vein, discreetly withdrew; and the sound of his calking-hammer from the beach, told that he was expending a certain irritation on the hull of the Adventure.
One day he found a relic that seemed to stab him to the heart with a sudden realization of the tremendous gap between his own life and that which he had left.
Hunting in the forest, to westward of the bungalow, he came upon what at first glance seemed a very long, straight, level Indian mound or earthwork; but in a moment his trained eye told him it was a railway embankment.
With an almost childish eagerness he hunted for some trace of the track; and when, buried under earth-mold and rubbish, he found some rotten splinters of metal, they filled him with mingled pleasure and depression.
“My God!” he exclaimed, “is it possible that here, right where I stand, countless thousands of human beings once passed at tremendous velocity, bent on business and on pleasure, now ages long vanished and meaningless and void? That mighty engines whirled along this bank, where now the forest has been crowding for centuries? That all, all has perished—forever?
“It shall not be!” he cried hotly, and flung his hands out in passionate denial. “All shall be thus again! All shall return—only far better! The world’s death shall not, cannot be!”
Experiences such as these, leaving both of them increasingly irritated and depressed as time went on, convinced Stern of the imperative necessity for exploration. If human beings still existed anywhere in the world, he and she must find them, even at the risk of losing life itself. Years of migration, he felt, would not be too high a price to pay for the reward of coming once again in contact with his own species. The innate gregariousness of man was torturing them both.
Now that the hour of departure was drawing nigh, a strange exultation filled them both—the spirit of conquest and of victory.
Together they planned the last details of the trip.
“Is the sail coming along all right, Beta?” asked Stern, the night when they decided to visit Cambridge. “You expect to have it done in a day or two?”
“I can finish it to-morrow. It’s all woven now. Just as soon as I finish binding one edge with leather strips, it’ll be ready for you.”
“All right; then we can get a good, early start, on Monday morning. Now for the details of the freight.”
They worked out everything to its last minutiae. Nothing was forgotten, from ammunition to the soap which Stern had made out of moose-fat and wood-ashes and had pressed into cakes; from fishing-tackle and canned goods to toothbrushes made of stiff vegetable fibers set in bone; from provisions even to a plentiful supply of birch-bark leaves for taking notes.
“Monday morning we’re off,” Stern concluded, “and it will be the grandest lark two people ever had since time began! Built and stocked as the Adventure is, she’s safe enough for anything from here to Europe.
“Name the place you want to see, and it’s yours. Florida? Bermuda? Mediterranean? With the compass I’ve made and adjusted to the new magnetic variations, and with the maps out of Van’s set of books, I reckon we’re good for anything, including a trip around the world.
“The survivors will be surprised to see a fully stocked yawl putting in to rescue them from savagery, eh? Imagine doing the Captain Cook stunt, with white people for subjects!”
“Yes, but I’m not counting on their treating us the way Captain Cook was; are you? And what if we shouldn’t find anybody, dear? What then?”
“How can we help finding people? Could a billion and a half human beings die, all at once, without leaving a single isolated group somewhere or other?”
“But you never succeeded in reaching them with the wireless from the Metropolitan, Allan.”
“Never mind—they weren’t in a condition to pick up my messages; that’s all. We surely must find somebody in all the big cities we can reach by water, either along He coast or by running up the Mississippi or along the St. Lawrence and through the lakes. There’s Boston, of course, and Philadelphia, New Orleans, San Francisco, St. Louis, Chicago—dozens of others—no end of places!”
“Oh, if they’re only not all like New York!”
“That remains to be seen. There’s all of Europe, too, and Africa and Asia—why, the whole wide world is ours! We’re so rich, girl, that it staggers the imagination—we’re the richest people that have ever lived, you and I. The ‘pluses’ in the old days owned their millions; but we own—we own the whole earth!”
“Not if there’s anybody else alive, dear.”
“That’s so. Well, I’ll be glad to share it with ‘em, for the sake of a handshake and a ‘howdy,’ and a chance to start things going again. Do you know, I rather count on finding a few scattered remnants of folk in London, or Paris, or Berlin?
“Just the same as in our day, a handful of ragged shepherds descended from the Mesopotamian peoples extinct save for them—were tending their sheep at Kunyunjik, on those Babylonian ruins where once a mighty metropolis stood, and where five million people lived and moved, trafficked, loved, hated, fought, conquered, died—so now to-day, perhaps, we may run across a handful of white savages crouching in caves or rude huts among the débris of the Place de l’Opéra, or Unter den Linden, or—”
“And civilize them, Allan? And bring them back and start a colony and make the world again? Oh, Allan, do you think we could?” she exclaimed, her eyes sparkling with excitement.
