Darkness and Dawn............................................................................................................................................1

George Allan England ..............................................................................................................................1

BOOK I. THE VACANT WORLD .........................................................................................................3

CHAPTER I. THE AWAKENING.........................................................................................................3

CHAPTER II. REALIZATION ...............................................................................................................6

CHAPTER III. ON THE TOWER PLATFORM....................................................................................9

CHAPTER IV. THE CITY OF DEATH...............................................................................................13

CHAPTER V. EXPLORATION...........................................................................................................17

CHAPTER VI. TREASURETROVE ..................................................................................................20

CHAPTER VII. THE OUTER WORLD ...............................................................................................25

CHAPTER VIII. A SIGN OF PERIL ....................................................................................................28

CHAPTER IX. HEADWAY AGAINST ODDS ...................................................................................31

CHAPTER X. TERROR ........................................................................................................................35

CHAPTER XI. A THOUSAND YEARS! .............................................................................................39

CHAPTER XII. DRAWING TOGETHER...........................................................................................43

CHAPTER XIII. THE GREAT EXPERIMENT ...................................................................................46

CHAPTER XIV. THE MOVING LIGHTS ...........................................................................................49

CHAPTER XV. PORTENTS OF WAR ................................................................................................52

CHAPTER XVI. THE GATHERING OF THE HORDES...................................................................55

CHAPTER XVII. STERN'S RESOLVE...............................................................................................58

CHAPTER XVIII. THE SUPREME QUESTION................................................................................60

CHAPTER XIX. THE UNKNOWN RACE ..........................................................................................62

CHAPTER XX. THE CURIOSITY OF EVE ........................................................................................65

CHAPIER XXI. EVE BECOMES AN AMAZON ..............................................................................70

CHAPTER XXII. GODS! ......................................................................................................................73

CHAPTER XXIII. THE OBEAH ..........................................................................................................75

CHAPTER XXIV. THE FIGHT IN THE FOREST ..............................................................................78

CHAPTER XXV. THE GOAL, AND THROUGH IT ..........................................................................81

CHAPTER XXVI. BEATRICE DARES ...............................................................................................84

CHAPTER XXVII. TO WORK!...........................................................................................................87

CHAPTER XXVIII. THE PULVERITE...............................................................................................90

CHAPTER XXIX. THE BATTLE ON THE STAIRS ..........................................................................93

CHAPTER XXX. CONSUMMATION .................................................................................................96

BOOK II. BEYOND THE GREAT OBLIVION ...............................................................................100

CHAPTER I. BEGINNINGS ...............................................................................................................100

CHAPTER II. SETTLING DOWN.....................................................................................................103

CHAPTER III. THE MASKALONGE ................................................................................................106

CHAPTER IV. THE GOLDEN AGE ..................................................................................................108

CHAPTER V. DEADLY PERIL .........................................................................................................112

CHAPTER VI. TRAPPED! .................................................................................................................116

CHAPTER VII. A NIGHT OF TOIL..................................................................................................119

CHAPTER VIII. THE REBIRTH OF CIVILIZATION ......................................................................124

CHAPTER IX. PLANNING THE GREAT MIGRATION .................................................................127

CHAPTER X. TOWARD THE GREAT CATARACT......................................................................133

CHAPTER XI. THE PLUNGE!..........................................................................................................136

CHAPTER XII. TRAPPED ON THE LEDGE...................................................................................139

CHAPTER XIII. ON THE CREST OF THE MAELSTROM............................................................143

CHAPTER XIV. A FRESH START...................................................................................................147

CHAPTER XV. LABOR AND COMRADESHIP ..............................................................................150

CHAPTER XVI. FINDING THE BIPLANE......................................................................................153

CHAPTER XVII. ALL ABOARD FOR BOSTON!...........................................................................157

CHAPTER XVIII. THE HURRICANE..............................................................................................160

CHAPTER XIX. WESTWARD HO! ..................................................................................................164

CHAPTER XX. ON THE LIP OF THE CHASM ...............................................................................168

CHAPTER XXI. LOST IN THE GREAT ABYSS .............................................................................173

CHAPTER XXII. LIGHTS!................................................................................................................177

CHAPTER XXIII. THE WHITE BARBARIANS..............................................................................181

CHAPTER XXIV. THE LAND OF THE MERUCAANS.................................................................184

CHAPTER XXV. THE DUNGEON OF THE SKELETONS............................................................188

CHAPTER XXVI. "YOU SPEAK ENGLISH!".................................................................................191

CHAPTER XXVII. DOOMED!..........................................................................................................196

CHAPTER XXVIII. THE BATTLE IN THE DARK.........................................................................201

CHAPTER XXIX. SHADOWS OF WAR..........................................................................................207

CHAPTER XXX. EXPLORATION ....................................................................................................212

CHAPTER XXXI. ESCAPE? ..............................................................................................................216

CHAPTER XXXII. PREPARATIONS...............................................................................................219

CHAPTER XXXIII. THE PATRIARCH'S TALE..............................................................................223

CHAPTER XXXIV. THE COMING OF KAMROU ..........................................................................227

CHAPTER XXXV. FACE TO FACE WITH DEATH .......................................................................232

CHAPTER XXVI. GAGE OF BATTLE .............................................................................................237

CHAPTER XXXVII. THE FINAL STRUGGLE ................................................................................240

CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE SUN OF SPRING ...................................................................................244

BOOK III. THE AFTER GLOW ........................................................................................................248

CHAPTER I. DEATH, LIFE, AND LOVE .........................................................................................248

CHAPTER II. EASTWARD HO!.......................................................................................................251

CHAPTER III. CATASTROPHE!......................................................................................................254

CHAPTER IV. "TOMORROW IS OUR WEDDINGDAY" ..........................................................258

CHAPTER V. THE SEARCH FOR THE RECORDS ........................................................................261

CHAPTER VI. TRAPPED! .................................................................................................................264

CHAPTER VII. THE LEADEN CHEST............................................................................................268

CHAPTER VIII. TILL DEATH US DO PART..................................................................................273

CHAPTER IX. AT SETTLEMENT CLIFFS ......................................................................................277

CHAPTER X. SEPARATION............................................................................................................281

CHAPTER XI. "HAIL TO THE MASTER!" ......................................................................................285

CHAPTER XII. CHALLENGED! .......................................................................................................289

CHAPTER XIII. THE RAVISHED NEST.........................................................................................293

CHAPTER XIV. ON THE TRAIL OF THE MONSTER ...................................................................299

CHAPTER XV. IN THE GRIP OF TERROR....................................................................................303

CHAPTER XVI. A RESPITE FROM TOIL.......................................................................................306

CHAPTER XVII. THE DISTANT MENACE....................................................................................309

CHAPTER XVIII. THE ANNUNCIATION .......................................................................................314

CHAPTER XIX. THE MASTER OF HIS RACE ...............................................................................319

CHAPTER XX. DISASTER!..............................................................................................................322

CHAPTER XXI. ALLAN RETURNS NOT.......................................................................................326

CHAPTER XXII. THE TREASON OF H'YEMBA...........................................................................329

CHAPTER XXIII. THE RETURN OF THE MASTER ......................................................................334

CHAPTER XXIV. THE BOY IS GONE!...........................................................................................338

CHAPTER XXV. THE FALL OF H'YEMBA ....................................................................................341

CHAPTER XXVI. THE COMING OF THE HORDE ........................................................................346

CHAPTER XXVII. WAR!..................................................................................................................350

CHAPTER XXVIII. THE BESOM OF FLAME................................................................................353

CHAPTER XXIX. ALLAN'S NARRATIVE ......................................................................................358

CHAPTER XXX. INTO THE FIRESWEPT WILDERNESS ..........................................................362

CHAPTER XXXI. A STRANGE APPARITION...............................................................................365

CHAPTER XXXII. THE MEETING OF THE BANDS .....................................................................371

CHAPTER XXXIII. FIVE YEARS LATER .......................................................................................376

CHAPTER XXXIV. HISTORY AND ROSES ...................................................................................379

CHAPTER XXXV. THE AFTERGLOW...........................................................................................383

DIMLY, like the daybreak glimmer of a sky long wrapped in fogs, a sign of consciousness began to dawn in

Once more the breath of life began to stir in that full bosom, to which again a vital warmth had on this day of

And as she lay there, prone upon the dusty floor, her beautiful face buried and shielded in the hollow of her

Lifelife was flowing back again! The miracle of miracles was growing to reality.

