Stern laughed.
“Hunt for a town, of course,” he reassured her. “There, there, don’t worry! If we find alcohol, we’re all right, anyhow. If not, we’re better off than we were after the maelstrom almost got us, at any rate. Then we had no arms, ammunition, tools, or means to make fire, while now we’ve got them all. Forgive my speaking as I did, little girl. Don’t worry—everything will come right in the end.”
Reassured, she sat before the fire, and for an hour or more they drew maps and diagrams in the sand, made plans, and laid out their next step in this long campaign against the savage power of a deserted world.
At last, their minds made up, they wheeled the plane back to the forest, where Stern cut out among the trees a space for its protection. And, leaving it here, covered with branches of the thick-topped fern-tree, they took provisions and once more set out on their exploration.
But this time they had an ax and their two rifles, and as they strode northward along the shore they felt a match for any peril.
An hour’s walk brought them to the ruins of a steel recreation-pier, with numerous traces of a town along the lake behind it.
“That settles the Hudson Bay theory,” Stern rejoiced, as they wandered among the débris. “This is certainly one of the Great Lakes, though which one, of course, we can’t tell as yet. And now if we can round up some alcohol we’ll be on our way before very long.”
They found no alcohol, for the only ruin where drugs or liquors had evidently been sold had caved in, a mass of shattered brickwork, smashing every bottle in the place. Stern found many splintered shards of glass; but that was all, so far as fuel was concerned. He discovered something else, however, that proved of tremendous value—the wreck of a printing-office.
Presses and iron of all kind had gone to pieces, but some of the larger lead types and quads still were recognizable. And, the crucial thing, he turned up a jagged bit of stereotype-sheet from under the protection of a concrete plinth that had fallen into the cellar.
All corroded and discolored though it was, he still could make out a few letters.
“A newspaper head, so help me!” he exclaimed, as with a trembling finger he pointed the letters out to Beatrice: “Here’s an ‘H’—here’s ‘mbur’—here’s ‘aily,’ and ‘ronicl’! Eh, what? ‘Chronicle,’ it must have been! By Jove, you’re right! And the whole thing used to spell ‘Hamburg Daily Chronicle,’ or I’m a liar!”
He thought a moment—thought hard—then burst out:
“Hamburg, eh? Hamburg, by a big lake? Well, the only Hamburg by a lake that I know of used to be Hamburg, New York. I ought to remember. I drew the plans for the New York Central bridge, just north of here, over the Spring Creek ravine.
“Yes, sir, this certainly is Hamburg, New York. And this lake must be Erie. Now, if I’m correct, just back up there on that hill we’ll find the remains of the railway cut, and less than ten miles north of here lies all that’s left of Buffalo. Some luck, eh? Cast away, only fifteen miles or so from a place like that. And we might have gone to Great Bear Lake, or to—h-m!—to any other place, for all the cyclone cared.
“Well, come on now, let’s see if the railway cut is still there, and my old bridge; and if so, it’s Buffalo for ours!”
It was all as he had said. The right-of-way of the railroad still showed distinctly, in spite of the fact that ties and rails had long since vanished. Of the bridge nothing was left but some rusted steel stringers lying entangled about the disintegrated concrete piers. But Stern viewed them with a melancholy pride and interest—his own handiwork in the very long ago.
They had no time, however, for retrospection; but, once more taking the shore, kept steadily northward. And before noon they reached the débris of Buffalo, stark and deserted by the lake where once its busy commerce and its noisy life had thronged. By four o’clock that afternoon they had collected fuel enough for the plane to do that distance on, and more. Late that night they were again back at the spot where they had landed the night before.
And here, in high spirits and with every hope of better fortune now to follow evil, they cooked their meal and spent an hour in planning their next move, then slept the sleep of well-earned rest.
They had now decided to abandon the idea of visiting Boston. This seeming change of front was not without its good reasons.