“My plans include nothing less,” he answered. “It’s mighty well worth trying for, at any rate. Monday morning we start, then, little girl.”
“Sunday, if you say so
.”
“Impatient, now?” he laughed. “No, Monday will be time enough. Lots of things yet to put in shape before we leave. And we’ll have to trust our precious crops to luck, at that. Here’s hoping the winter will bring nothing worse than rain. There’s no help for it, whatever happens. The larger venture calls us.”
They sat there discussing many many other factors of the case, for a long time. The fire burned low, fell together and dwindled to glowing embers on the hearth.
In the red gloom Allan felt her vague, warm, beautiful presence. Strong was she; vigorous, rosy as an Amazon, with the spirit and the beauty of the great outdoors; the life lived as a part of nature’s own self. He realized that never had a woman lived like her.
Dimly he saw her face, so sweet, so gentle in its wistful strength, shadowed with the hope and dreams of a whole race—the type, the symbol, of the eternal motherhood.
And from his hair he drew her hand down to his mouth and kissed it; and with a thrill of sudden tenderness blent with passion he knew all that she meant to him—this perfect woman, his love, who sometime soon was now to be his bride.
CHAPTER X
TOWARD THE GREAT CATARACT
Pleasant and warm shone the sun that Monday morning, the 2d of September, warm through the greenery of oak and pine and fern-tree. Golden it lay upon the brakes and mosses by the river-bank; silver upon the sands.
Save for the chippering of the busy squirrels, a hush brooded over nature. The birds were silent. A far blue haze veiled the distant reaches of the stream. Over the world a vague, premonitory something had fallen; it was summer still, but the first touch of dissolution, of decay, had laid the shadow of a pall upon it.
And the two lovers felt their hearts gladden at thought of the long migration out into the unknown, the migration that might lead them to southern shores and to perpetual plenty, perhaps to the great boon of contact once again with humankind.
From room to room they went, making all tight and fast for the long absence, taking farewell of all the treasures that during their long weeks of occupancy had accumulated there about them.
Though Stern was no sentimentalist, yet he, too, felt the tears well in his eyes, even as Beta did, when they locked the door and slowly went down the broad steps to the walk he had cleared to the river.
“Good-by,” said the girl simply, and kissed her hand to the bungalow. Then he drew his arm about her and together they went on down the path. Very sweet the thickets of bright blossoms were; very warm and safe the little garden looked, cut out there from the forest that stood guard about it on all sides.
They lingered one last moment by the sun-dial he had carved on a flat boulder, set in a little grassy lawn. The shadow of the gnomon fell athwart the IX and touched the inscription he had graved about the edge:
I MARK NO HOURS BUT BRIGHT ONES.
Beatrice pondered.
“We’ve never had any other kind, together—not one,” said she, looking up quickly at the man as though with a new sort of self-realization. “Do you know that, dear? In all this time, never one hour, never one single moment of unhappiness or disagreement. Never a harsh word, an unkind look or thought. ‘No hours but bright ones!’ Why, Allan, that’s the motto of our lives!”
“Yes, of our lives,” he repeated gravely. “Our lives, forever, as long as we live. But come, come—time’s slipping on. See, the shadow’s moving ahead already. Come, say good-by to everything, dear, until next spring. Now let’s be off and away!”
They went aboard the yawl, which, fully laden, now lay at a little stone wharf by the edge of the sweet wild wood, its mast overhung by arching branches of a Gothic elm.
Allan cast off the painter of braided leather, and with his boat-hook pushed away. He poled out into the current, then raised the sail of woven rushes like that of a Chinese junk.
The brisk north wind caught it, the sail crackled, filled and bellied hugely. He hauled it tight. A pleasant ripple began to murmur at the stern as the yawl gathered speed.
“Boston and way-stations!” cried he. But through his jest a certain sadness seemed to vibrate. As the wooded point swallowed up their bungalow and blotted out all sight of their garden in the wilderness, then as the little wharf vanished, and nothing now remained but memories, he, too, felt the solemnity of a leave-taking which might well be eternal.
Beatrice pressed a spray of golden-rod to her lips.
“From our garden,” said she. “I’m going to keep it, wherever we go.”
“I understand,” he answered. “But this is no time, now, for retrospection. Everything’s sunshine, life, hope—we’ve got a world to win!”