Faintly now she breathed; vaguely her heart began to throb once more. She stirred. She moaned, still for the

moment powerless to cast off wholly the enshrouding incubus of that tremendous, dreamless sleep.

Then her hands closed. The finely tapered fingers tangled themselves in the masses of thick, luxuriant hair

And, a moment later, Beatrice Kendrick was sitting up, dazed and utterly uncomprehending, peering about

her at the strangest vision which since the world began had ever been the lot of any human creature to

beholdthe vision of a place transformed beyond all power of the intellect to understand.

For of the room which she remembered, which had been her last sight when (so long, so very long, ago) her

eyes had closed with that sudden and unconquerable drowsiness, of that room, I say, remained only walls,

Quite gone was all the plaster, as by magic. Here or there a heap of whitish dust betrayed where some of its

Gone was every picture, chart, and mapwhichbut an hour since, it seemed to herhad decked this

office of Allan Stern, consulting engineer, this aerie up in the fortyeighth story of the Metropolitan Tower.

Furniture, there now was none. Over the stillintact glass of the windows cobwebs were draped so thickly as

almost to exclude the light of daya strange, flyinfested curtain where once neat green shaderollers had

Even as the bewildered girl sat there, lips parted, eyes wide with amaze, a spider seized his buzzing prey and

A huge, leathery bat, suspended upside down in the far corner, cheeped with dry, crepitant sounds of

"What?" she said, quite slowly. "Dreaming? How singular! I only wish I could remember this when I wake

up. Of all the dreams I've ever had, this one's certainly the strangest. So real, so vivid! Why, I could swear I

All at once a sudden doubt flashed into her mind. An uneasy expression dawned across her face. Her eyes

Something about this room, this weird awakening, bore upon her consciousness the dread tidings this was not

Something drove home to her the fact that it was real, objective, positive! And with a gasp of fright she

"Oh!" she cried in terror, as a huge scorpion, malevolent, and with its tail raised to strike, scuttled away and

vanished through a gaping void where once the corridordoor had swung. "Oh, oh! Where am I?

Horrified beyond all words, pale and staring, both hands clutched to her breast, whereon her very clothing

To her it seemed as though some monstrous, evil thing were lurking in the dim corner at her back. She tried

Then she started toward the doorway. Even as she took the first few steps her gowna mere tattered

And, confronted by a new problem, she stopped short. About her she peered in vain for something to protect

"Whywhere'swhere's my chair? My desk?" she exclaimed thickly, starting toward the place by the

window where they should have been, and were not. Her shapely feet fell soundlessly in that strange and

"My typewriter? Iscan that be my typewriter? Great Heavens! What's the matter here, with everything?

There before her lay a somewhat larger pile of dust mixed with soft and punky splinters of rotten wood. Amid

all this decay she saw some bits of rust, a corroded typebar or twoeven a few rubber keycaps, still

All about her, veiling her completely in a mantle of wondrous gloss and beauty, her lustrous hair fell, as she

stooped to see this strange, incomprehensible phenomenon. She tried to pick up one of the rubber caps. At her

For a moment she stood there, her every power of thought, of motion, numbed. Breathing not, she only stared

in a wild kind of cringing amazement, as perhaps you might do if you should see a dead man move.

Then to the door she ran. Out into the hall she peered, this way and that, down the dismantled corridor, up the

wreckage of the stairs all cumbered, like the office itself, with dust and webs and vermin.

Aloud she hailed: "Oh! Help, help, help!" No answer. Even the echoes flung back only dull, vacuous sounds

What? No noise of human life anywhere to be heard? None! No familiar hum of the metropolis now rose

from what, when she had fallen asleep, had been swarming streets and miles on miles of habitations.

Instead, a blank, unbroken leaden silence, that seemed part of the musty, choking atmospherea silence that

Dumfounded by all this, and by the universal crumbling of every perishable thing, the girl ran, shuddering,

No dream, then, but reality! She knew at length that some catastrophe, incredibly vast, some disaster cosmic

She did not weep, but just stood cowering, a chill of anguished horror racking her. All at once her teeth began

Thus for a moment dazed and stunned she remained there, knowing not which way to turn nor what to do.

Then her terrorstricken gaze fell on the doorway leading from her outer office to the inner one, the one

This door now hung, a few wormeaten planks and splintered bits of wood, barely supported by the rusty

Toward it she staggered. About her she drew the sheltering masses of her hair, like a Godiva of another age;

and to her eyes, womanlike, the hot tears mounted. As she went, she cried in a voice of horror.

She reached the door. The mere touch of her outstretched hand disintegrated it. Down in a crumbling mass it

fell. Thick dust bellied up in a cloud, through which a single sunray that entered the cobwebbed pane shot a

Peering, hesitant, fearful of even greater terrors in that other room, Beatrice peered through this dusthaze. A

sick foreboding of evil possessed her at thought of what she might find thereyet more afraid was she of

An instant she stood within the ruined doorway, her left hand resting on the moldy jam. Then, with a cry, she

Forgotten now the fact that, save for the shrouding of her messy hair, she stood naked. Forgotten the wreck,

There, in that inner office, halfrising from the wrack of many things that had been and were now no more

At her he peered with eyes that saw not, yet; toward her he groped a vague, unsteady hand.

THE joy in Beatrice's eyes gave way to poignant wonder as she gazed on him. Could this be he?

Yes, well she knew it was. She recognized him even through the grotesquery of his clinging rags, even

behind the mask of a long, red, dusty beard and formidable mustache, even despite the wild and staring

Yet how incredible the metamorphosis! To her flashed a memory of this man, her othertime

employerkeen and smoothshaven, alert, welldressed, selfcentered, dominant, the master of a hundred

Faltering and uncertain now he stood there. Then, at the sound of the girl's voice, he staggered toward her

For he had had no time as yet to correlate his thoughts, to pull himself together.

And while one's heart might throb ten times, Beatrice saw terror in his blinking, bloodshot eyes.

But almost at once the engineer mastered himself. Even as Beatrice watched him, breathlessly, from the door,

It was almost as though something tangible were limning the man's soul upon his face. She thrilled at sight of

And though for a long moment no word was spoken, while the man and woman stood looking at each other

like two children in some dread and unfamiliar attic, an understanding leaped between them.

Then, womanlike, instinctively as she breathed, the girl ran to him. Forgetful of every convention and of her

disarray, she seized his hand. And in a voice that trembled till it broke she cried:

"There, there," said he huskily, as though the dust and dryness of the innumerable years had got into his very

"Something seems to have taken place here whilewe've been asleep. What? What is it? I don't know yet.

"Yes, I see. But no matter. You're alive. I'm alive. That's two of us, anyhow. Maybe there are a lot more.

He turned and, trailing rags and streamers of rotten cloth that once had been a business suit, he waded

If you have seen a weatherbeaten scarecrow flapping in the wind, you have some notion of his outward

guise. No tramp you ever laid eyes on could have offered so preposterous an appearance.

Down over his shoulders fell the matted, dusty hair. His tangled beard reached far below his waist. Even his

Save that he was not gray or bent, and that he still seemed to have kept the resilient force of vigorous

manhood, you might have thought him some incredibly ancient Rip Van Winkle come to life upon that

But little time gave he to introspection or the matter of his own appearance. With one quick gesture he swept

away the shrouding tangle of webs, spiders, and dead flies that obscured the window. Out he peered.

"Why, I don't knowyet. But this is something big! Something universal! It'sit'sno, no, you'd better not

Now she was at his side, and, like him, staring out into the clear sunshine, out over the vast expanses of the

A moment's utter silence fell. Quite clearly hummed the protest of an imprisoned fly in a web at the top of the

"Wrecked? It looks that way," the engineer made answer, with a strong effort holding his emotions in control.