“We’re half-way to Chicago as it is,” Stern summed up next morning. “Conditions are probably similar all along the Atlantic coast; there’s no life to be found there: On the other hand, if we strike for the West there’s at least a chance of running across survivors. If we don’t find them there, then we probably sha’n’t find them anywhere. In Chicago we can live and restock for further explorations, and as for locating a telescope, the University of Chicago ruins are as promising as those of Harvard. Chicago, by all means!”
They set out at nine o’clock, and, having made a good start, reached Buffalo by twenty minutes past, flying easily along the shore at not more than five hundred feet elevation.
Gaily the lake sparkled and wimpled in the morning sun, unvexed now by any steamer’s prow, unshaded by any smoke from cities or roaring mills along its banks.
Despite the lateness of the season, the morning was warm; a mild breeze swayed the treetops and set the little whitecaps foaming here and there over the broad expanse of blue. Beatrice and Stern felt the joy of life reborn in them at that sight.
“Magnificent!” cried the engineer. “Now for a swing up past Niagara, and we’re off!”
The river, they found as the plane swept onward, had dwindled to a brook that they could almost leap across. The rapids now were but a dreary waste of blackened rocks, and the Falls themselves, dry save for a desolate trickle down past Goat Island, presented a spectacle of death—the death of the world as Beatrice and Stern had known it, which depressed them both.
That this tremendous cataract could vanish thus; that the gorge and the great Falls which for uncounted centuries had thundered to the rush and tumult of the mighty waters could now lie mute and dry and lifeless, saddened them both beyond measure.
And they were glad when, with a wide sweep of her wings, the Pauillac veered to westward again along the north shore of Lake Erie and settled into the long run of close on two hundred and fifty miles to Detroit, where Stern counted on making his first stop.
Without mishap, yet without sighting a single indication of the presence of man, they coasted down the shore and ate their dinner on the banks of Lake Saint Clair, near the ruins of Windsor, with those of Detroit on the opposite side. For some reason or other, impossible to solve, the current now ran northward toward Huron, instead of south to Erie. But this phenomenon they could do little more than merely note, for time lacked to give it any serious study.
Mid-afternoon found them getting under way again westbound.
“Chicago next,” said Stern, making some slight but necessary adjustment of the air-feed in the carburetor. “And here’s hoping there’ll be some natives to greet us!”
“Amen to that!” answered the girl. “If any life has survived at all, it ought to be on the great central plain of the country, say from Indiana out through Nebraska. But do you know, Allan, if it should come right down to meeting any of our own kind of people—savages, of course, I mean, but white—I really believe I’d be awfully afraid of them. Imagine white savages dressed in skins—”
“Like us!” interrupted Stern, laughing.
“And painted with woad, whatever woad is; I remember reading about it in the histories of England; all the early Britons used it. And carrying nice, knobby stone creeks to stave in our heads! It would be nice to meet a hundred or a thousand of them, eh? Rather a different matter from dealing with a horde of those anthropoid creatures, I imagine.”
Stern only smiled, then answered:
“Well, I’ll take my chances with ‘em. Better a fight, say I, with my own kind, than solitude like this—you and I all alone, girl, getting old some time and dying with never
a hand-clasp save perhaps such as it may please fate to give us from whatever children are to be. But come, come, girl. No time for gloomy speculations of trouble. In you get now, and off we go—westward bound again.”
Only half an hour out of Detroit it was that they first became aware of some strange disturbance of the horizon, some inexplicable appearance such as neither of them had ever seen, a phenomenon so peculiar that, though both observed it at about the same time, neither Stern could believe his own senses nor Beatrice hers.
For all at once it seemed to them the sky-line was drawing suddenly nearer; it seemed that the horizon was approaching at high speed.
The dark, untrodden forest mass still stretched away, away, until it vanished against the dim blue of the sky; but now, instead of that meeting-line being forty miles off, it seemed no farther than twenty, and minute by minute it indubitably was rushing toward them with a speed equal to their own.