Then as the yawl heeled to the breeze and foamed away down stream with a speed and ease that bore witness to the correctness of her lines, he struck up a song, and Beatrice joined in, and so their sadness vanished and a great, strong, confident joy thrilled both of them at prospect of what was yet to be.
By mid-afternoon they had safely navigated Harlem River and the upper reaches of East River, and were well up toward Willett’s Point, with Long Island Sound opening out before them broadly.
Of the towns and villages, the estates and magnificent palaces that once had adorned the shores of the Sound, no trace remained. Nothing was visible but unbroken lines of tall, blue forest in the distance; the Sound appeared to have grown far wider, and what seemed like a strong current set eastward in a manner certainly not produced by the tide, all of which puzzled Stern as he held the little yawl to her course, sole alone in that vast blue where once uncounted thousands of keels had vexed the brine.
Nightfall found them abreast the ruins of Stamford, still holding a fair course about five or six miles off shore.
Save for the gulls and one or two quick-scurrying flights of Mother Carey’s chickens (now larger and swifter than in the old days), and a single “V” of noisy geese, no life had appeared all that afternoon. Stern wondered at this. A kind of desolation seemed to lie over the region.
“Ten times more living things in our vicinity back home on the Hudson,” he remarked to Beatrice, who now lay ‘midships, under the shelter of the cabin, warmly wrapped in furs against the keen cutting of the night wind. “It seems as though something had happened around here, doesn’t it? I should have thought the Sound would be alive with birds and fish. What can the matter be?”
She had no hypothesis, and though they talked it over, they reached no conclusion. By eight o’clock she fell asleep in her warm nest, and Stern steered on alone, by the stars, under promise to put into harbor where New Haven once had stood, and there himself get some much-needed sleep.
Swiftly the yawl split the waters of the Sound, for though her sail was crude, her body was as fine and speedy as his long experience with boats could make it. Something of the vast mystery of night and sea penetrated his soul as he held the boat on her way.
The night was moonless; only the great untroubled stars wondered down at this daring venture into the unknown.
Stern hummed a tune to keep his spirits up. Running easily over the monotonous dark swells with a fair following breeze, he passed an hour or two. He sat down, braced the tiller, and resigned himself to contemplation of the mysteries that had been and that still must be. And very sweet to him was the sense of protection, of guardianship, wherein he held the sleeping girl, in the shelter of the little cabin.
He must have dozed, sitting there inactive and alone. How long? He could not tell. All that he knew was, suddenly, that he had wakened to full consciousness, and that a sense of uneasiness, of fear, of peril, hung about him.
Up he started, with an exclamation which he suppressed just in time to avoid waking Beatrice. Through all, over all, a vast, dull roar was making itself heard—a sound as though of mighty waters rushing, leaping, echoing to the sky that droned the echo back again.
Whence came it? Stern could not tell. From nowhere, from everywhere; the hum and vibrant blur of that tremendous sound seemed universal.
“My God,
what’s that?” Allan exclaimed, peering ahead with eyes widened by a sudden stabbing fear. “I’ve got Beatrice aboard, here; I can’t let anything happen to her!”
The gibbous moon, red and sullen, was just beginning to thrust its strangely mottled face above the uneasy moving plain of waters. Far off to southward a dim headland showed; even as Stern looked it drifted backward and away.
Suddenly he got a terrifying sense of speed. The headland must have lain five miles to south of him; yet in a few moments, even as he watched, it had gone into the vague obliteration of a vastly greater distance.
“What’s happening?” thought Stern. The wind had died; it seemed as though the waters were moving with the wind, as fast as the wind; the yawl was keeping pace with it, even as a floating balloon drifts in a storm, unfeeling it.
Deep, dull, booming, ominous, the roar continued. The sail flapped idle on the mast. Stern could distinguish a long line of foam that slid away, past the boat, as only foam slides on a swift current.
He peered, in the gloom, to port; and all at once, far on the horizon, saw a thing that stopped his heart a moment, then thrashed it into furious activity.
Off there in a direction he judged as almost due northeast, a tenuous, rising veil of vapor blotted out the lesser stars and dimmed the brighter ones.
Even in that imperfect light he could see something of the sinuous drift of that strange cloud.
Quickly he lashed the tiller, crept forward and climbed the mast, his night-glasses slung over his shoulder.
Holding by one hand, he tried to concentrate his vision through the glasses, but they failed to show him even as much as the naked eye could discern.
The sight was paralyzing in its omen of destruction. Only too well Stern realized the meaning of the swift, strong current, the roar—now ever increasing, ever deepening in volume—the high and shifting vapor veil that climbed toward the dim zenith.
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