"Why not be frank about this? You'd better make up your mind at once to accept the very worst. I see no

Again the silence while they looked, with emotions that could find no voicing in words. Instinctively the

"And the last thing I remember," whispered she, "was justjust after you'd finished dictating those Taunton

Bridge specifications. I suddenly feltoh, so sleepy! Only for a minute I thought I'd close my eyes and rest,

"Same here," said he. "What the deuce can have struck us? Us and everybodyand everything? Talk about

He did not finish, but fell once more to studying the incomprehensible prospect.

Their view was towards the east, but over the river and the reaches of what had once upon a time been Long

Island City and Brooklyn, as familiar a scene in the other days as could be possibly imagined. But now how

"It's surely all wiped out, all gone, gone into ruins," said Stern slowly and carefully, weighing each word. "No

hallucination about that." He swept the skyline with his eyes, that now peered keenly out from beneath those

bushy brows. Instinctively he brought his hand up to his breast. He started with surprise.

"What's this?" he cried. "Why, II've got a full yard of whiskers. My good Lord! Whiskers on me? And I

He burst out laughing. At his beard he plucked with merriment that jangled horribly on the girl's tense nerves.

Suddenly he grew serious. For the first time he seemed to take clear notice of his companion's plight.

"Why, what a time it must have been!" cried he. "Here's some calculation all cut out for me, all right.

Butyou can't go that way, Miss Kendrick. Itit won't do, you know. Got to have something to put on.

He tried to peel off his remnant of a coat, but at the merest touch it tore to shreds and fell away. The girl

"Never mind," said she, with quiet, modest dignity. "My hair protects me very well for the present. If you and

"Forgive me," he whispered, laying a hand on her shoulder. Once more he turned to the window and Looked

"So then, it's all gone?" he queried, speaking as to himself. "Only a skyscraper standing here or there? And

"Not a sign of life anywhere; not a sound; the forests growing thick among the ruins? A dead world ifif all

In silence they stood there, striving to realize the full import of the catastrophe. And Stern, deep down in his

SUDDENLY the girl started, rebelling against the evidence of her own senses, striving again to force upon

"No, no, no!" she cried. "This can't be true. It mustn't be. There's a mistake somewhere. This simply must be

"If the whole world's dead, how does it happen we're alive? How do we know it's dead? Can we see it all

from here? Why, all we see is just a little segment of things. Perhaps if we could know the truth, look farther,

"I guess you'll find it's real enough," he answered, "no matter how far you look. But, just the same, it won't do

"Come, let's go on up to the top of the tower, up to the observationplatform. The quicker we know all the

He thought hard a moment, then turned and strode over to a heap of friable disintegration that lay where once

Down on his ragged knees he fell; his rotten shreds of clothing tore and ripped at every movement, like so

A strange, hairy, dustcovered figure, he knelt there. Quickly he plunged his hands into the rubbish and

"Ah!" he cried with triumph. "Thank Heaven, brass and lenses haven't crumbled yet!"

"My 'level,' see?" he exclaimed, holding it up to view. "The wooden tripod's long since gone. The fixtures

"Neither will the spiritglass on top. The main thing is that the telescope itself seems to be still intact. Now

Speaking, he dusted off the eyepiece and the objective with a bit of rag from his coatsleeve.

Beatrice noted that the brass tubes were all eaten and pitted with verdigris, but they still held firmly. And the

lenses, when Stern had finished cleaning them, showed as bright and clear as ever.

Out through the doorway into the hall he made his way while the girl followed. As she went she gathered her

In this universal disorganization, this wreck of all the world, how little the conventions counted!

Together, picking their way up the broken stairs, where now the rustbitten steel showed through the

Here, spiderwebs thickly shrouded the way, and had to be brushed down. There, still more bats bung and

A fluffy little white owl blinked at them from a dark niche; and, well toward the top of the climb, they

flushed up a score of mudswallows which had ensconced themselves comfortably along a broken

At last, however, despite all unforeseen incidents of this sort, they reached the upper platform, nearly a

Out through the relics of the revolving door they crept, he leading, testing each foot of the way before the

Even here they saw with growing amazement that the hand of time and of this maddening mystery had laid its

"Look!" he exclaimed, pointing. "What this all means we don't know yet. How long it's been we can't tell. But

to judge by the appearance up here, it's even longer than I thought. See, the very tiles are cracked and

"Tilework is usually considered highly recalcitrantbut this is gone. There's grass growing in the dust that's

settled between the tiles. Andwhy, here's a young oak that's taken root and forced a dozen slabs out of

"The winds and birds have carried seeds up here, and acorns," she answered in an awed voice. "Think of the

"But tell me," and her brow wrinkled with a sudden wonder, "tell me how we've ever lived so long? I can't

"Not only have we escaped starvation, but we haven't frozen to death in all these bitter winters. How can that

"Let it all go as suspended animation till we learn the facts, if we ever do," he replied, glancing about with

"You know, of course, how toads have been known to live embedded in rock for centuries? How fish,

"I know. Certain unknown natural forces, however, might have made no more of us than of nonmammalian

"Don't bother your head about these problems yet a while. On my word, we've got enough to do for the

"All we definitely know is that some very long, undetermined period of time has passed, leaving us still alive.

"Impossible to say at once. But it must have been something extraordinaryprobably far longer than either

"See, for example, the attrition of everything up here exposed to the weather." He pointed at the heavy stone

A whole segment, indeed, had fallen inward. Its debris lay in confusion, blocking all the southern side of the

The bronze bars, which Stern well rememberedtwo at each corner, slanting downward and bracing a

Three had broken entirely and sagged wantonly awry with the displacement of the stone blocks, between

"Look out!" Stern cautioned. "Don't lean against any of those stones." Firmly he held her back as she, eagerly

"Don't go anywhere near the edge. It may all be rotten and undermined, for anything we know. Keep back

"Facing stones are pretty well gone," said he, "but, so far as I can see, the steel frame isn't too bad. Putting

everything together, I'll probably be able before long to make some sort of calculation of the date. But for

"The year X!" she whispered under her breath. "Good Heavens, am I as old as that?"

He made no answer, but only drew her to him protectingly, while all about them the warm summer wind

swept onward to the sea, out over the sparkling expanses of the bayalone unchanged in all that universal

In the breeze her heavy masses of hair stirred luringly. He felt its silken caress on his halfnaked shoulder,

Quite gone now the daze and drowsiness of the first wakening. Stern did not even feel weak or shaken. On

The presence of the girl set his heart throbbing heavily, but he bit his lip and restrained every untoward

Only his arm tightened a little about that warmly clinging body. Beatrice did not shrink from him. She needed

To her it seemed that come what might, his strength and comfort could not fail. And, despite everything, she

Quite vanished now, even in those brief minutes since their awakening, was all consciousness of their former

Now, through all the extraneous disguise of his outer self, there lived and breathed just a man, a young man,

thewed with the vigor of his plentitude. All else had been swept clean away by this great change.

The girl was different, too. Was this strong woman, eagereyed and brave, the quiet, lowvoiced

stenographer he remembered, busy only with her machine, her fileboxes, and her carboncopies? Stern

dared not realize the transmutation. He ventured hardly fringe it in his thoughts.

To divert his wonderings and to ease a situation which oppressed him, he began adjusting the "level"

With his back planted firmly against the tower, he studied a wide section of the dead and buried world so

"It is true, Beatrice! Everything's swept clean away. Nothing left, nothing at allno signs of life!

"As far as I can reach with these lenses, universal ruin. We're all alone in this whole world, just you and

Suddenly he felt her tremble at his side. Down at her he looked, a great new tenderness possessing him. He

Beatrice pressed both hands to her face and bowed her head. Filled with strange emotions, the man watched

Then in silence, realizing the uselessness of any words, knowing that in this monstrous Ragnarok of all

humanity no ordinary relations of life could bear either cogency or meaning, he took her in his arms.

And there alone with her, far above the ruined world, high in the pure air of midheaven, he comforted the

PRESENTLY Beatrice grew calmer. For though grief and terror still weighed upon her soul, she realized that

this was no fit time to yield to any weaknessnow when a thousand things were pressing for

accomplishment, if their own lives, too, were not presently to be snuffed out in all this universal death.