Stern, puzzled and alarmed at this unusual sight, felt an impulse to slow, to swerve, to test the apparition in some way; but second thought convinced him it must be deception of some sort.
“Some peculiar state of the atmosphere,” thought he, “or perhaps we’re approaching a high ridge, on the other side of which lie clouds that cut away the farther view. Or else—no, hang it! the world seems to end right there, with no clouds to veil it—nothing, only—what?”
He saw the girl pointing in alarm. She, too, was clearly stirred by the appearance.
What to do? Stern felt indecision for the first time since he had started on this long, adventurous journey. Shut off and descend? Impossible among those forests. Swing about and return? Not to be thought of. Keep on and meet perils perhaps undreamed of? Yes—at all hazards he would keep on.
And with a tightening of the jaw he drove the Pauillac onward, ever onward—toward the empty space that yawned ahead.
“End o’ the world?” thought he. “All right, the old machine is good for it, and so are we. Here goes!”
CHAPTER XX
ON THE LIP OF THE CHASM
Very near, now, was the strange apparition. On, on, swift as a falcon, the plane hurtled. Stern glanced at Beatrice. Never had he seen her more beautiful. About her face, rosy and full of life, the luxuriant loose hair was whipping. Her eyes sparkled with this new excitement, and on her full red lips a smile betrayed her keen enjoyment. No trace of fear was there—nothing but confidence and strength and joy in the adventure.
The phenomenon of the world’s end—for nothing else describes it adequately—now appeared distinctly as a jagged line, beyond which nothing showed. It differed from the horizon line, inasmuch as it was close at hand. Already the adventurers could peer down upon it at an acute angle.
Plainly could they see the outlines of trees growing along the verge. But beyond them, nothing.
It differed essentially from a cañon, because there was no other side at all. Strain his eye as he might, Stern could detect no opposite wall. And now, realizing something of the possibilities of such a chasm, he swung the Pauillac southward. Flying parallel to the edge of this tremendous barrier, he sought to solve the mystery of its true nature.
“If I go higher, perhaps I may be able to get some notion of it,” thought he, and swinging up-wind, he spiraled till the barometer showed he had gained another thousand feet.
But even this additional view profited him nothing. Half a mile to westward the ragged tree-line still showed as before, with vacancy behind it, and as far as Stern could see to north, to south, it stretched away till the dim blue of distance swallowed it. Yet, straight across the gulf, no land appeared. Only the sky itself was visible there, as calm and as unbroken as in the zenith, yet extending far below where the horizon-line should have been—down, in fact, to where the tree-line cut it off from Stern’s vision.
The effect was precisely that of coming to the edge of a vast plain, beyond which nothing lay, save space, and peering over.
“The end of the world, indeed!” thought the engineer, despite himself. “But what can it mean? What can have happened to the sphere to have changed it like this? Good Heavens, what a marvel—what a catastrophe!”
Determined at all hazards to know more of this titanic break or “fault,” or whatsoever it might be, he banked again, and now, on a descending slant, veered down toward the lip of the chasm.
“Going out over it?” cried Beatrice.
He nodded.
“It may be miles deep!”
“You can’t get killed any deader falling a hundred miles than you can a hundred feet!” he shouted back, above the droning racket of the motor.
And with a fresh grip on the wheel, head well forward, every sense alert and keen to meet whatever conditions might arise, to battle with cross-currents, “air-holes,” or any other vortices swirling up out of those unknown depths, he skimmed the Pauillac fair toward the lip of the monstrous vacancy.
Now as they rushed almost above the verge he could see conclusively they were not dealing here with a cañon like the Yosemite or like any other he had ever seen or heard of in the old days.
There was positively no bottom to the terrific thing!
Just a sheer edge and beyond that—nothing.
Nowhere any sign of an opposite bank; nowhere the faintest trace of land. Far, far below, even a few faint clouds showed floating there as if in mid-heaven.