"Come, come," said Stern reassuringly. "I want you, too, to get a complete idea of what has happened. From

now on you must know all, share all, with me." And, taking her by the hand he led her along the crumbling

Together, very cautiously, they explored the three sides of the platform still unchoked by ruins.

Out over the incredible mausoleum of civilization they peered. Now and again they fortified their vision by

Nowhere, as he had said, was any slightest sign of life to be discerned. Nowhere a thread of smoke arose;

Dead lay the city, between its rivers, whereon now no sail glinted in the sunlight, no tug puffed vehemently

with plumy jets of steam, no liner idled at anchor or nosed its slow course out to sea.

The Jersey shore, the Palisades, the Bronx and Long Island all lay buried in dense forests of conifers and oak,

with only here and there some skeleton mockery of a steel structure jutting through.

The islands in the harbor, too, were thickly overgrown. On Ellis, no sign of the immigrant station remained.

Castle William was quite gone. And with a gasp of dismay and pain, Beatrice pointed out the fact that no

Save for a black, misshapen mass protruding through the treetops, the huge gift of France was no more.

Fringing the waterfront, all the way round, the mournful remains of the docks and piers lay in a mere

Even over these wrecks of liners, vegetation was growing rank and green. All the wooden ships, barges and

The telescope showed only a stray, lolling mast of steel, here or yonder, thrusting up from the desolation, like

"See," remarked Stern, "uptown almost all the buildings seem to have crumbled in upon themselves, or to

have fallen outward into the streets. What an inconceivable tangle of detritus those streets must be!

"And, do you notice the park hardly shows at all? Everything's so overgrown with trees you can't tell where it

"The universal claim, made real," said Beatrice. "Those rather clearer lines of green, I suppose, must be the

larger streets. See how the avenues stretch away and away, like ribbons of green velvet?"

"Everywhere that roots can hold at all, Mother Nature has set up her flags again. Hark! What's that?"

A moment they listened intently. Up to them, from very far, rose a wailing cry, tremulous, longdrawn,

"Oh! Then there are people, after all?" faltered the girl, grasping Stern's arm.

"No, hardly!" answered he. "I see you don't know the wolfcry. I didn't till I heard it in the Hudson Bay

"Why not? Probably all sorts of game on the island now. Why shouldn't there be? All in Mother Nature's

"But come, come, don't let that worry you. We're safe, for the present. Time enough to consider hunting later.

Let's creep around here to the other side of the tower, and see what we can see."

Silently she acquiesced. Together they reached the southern part of the platform, making their way as far as

Very carefully they progressed, fearful every moment lest the support break beneath them and hurl them

"Look!" bade Stern, pointing. "That very long green line there used to be Broadway. Quite a respectable

"See those steel cages, those tiny, faroff ones with daylight shining through? You know themthe Park

Row, the Singer, the Woolworth and all the rest. And the bridges, look at those!"

She shivered at the desolate sight. Of the Brooklyn Bridge only the towers were visible.

The watchers, two isolated castaways on their island in the sea of uttermost desolation, beheld a dragging

mass of wreckage that drooped from these towers on either shore, down to the sparkling flood.

The other bridges, newer and stronger far, still remained standing. But even from that distance Stern could

quite plainly see, without the telescope, that the Williamsburg Bridge had "buckled" downward and that the

"How horrible, how ghastly is all this waste and ruin!" thought the engineer. "Yet, even in their overthrow,

A vast wonder seized him as he stood there gazing; a fierce desire to rehabilitate all this wreckage, to set it

"Can it be possible," whispered she, "that you andand Iare really like Macaulay's lone watcher of the

"That we are actually seeing the thing so often dreamed of by prophets and poets? That 'All this mighty heart

So then, could he and Beatrice, just they two, be in stern reality the sole survivors of the entire human race?

That race for whose material welfare he had, once on a time, done such tremendous work?

Could they be destined, he and she, to witness the closing chapter in the long, painful, glorious Book of

Till he could adjust his reason to the facts, could learn the truth and weigh it, he knew he must not analyze

The sun, declining, shot a broad glory all across the sky. Purple and gold and crimson lay the lightbands

Dark blue the shadows streamed across the ruined city with its crowding forests, its blankstaring windows

and sagging walls, its thousands of gaping vacancies, where wood and stone and brick had crumbled

downthe city where once the tides of human life had ebbed and flowed, roaring resistlessly.

High overhead drifted a few rosy clouds, part of that changeless nature which alone did not repel or mystify

these two beleaguered waifs, these chance survivors, this man, this woman, left alone together by the hand of

They were dazed, fascinated by the splendor of that sunset over a world devoid of human life, for the moment

Stern and his mate peered closer, down at the interwoven jungles of Union Square, the leafy frondmasses

that marked the onetime course of TwentyThird Street, the forest in Madison Square, and the truncated

column of the tower where no longer Diana turned her huntress bow to every varying breeze.

They heard their own hearts beat. The intake of their breath sounded strangely loud. Above them, on a broken

From Stern she took the telescope, adjusted it, and gazed minutely at the shattered pile of stone and metal.

Blotched as with leprosy stood the walls, whence many hundreds of blocks had fallen into Broadway forming

In numberless places the steel frame peered through. The whole roof had caved in, crushing down the upper

"Oh, I can even seeinto some of the offices on the eighteenth floor!" cried she. "There, look?" And she

She broke short off. In her trembling hands the telescope sank. Stern saw that she was very pale.

"Take me down!" she whispered. "I can't stand it any longerI can't, possibly! The sight of that wrecked

Gently, as though she had been a frightened child, Stern led her round the platform to the doorway, then

down the crumbling stairs and so to the wreckage and duststrewn confusion of what had been his office.

"Listen now, Beatrice," said he. "Let's try to reason this thing out together, let's try to solve this problem like

"Just what's happened, we don't know; we can't know yet a while, till I investigate. We don't even know what

"Don't know whether anybody else is still alive, anywhere in the world. But we can find outafter we've

"If all the rest are gone, swept away, wiped out clean like figures on a slate, then why we should have

happened to survive whatever it was that struck the earth, is still a riddle far beyond our comprehension."

He raised her face to his, noble despite all its grotesque disfigurements; he looked into her eyes as though to

read the very soul of her, to judge whether she could share this fight, could brave this coming struggle.

"All these things may yet be answered. Once I get the proper data for this series of phenomena, I can find the

"Some vast worldduty may be ours, far greater, infinitely more vital than anything that either of us has ever

dreamed. It's not our place, now, to mourn or fear! Rather it is to read this mystery, to meet it and to

Through her tears the girl smiled up at him, trustingly, confidingly. And in the last declining rays of the sun

CAME now the evening, as they sat and talked together, talked long and earnestly, there within that ruined

place. Too eager for some knowledge of the truth, they, to fed hunger or to think of their lack of clothing.

Chairs they had none, nor even so much as a broom to clean the floor with. But Stern, firstoff, had wrenched

And with this plank of stone still strong enough to serve, he had scraped all one corner of the office floor free

of rubbish. This gave them a preliminary campingplace wherein to take their bearings and discuss what

"So then," the engineer was saying as the dusk grew deeper, "so then, we'll apparently have to make this

"As nearly as I can figure, this is about what must have happened. Some sudden, deadly, numbing plague or

"It may have been an almost instantaneous onset of some new and highly fatal microorganism, propagating

with such marvelous rapidity that it swept the world clean in a daydoing its work before any resistance

"Again, some poisonous gas may have developed, either from a fissure in the earth's crust, or otherwise.

"We only know that here, in this uppermost office of the Tower, you and I have somehow escaped with only

a long period of completely suspended animation. How long? God alone knows! That's a query I can't even

"Well, to judge by all the changes," Beatrice suggested thoughtfully, "it can't have been less than a hundred

years. Great Heavens!" and she burst into a little satiric laugh. "Am I a hundred and twentyfour years old?

"You underestimate," Stern answered. "But no matter about the time question for the present; we can't solve

"Neither can we solve the other problem about Europe and Asia and all the rest of the world. Whether

London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, and every other city, every other land, all have shared this fate, we simply don't

"All we can have is a feeling of strong probability that life, human life I mean, is everywhere extinctsave

"Otherwise, don't you see, men would have made their way back here again, back to New York, where all

He broke short off. Again, far off, they heard a faint reechoing roar. For a moment they both sat speechless.

What could it be? Some distant wall toppling down? A hungry beast scenting its prey? They could not tell.

"I guess," said he, "guns will be about the first thing I'll look for, after food. There ought to be good hunting

"You shoot, of course? No? Well, I'll soon teach you. Lots of things both of us have got to learn now. No end

He rose from his place on the floor, went over to the window and stood for a minute peering out into the

"What's the matter with me, anyhow?" he exclaimed with irritation. "What right have I to be staying here,

"In some way or other I've got to find food, clothing, tools, armsa thousand things. And above all, water!

Stern seemed not to have heard her, so strong the imperative of action lay upon him now. He began to pace

the floor, sliding and stumbling through the rubbish, a singular figure in his tatters and with his patriarchal

hair and beard, a figure dimly seen by the faint light that still gloomed through the window:

"In all that wreckage down below, "said he, as though half to himself, "in all that vast congeries of ruin which

once was called New York, surely enough must still remain intact for our small needs. Enough till we can

"Don't go now!" pleaded Beatrice. She, too, stood up, and out she stretched her hands to him. "Don't, please!

"No, no, it isn't right! Down in the shops and stores, who knows but we might find"

"Listen!" he commanded rather abruptly. "This is no time for hesitating or for weakness. I know you'll stand

"Some way or other I've got to make you comfortable. I've got to locate food and drink immediately. Got to

get my bearings. Why, do you think I'm going to let you, even for one night, go fasting and thirsty, sleep on

"If so, you're mistaken! No, you must spare me for an hour or two. Inside of that time I ought to make a

"Oh, I'm not quite so foolhardy as all that!" he retorted. "I'm not going to venture outside till tomorrow. My

"It's a city in itselfor was. Offices, stores, shops, everything right here together in a lump. It can't possibly

"Now that the first shock and surprise of our awakening are over, we can't go on in this way, you

Silently she looked at his dim figure in the dusk. Then she stretched out her hand.

Over to her he came. He took her hand. In silence he pressed it. Thus for a moment they stood. Then,

"A light? How can you make a light? Why, there isn't a match left anywhere in this whole world."

"I know, but there are other things. Probably my chemical flasks and vials aren't injured. Glass is practically

imperishable. And if I'm not mistaken, the bottles must be lying somewhere in that rubbish heap over by the

He left her wondering, and knelt among the litter. For a while he silently delved through the triturated bits of

punky wood and rustred metal that now represented the remains of his chemical cabinet.

All at once he exclaimed: "Here's one! And here's another! This certainly is luck! Hm! I shouldn't wonder if

One by one he found a score of thick, groundglass vials. Some were broken, probably by the shock when

Among these were the two essential ones. By the last dim ghost of light through the window, and by the

sense of touch, Stern was able to make out the engraved symbols "P" and "S" on these bottles.

"Phosphorus and sulphur," he commented. "Well, what more could I reasonably ask? Here's alcohol, too,

While the girl watched, with wondering admiration, Stern thought hard a moment. Then he set to work.

First he took a piece of the corroded metal framework of the cabinet, a steel strip about eighteen inches long,

Tearing off some rags from his coatsleeve, he wadded them together into a ball as big as his fist. Around

this ball he twisted the metal strip, so that it formed at once a holder and a handle for the ragmass.

With considerable difficulty he worked the glass stopper out of the alcohol bottle, and with the fluid saturated

the rags. Then, on a clear bit of the floor, he spilled out a small quantity of the phosphorus and sulphur.

"This beats getting fire by friction all hollow," he cheerfully remarked. "I've tried that, too, and I guess it's

only in books a white man ever succeeds at it. But this way you see, it's simplicity itself."

Very moderate friction, with a bit of wood from the wreckage of the door, sufficed to set the phosphorus

ablaze. Stern heaped on a few tiny lumps of sulphur. Then, coughing as the acrid fumes arose from the

Instantly a puff of fire shot up, colorless and clear, throwing no very satisfactory light, yet capable of

The blaze showed Stern's eager face, longbearded and dusty, as he bent over this crucial experiment.

The girl, watching closely, felt a strange new thrill of confidence and solace. Some realization of the

engineer's resourcefulness came to her, and in her heart she had confidence that, though the whole wide

world had crumbled into ruin, yet he would find a way to smooth her path, to be a strength and refuge for her.

But Stern had no time for any but matters of intensest practicality. From the floor he arose, holding the

"Come now," bade he, and raised the torch on high to light her way, "You're still determined to go?"

And so, together, he leading out of the room and along the wrecked hall, they started on their trip of

NEVER before had either of them realized just what the meaning of fortyeight stories might be. For all their

memories of this height were associated with smoothsliding elevators that had whisked them up as though

This night, however, what with the broken stairs, the debriscumbered hallways, the lurking darkness which

the torch could hardly hold back from swallowing them, they came to a clear understanding of the problem.

Every few minutes the flame burned low and Stern had to drop on more alcohol, holding the bottle high

Long before they had compassed the distance to the ground floor the girl lagged with weariness and shrank

Each black doorway that yawned along their path seemed ominous with memories of life that had perished

Each corner, every niche and crevice, breathed out the spirit of the past and of the mystic tragedy which in so

brief a time had wiped the human race from earth, "as a mother wipes the milky lips of her child."

And Stern, though he said little save to guide Beatrice and warn her of unusual difficulties, felt the somber

magic of the place. No poet, he; only a man of hard and practical details. Yet he realized that, were he

cowered with the faculty, here lay matter for an Epic of Death such as no Homer ever dreamed, no Virgil

Now and then, along the corridors and down the stairways, they chanced on curious little piles of dust,

These for a few minutes puzzled Stern, till stooping, he stirred one with his hand. Something he saw there

But he, realizing the nature of his discoveryfor he had seen a human incisor tooth, goldfilled, there in the

"It's nothing, nothing at all!" he answered. "Come, we haven't got any time to waste. If we're going to provide

ourselves with even a few necessaries before the alcohol's all gone, we've got to be at work!"

And onward, downward, ever farther and farther, he led her through the dark maze of ruin, which did not

Like disheveled wraiths they passed, soundlessly, through eerie labyrinths and ways which might have served

as types of Coleridge's "caverns measureless to man," so utterly drear they stretched out in their ghostly

At length, after an eternal time of weariness and labor, they managed to make their way down into the ruins

of the once famous and beautiful arcade which had formerly run from Madison Avenue to the square.

"Oh, how horrible!" gasped Beatrice, shrinking, as they clambered down the stairs and emerged into this

Where long ago the arcade had stretched its path of light and life and beauty, of wealth and splendor, like an

epitome of civilization all gathered in that constricted space, the little light disclosed stark horror.

Feeble as a willo'thewisp in that enshrouding dark, the torch showed only hints of thingshere a fallen

pillar, there a shattered mass of wreckage where a huge section of the ceiling had fallen, yonder a gaping

Through all this rubbish and confusion, over and through a score of the little dustpiles which Stern had so

carefully avoided explaining to Beatrice, they climbed and waded, and with infinite pains slowly advanced.

"What we need is more light!" exclaimed the engineer presently. "We've got to have a bonfire here!"

And before long he had collected a considerable pile of wood, ripped from the doorways and

Soon a dull, wavering glow began to paint itself upon the walls, and to fling the comrades' shadows, huge and

Strangely enough, many of the large plateglass windows lining the arcade still stood intact. They glittered

with the uncanny reflections of the fire as the man and woman slowly made way down the passage.

"See," exclaimed Stern, pointing "See all these ruined shops? Probably almost everything is worthless. But

"See the postoffice, down there on the left? Think of the millions in real money, gold and silver, in all these

"Jewels, diamonds, wealth simply inconceivable! Yet now a good water supply, some bread, meat, coffee,

salt, and so on, a couple of beds, a gun or two and some ordinary tools would outweigh them all!"

"Clothes, too," the girl suggested. "Plain cotton cloth is worth ten million dollars an inch now."