The effect was ghastly, unnerving and altogether terrible. Not that Stern feared height. No, it was the unreality of the experience, the inexplicable character of this yawning edge of the world that almost overcame him.
Only by a strong exercise of will-power could he hold the biplane to her course. His every instinct was to veer, to retreat back to solid earth, and land somewhere, and once more, at all hazards, get the contact of reality.
But Stern resisted all these impulses, and now already had driven the Pauillac right to the lip of the vast nothingness.
Now they were over!
“My God!” he cried, stunned by the realization of this thing. “Sheer space! No bottom anywhere!”
For all at once they had shot, as it were, out into a void which seemed to hold no connection at all with the earth they now were quitting.
Stern caught a glimpse of the tall forest growing up to within a hundred yards of the edge, then of smaller trees, dwindling to bushes and grasses, and strange red sand that bordered the gap—sand and rocks, barren as though some up-draft from the void had killed off vegetable growth along the very brink.
Then all slid back and away. The red-ribbed wall of the great chasm, shattered and broken as by some inconceivable disaster, some cosmic cataclysm, fell away and away, downward, dimmer and more dim, until it faded gradually into a blue haze, then vanished utterly.
And there below lay nothingness—and nothingness stretched out in front to where the sight lost itself in pearly vapors that overdimmed the sky.
Beatrice glanced at Stern as the Pauillac sped true as an arrow in its flight, out into this strange and incomprehensible vacuity.
Just a shade paler now he seemed. Despite the keen wind, a glister of sweat-drops studded his forehead. His jaw was set, set hard; she could see the powerful maxillary muscles knotted there where the throat-cords met the angle of the bone. And she understood that, for the first time since their tremendous adventure had begun, the man felt shaken by this latest and greatest of all the mysteries they had been called upon to face.
Already the verge lay far behind; and now the sense of empty space above and on all sides and there below was overpowering.
Stern gasped with a peculiar choking sound. Then all at once, throwing the front steering plane at an angle, he brought the machine about and headed for the distant land.
He spoke no word, nor did she; but they both swept the edge of the chasm with anxious eyes, seeking a place to light.
It was with tremendous relief that they both saw the solid earth once more below them. And when, five minutes later, having chosen a clear and sand-barre
n on the verge, some two miles southward along the abyss, Stern brought the machine to earth, they felt a gratitude and a relief not to be voiced in words.
“By Jove!” exclaimed the man, lifting Beatrice from the seat, “if that isn’t enough to shake a man’s nerve and upset all his ideas, geological or otherwise, I’d like to know what is!”
“Going to try to cross it?” she asked anxiously; “that is, if there is any other side? I know, of course, that if there is you’ll find out, some way or other!”
“You overestimate me,” he replied. “All I can do, for now, is to camp down here and try to figure the problem out—with your help. Whatever this thing is, it’s evident it stands between us and our plan. Either Chicago lies on the other side—(provided, of course, as you say, that there is one)—or else it’s been swallowed up, ages ago, by whatever catastrophe produced this yawning gulf.
“In either event we’ve got to try to discover the truth, and act accordingly. But for now, there’s nothing we can do. It’s getting late already. We’ve had enough for one day, little girl. Come on, let’s make the machine ready for the night, and camp down here and have a bite to eat. Perhaps by to-morrow we may know just what we’re up against!”
The moon had risen, flooding the world with spectral light, before the two adventurers had finished their meal. All during it they had kept an unusual silence. The presence of that terrible gulf, there not two hundred feet away to westward of them, imposed its awe upon their thoughts.
And after the meal was done, by tacit understanding they refrained from trying to approach it or to peer over. Too great the risks by night. They spoke but little, and presently exhausted by the trying events of the day—sought sleep under the vanes of the Pauillac.
But for an hour, tired as he was, the engineer lay thinking of the chasm, trying in vain to solve its problem or to understand how they were to follow any further the search for the ruins of Chicago, where fuel was to be had, or carry on the work of trying to find some living members of the human race.
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