"And I offer a bushel of diamonds for a razor and a pair of scissors." Grimly he smiled as he stroked his

"But come, this won't do. There'll be plenty of time to look around and discuss things in the morning. Just

Thus began their search for a few prime necessities of life, there in that charnelhouse of civilization, by the

Though they forced their way into ten or twelve of the arcade shops, they found no clothing, no blankets or

fabric of any kind that would serve for coverings or to sleep upon. Everything at all in the nature of cloth had

either sunk back into moldering annihilation or had at best grown far too fragile to be of the slightest service.

From rusted metal hooks a few warped fragments of skins still hung, motheaten, riddled with holes, ready to

"There's nothing in any of these to help us," judged Stern. "But maybe we might find something else in here."

Carefully they searched the littered place, all dust and horrible disarray, which made sad mockery of the

goldleaf sign still visible on the window: "Lange, Importer. All the Latest Novelties."

On the floor Stern discovered three more of those little dustmiddens which meant human bodies, pitiful

remnants of an extinct race, of unknown people in the long ago. What had he now in common with them?

The remains did not even inspire repugnance in him. All at once Beatrice uttered a cry of startled gladness.

True enough, there stood a cedar box, all seamed and cracked and bulging, yet still retaining a semblance of

The copper bindings and the lock were still quite plainly to be seen, as the engineer held the torch close,

One effort of Stern's powerful arms sufficed to tip the chest quite over. As it fell it burst. Down in a mass of

Out rolled furs, many and many of them, black, and yellow, and stripedthe pelts of the grizzly, of the

"Hurray!" shouted the man, catching up first one, then another, and still a third. "Almost intact. A little

"What's that? Yes, maybe they are a trifle warm for this season of the year, but this is no time to be particular.

"Magnificent!" he judged, standing back a pace or two and holding up the torch to see her better. "When I

find you a big gold pin or clasp to fasten that with at the throat you'll make a picture of another and more

He tried to laugh at his own words, but merriment sat ill there in that place, and with such a subject. For the

Bright gleamed her gray eyes by the light of the flambeau; limpid, and deep, and earnest, they looked at

Stern. Her wonderful hair, shaken out in bewildering masses over the striped, tawny savagery of the robe,

Half hidden, the woman's perfect body, beautiful as that of a woodnymph or a pagan dryad, roused atavistic

He dared speak no other word for the moment, but bent beside the shattered chest again and fell to looking

A polarbear skin attracted his attention, and this he chose. Then, with it slung across his shoulder, he stood

"Come," said he, steadying his voice with an effort; "come, we must be going now. Our light won't hold out

very much longer. We've got to find food and drink before the alcohol's all gone; got to look out for practical

In the wreck of a small fancy grocer's booth down toward the end of the arcade, where the postoffice had

All the tinned foods had long since perished, but the impermeable glass seemed to have preserved fruits and

vegetables of the finer sort, and chipped beef and the like, in a state of perfect soundness.

Best of all, they discovered the remains of a case of mineral water. The case had crumbled to dust, but

"Pile three or four of these into my fur robe here," directed Stern. "Now, a few of the other jarsthat's right.

Tomorrow we'll come down and clean up the whole stock. But we've got enough for now."

"Are you going to leave that fire burning?" asked the girl, as they passed the middle of the arcade.

"Yes. It can't do any harm. Nothing to catch here; only old metal and cement. Besides, it would take too

It must have taken them an hour and a half at least to reach their eerie. Both found their strength taxed to the

Before they were much more than halfway up, the ultimate drop of alcohol had been burned.

The last few hundred feet had to be made by slow, laborious feeling, aided only by such dim reflections of

the gibbous moon as glimmered through a window, cobwebhung, or through some break in the walls.

At length, howeverfor all things have an endbreathless and spent, they found their refuge. And soon

Allan Stern, consulting engineer, and Beatrice Kendrick stenographer, now king and queen of the whole wide

world domain (as they feared), sat together by a little blaze of punky wood fragments that flickered on the

They ate with their fingers and drank out of the bottles, sans apology. Strange were their speculations, their

wonderings, their plansnow discussed specifically, now halfvoiced by a mere word that thrilled them

An so an hour passed, and the night deepened toward the birth of another day. The fire burned low and died,

Down sank the moon, her pale light dimming as she went, her faint illumination wanly creeping across the

And at length Stern, in the outer office, Beatrice in the other, they wrapped themselves within their furs and

Despite the agelong trance from which they both had but so recently emerged, a strange lassitude weighed

Yet long after Beatrice had lost herself in dreams, Stern lay and thought strange thoughts, yearning and eager

BEFORE daybreak the engineer was up again, and active. Now that he faced the light of morning, with a

thousand difficult problems closing in on every hand, he put aside his softer moods, his visions and desires,

andlike the scientific man he wasaddressed himself to the urgent matters in hand.

"The girl's safe enough alone, here, for a while," thought he, looking in upon her where she lay, calm as a

"I must be out and away for two or three hours, at the very least. I hope she'll sleep till I get back. If

He thought a moment; then, coming over to the charred remnants of last night's fire, chose a bit of burnt

wood. With this he scrawled in large, rough letters on a fairly smooth stretch of the wall:

Garish now, and doubly terrible, since seen with more than double clearness by the graying dawn, the

Strong of body and of nerve as he was, he could not help but shudder at the numberless traces of sudden and

Everywhere lay those dustheaps, with here or there a tooth, a ring, a bit of jewelry showingeverywhere he

saw them, all the way down the stairs, in every room and office he peered into, and in the timeravished

But this was scarcely the time for reflections of any sort. Life called, and labor, and duty; not mourning for

the dead world, nor even wonder or pity at the tragedy which had so mysteriouslybefallen.

And as the man made his way over and through the universal wreckage, he took counsel with himself.

"First of all, water!" thought he. "We can't depend on the bottled supply. Of course, there's the Hudson; but it

s brackish, if not downright salt. I've got to find some fresh and pure supply, close at hand. That's the prime

"What with the canned stuff, and such game as I can kill, there's bound to be food enough for a while. But a

Yet, prudent rather for the sake of Beatrice than for his own, he decided that he ought not to issue out,

unarmed, into this new and savage world, of which he had as yet no very definite knowledge. And for a while

"I've got to have an ax, first of all," said he. "That's mans first need, in any wilderness. Where shall I find

"Ah! In the basements!" exclaimed he. "Maybe I can locate an engineroom, a storeroom, or something of

that sort. There's sure to be tools in a place like that." And, laying off the bearskin, he prepared to explore

He used more than half an hour, through devious ways and hard labor, to make his way to the desired spot.

But by clambering down one of the elevatorshafts, digging toes and fingers into the crevices in the metal

framework and the cracks in the concrete, he managed at last to reach a vaulted subcellar, festooned with

Considerable light glimmered in from a broken sidewalkgrating above, and through a gaping, jagged hole

The engineer figured that this block had fallen from the tower and come to rest only here; and this awoke him

to a new sense of everpresent peril. At any moment of the night or day, he realized, some such mishap was

"Eternal vigilance!" he whispered to himself. Then, dismissing useless fears, he set about the task in hand.

By the dim illumination from above, he was able to take cognizance of the mustysmelling place, which, on

the whole, was in a better state of repair than the arcade. The first cellar yielded nothing of value to him, but,

making his way through a low vaulted door, he chanced into what must have been one of the smaller,

This, he found, contained a battery of four dynamos, a small seepagepump, and a crumbling marble

At sight of all this valuable machinery scaled and pitted with rust, Stern's brows contracted with a feeling

akin to pain. The engineer loved mechanism of all sorts; its care and use had been his life.

And now these mournful relics, strange as that may seem, affected him more strongly than the little heaps of

dust which marked the spots where human beings had fallen in sudden, inescapable death.

"Tools!" cried he, peering about the dimwit vault. "ToolsI must have some. Till I find tools, I'm helpless!"

Search as he might, he discovered no ax in the place, but in place of it he unearthed a sledgehammer.

Though corroded, it was still quite serviceable. Oddly enough, the oak handle was almost intact.

"Kyanized wood, probably," reflected he, as he laid the sledge to one side and began delving into a bed of

dust that had evidently been a workbench. "Ah! And here's a chisel! A spanner, too! A heap of rusty old

"They're worth more to me," he exulted; "than all the gold between here and what's left of San Francisco!"

He found nothing more of value in the litter. Everything else was rusted beyond use. So, having convinced

himself that nothing more remained, he gathered up his finds and started back whence he had come.

After some quarterhour of hard labor, he managed to transport everything up into the arcade.

Gripping the sledge well in hand, he made his way through the confused nexus of ruin. Disguised as

everything now was, fallen and disjointed, murdering, blighted by age incalculable, still the man recognized

Here, he recalled, the telephonebooths had been; there the information desk. Yonder, again, he remembered

the little curved counter where once upon a time a man in uniform had sold tickets to such as had wanted to

Counter now was dust; ticketman only a crumble of fine, grayish powder. Stern shivered slightly, and

As he approached the outer air, he noticed that many a grassy tuft and creeping vine had rooted in the

pavement of the arcade, upprying the marble slabs and cracking the once magnificent floor.

The doorway itself was almost choked by a tremendous Norway pine which had struck root close to the

building, and now insolently blocked that way where, othertime many thousand men and women every day

But Stern clambered out past this obstacle, testing the floor with his sledge, as he went, lest he fall through an

unseen weak spots into the depths of coalcellars below. And presently he reached the outer air, unharmed.

"Butbut, the sidewalk?" cried he, amazed. "The streetthe Square? Where are they?" And in

The view from the tower, though it had told him something of the changes wrought, had given him no

He had expected some remains of human life to show upon the earth, some semblance of the metropolis to

remain in the street. But no, nothing was there; nothing at all on the ground to show that he was in the heart

He could, indeed, catch glimpses of a building here or there. Through the tangled thickets that grew close up

to the ageworn walls of the Metropolitan, he could make out a few bits of tottering construction on the south

But of the street itself, no trace remainedno pavement, no sidewalk, no curb. And even so near and so

conspicuous an object as the wreck of the Flatiron was now entirely concealed by the dense forest.

Soil had formed thickly over all the surface. Huge oaks and pines flourished there as confidently as though in

Under the man's feet, even as he stood close by the buildingwhich was thickly overgrown with ivy and with

ferns and bushes rooted in the cranniesthe pineneedles bent in deep, pungent beds.

Birch, maple, poplar and all the natives of the American woods shouldered each other lustily. By the state of

the fresh young leaves, just bursting their sheaths, Stern knew the season was midMay.

Through the windswayed branches, little flickering patches of morning sunlight met his gaze, as they played

Even upon the huge, squared stones which here and there lay in disorder, and which Stern knew must have

fallen from the tower, the moss grew very thick; and more than one such block had been rent by frost and

"How long has it been, great Heavens! How long?" cried the engineer, a sudden fear creeping into his heart.

For this, the reasserted dominance of nature, bore in on him with more appalling force than anything he had

"Why," said he, quite slowly, "it'sit's just as though some cosmic jester, allpowerful, had scooped up the

fragments of a ruined city and tossed them pellmell into the core of the Adirondacks! It's

Dazed and awed, he stood as in a dream, a strange figure with his mane of hair, his flaming, trailing beard,

his rags (for he had left the bearskin in the arcade), his muscular arm, knotted as he held the sledge over his

Well might he have been a savage of old times; one of the early barbarians of Britain, perhaps, peering in

The chatter of a squirrel high up somewhere in the branches of an oak, recalled him to his wits. Down came

Farther off among the woods, a robin's throaty morning notes drifted to him on the odorous breeze. A wren,

surprisingly tame, chippered busily. It hopped about, not ten feet from him, entirely fearless.

Stern realized that it was now seeing a man for the first time in its life, and that it had no fear. His bushy

brows contracted as he watched the little brown body jumping from twig to twig in the pine above him.

A deep, full breath he drew. Higher, still higher he raised his head. Far through the leafy screen he saw the

"The same old world, after allthe same, in spite of everythingthank God!" he whispered, his very tone a

And suddenly, though why he could not have told, the grim engineer's eyes grew wet with tears that ran,

STERN'S weaknessas he judged itlasted but a minute. Then, realizing even more fully than ever the

necessity for immediate labor and exploration, he tightened his grip upon the sledge and set forth into the

Away from him scurried a cottontail. A snake slid, hissing, out of sight under a jungle of fern. A butterfly,

dull brown and ocher, settled upon a branch in the sunlight, where it began slowly opening and shutting its

"Hem! That's a Danaus plexippus, right enough," commented the man. "But there are some odd changes in it.

Yes, indeed, certainly some evolutionary variants. Must be a tremendous time since we went to sleep, for

sure; probably very much longer than I dare guess. That's a problem I've got to go to work on, before many

But now for the present he dismissed it again; he pushed it aside in the press of urgent matters. And, parting

He had gone but a few hundred yards when an exclamation of surprised delight burst from his lips.

"Water! Water!" he cried. "What? A spring, so close? A pool, right here at hand? Good luck, by Jove, the

There, so near to the massive bulk of the tower that the vast shadow lay broadly across it, Stern had suddenly

come upon as beautiful a little watercourse as ever bubbled forth under the yews of Arden or lapped the

He beheld a roughly circular depression in the woods, fernbanked and fringed with purple blooms; at the

From this, down through a channel which the water must have worn for itself by slow erosion, a small brook

trickled, widening out into a pool some fifteen feet across; whence, brimming over, it purled away through

"What a find!" cried the engineer. Forward he strode. "So, then? Deertracks?" he exclaimed, noting a few

dainty hoofprints in the sandy margin. "Great!" And, filled with exultation, he dropped beside the spring.

Over it he bent. Setting his bearded lips to the sweet water, he drank enormous, satisfying drafts.

Sated at last, he stood up again and peered about him. All at once he burst out into joyous laughter.

"Why, this is certainly an old friend of mine, or I'm a liar!" he cried out. "This spring is nothing more or less

than the lineal descendant of Madison Square fountain, what? But good Lord, what a change!

"It would make a splendid subject for an article in the 'Annals of Applied Geology.' Onlywell, there aren't

A minute later, stripped to the buff, the man lay splashing vigorously in the water. From top to toe he

scrubbed himself vigorously with the fine, white sand. And when, some minutes later, he rose up again, the

For a minute he looked contemptuously at his rags, lying there on the edge of the pool. Then with a grunt he

"I guess we'll dispense with those," judged he. "The bearskin, back in the building, there, will be enough."

He picked up his sledge, and, heaving a mighty breath of comfort, set out for the tower again.

"Ah, but that was certainly fine!" he exclaimed. "I feel ten years younger, already. Ten, from what? X minus

Thoughtfully, as he walked across the elastic moss and over the pineneedles, he stroked his beard.

"Now, if I could only get a haircut and shave!" said he. "Well, why not? Wouldn't that surprise her,

The idea strong upon him, he hastened his steps, and soon was back at the door close to the huge Norway

Plowing through the woods, climbing over fallen columns and shattered buildingstones, flushing a covey of

loudwinged partridges, parting the bushes that grew thickly along the base of the wall, he now found

No sign, now of paving or cartracksnothing save, on the other side of the way, crumbling lines of ruin. As

he worked his way among the detritus of the Metropolitan, he kept sharp watch for the wreckage of a

Not until he had crossed the ancient line of Madison Avenue and penetrated some hundred yards still further

along TwentyThird Street, did he find what he sought. "Ah!" he suddenly cried. "Here's something now!"

And, scrambling over a pile of grassgrown rubbish with a couple of timebitten iron wheels peering

outevidently the wreckage of an electric carhe made his way around a gaping hole where a sidewalk

"Yes, prospects here, certainly prospects!" he decided carefully inspecting the place. "If this didn't use to be

Currier Brown's place, I'm away off my bearings. There ought to be something left."

"Ah! Would you?" and he flung a hastilysnatched rock at a rattlesnake that had begun its dry, chirring

Stern wheeled about with a cry of joy. For there, he saw, still stood near the back of the shop a showcase

Quickly he ran toward this, stumbling over the loose dooring, mossy and grassgrown. There in the case,

preserved as you have seen Egyptian relics two or three thousand years old, in museums, the engineer beheld

"I certainly do understand now," said he, "why the New Zealanders took Captain Cook's old barrelhoops

and refused his cash. Same here! All the money in this town couldn't buy this rusty knife" as he seized a

corroded blade set in a horn handle, yellowed with age. And eagerly he continued the hunt.

Fifteen minutes later he had accumulated a pair of scissors, two rubber combs, another knife, a revolver, an

All these he stowed in a warped, mildewed remnant of a Gladstone bag, taken from a corner where a broken

"I guess I've got enough, now, for the first load," he judged, more excited than if he had chanced upon a

blueclay bed crammed with Cullinan diamonds. "It's a beginning, anyhow. Now for Beatrice!"

Joyously as a schoolboy with a pocketful of newwon marbles, he made his exit from the ruins of the

But hardly had he gone a hundred feet when all at once he drew back with a sharp cry of wonder and alarm.

There at his feet, in plain view under a little maple sapling, lay something that held him frozen with

"What? What?" he stammered; and at the thing he stared with widened, uncomprehending eyes.

STERN gazed at this alarming object with far more trepidation than he would have eyed a token authentically

For the space of a full halfminute he found no word, grasped no coherent thought, came to no action save to

stand there, thunderstruck, holding the rotten leather bag in one hand, the spearhead in the other.

Then, suddenly, he shouted a curse and made as though to fling it clean away. But ere it had left his grasp, he

"No, there's no use in that," said he, quite slowly. "If this thing is what it appears to be, if it isn't merely some

freakish bit of stone weathered off somewhere, why, it meansmy God, what doesn't it mean?"

He shuddered, and glanced fearfully about him; all his calculations already seemed crashing down about him;

New, vast and unknown factors of the struggle broadened rapidly before his mental vision, if this thing were

Keenly he peered at the bit of flint in his palm. There it lay, real enough, an almost perfect specimen of the

flaker's art, showing distinctly where the wood had been applied to the core to peel off the many successive

It could not have been above three and a half inches long, by one and a quarter wide, at its broadest part. The

A diminutive object and a skilfullyformed one. At any other time or place, the engineer would have

"Yet after all," he said aloud, as if to convince himself, "it's only a bit of stone! What can it prove?"

His subconsciousness seemed to make answer: "So, too, the sign that Robinson Crusoe found on the beach

In deep thought the engineer stood there a moment or two. Then, "Bah!" cried he. "What does it matter,

anyhow? Let it comewhatever it is! If I hadn't just happened to find this, I'd have been none the wiser."

Again he picked up his sledge, and, now more cautiously, once more started forward.

"All I can do," he thought, "is just to go right ahead as though this hadn't happened at all. If trouble comes, it

comes, that's all. I guess I can meet it. Always have got away with it, so far. We'll see. What's on the cards

He retraced his way to the spring, where he carefully rinsed and filled the Cosmos bottle for Beatrice. Then

back to the Metropolitan he came, donned his bearskin, which he fastened with a wire nail, and started the

long climb. His sledge he carefully hid on the second floor, in an office at the left of the stairway.

"Don't think much of this hammer, after all," said he. "What I need is an ax. Perhaps this afternoon I can have

"If the handle's gone, I can heft it with green wood. With a good ax and these two revolverstill I find some

About him he glanced at the everpresent molder and decay. This office, he could easily see, had been both

spacious and luxurious, but now it offered a sorry spectacle. In the dust over by a window something glittered

Stern found it was a fragment of a beveled mirror, which had. probably hung there and, when the frame

He propped the glass up on the steel beam of the windowopening, and got the scissors out of the bag. Ten

minutes later, the face of Allan Stern bore some resemblance to its original self. True enough, his hair

remained a bit jagged, especially in the back, his brows were somewhat uneven, and the point to which his

But none the less his wild savagery had given place to a certain aspect of civilization that made the white

"What will she think, and say?" he wondered, as he once more took up the bag and started on the long,

Sweating profusely, badly "blown,"for he had not taken much time to rest on the waythe engineer at last

"All right, come in!" she answered cheerfully, and came to meet him in the doorway. Out to him she

stretched her hand, in welcome; and the smile she gave him set his heart pounding.

He had to laugh at her astonishment and naive delight over his changed appearance; but all the time his eyes

For now, freshlyawakened, full of new life and vigor after a sound night's sleep, the girl was magnificent.

The morning light disclosed new glints of color in her wondrous hair, as it lay broad and silken on the

This she had secured at the throat and waist with bits of metal taken from the wreckage of the filingcabinet.

Stern promised himself that ere long he would find her a profusion of gold pins and chains, in some of the

As she gave him her hand, the Bengal skin fell back from her round, warm, creamwhite arm.

At sight of it, at vision of that messy crown of hair and of those gray, penetrant, questioning eyes, the man's

He turned his own eyes quickly away, lest she should read his thought, and began speakingof what? He

But through it all he knew that in his whole life, till now selfcentered, analytical, cold, he never had felt

The touch of her fingers, soft and warm, dispelled his every anxiety. The thought that he was working, now,

And as some foregleam of the future came to him, his fears dropped from him like those outworn rags he had

"Well, so we're both up and at it, again," he exclaimed, commonplacely enough, his voice a bit uncertain.

Stern had walked narrow girders six hundred feet sheer up; he had worked in caissons under tidewater, with

He had swung in a bosun'schair down the face of the Yosemite Canon at Cathedral Spires. But never had he

He showed her his treasures, all the contents of the bag, except the spearpoint. Then, giving her the Cosmos

bottle, he bade her drink. Gratefully she did so, while he explained to her the finding of the spring.

Her face aglow with eagerness and brave enthusiasts, she listened. But when he told her about the

"It's not fair," she protested, "for you to monopolize that. If you'll show me the placeand just stay around in

"I'm just dying for one!" she exclaimed. "Think! I haven't had a bath, now, for x years!"

"I'm at your service," declared the engineer. And for a moment a little silence came between them, a silence

so profound that they could even hear the faint, far cheepings of the mudswallows in the tower stair, above.

At the back of Stern's brain still lurked a haunting fear of the wood, of what the assegaipoint might portend,

"Well, come along down," bade he. "It's getting late, already. But first, we must take just one more look, by

She assented readily. Together, talking of their first urgent needs, of their plans for this new day and for this

wonderful, strange life that now confronted them, they climbed the stairs again. Once more they issued out on

There they stood a moment, looking out with wonder over that vast, still, marvelous prospect of

"Tell me," said he, "where did you get that line of verse you quoted last night? The one about this vast

"That? Why, that was from Wordsworth's Sonnet on London Bridge, of course," she smiled up at him. "You

"Noo," he disclaimed a trifle dubiously. "Ithat is, I never was much on poetry, you understand. It wasn't

exactly in my line. But never mind. How did it go? I'd like to hear it, tremendously."

"I don't just recall the whole poem," she answered thoughtfully. "But I know part of it ran:

"......This city now cloth like a garment wear The beauty of the morning. Silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes,

theaters, and temples lie Open unto the fields and to the sky All bright and glittering in the smokeless air."

A moment she paused to think. The sun, lancing its long and level rays across the water and the vast dead

Instinctively, as she looked abroad over that wondrous panorama, she raised both bare arms; and, clad in the

tigerskin alone, stood for a little space like some Parsee priestess, sunworshiping, on her tower of silence.

Was this, could this indeed be the girl he had employed, in the old daysthe other days of routine and of

tedium, of orders and specifications and dryasdust dictation? As though from a strange spell he aroused

"Oh, that? I'd almost forgotten about that; I was dreaming. It goes this way, I think:

"Never did the sun more beautifully steep In his first splendor valley, rock, or hill, Ne'er saw I, never felt a

calm so deep; The river glideth at his own sweet will. Dear God! the very houses seem asleep, And all this

They both stood silent a moment, gazing out together on that strange, inexplicable fulfilment of the poet's

Up to them, through the crystal morning air, rose a faint, small sound of waters, from the brooklet in the

forest. The nesting birds, below, were busy "in song and solace"; and through the golden sky above, a

Far out upon the river, faint specks of white wheeled and hovereda flock of swooping gulls, snowy and

beautiful and free. Their pinions flashed, spiralled and sank to rest on the wide waters.

Stern breathed a sigh. His right arm slipped about the sinuous, furrobed body of the girl.

"Come, now!" said he, with returning practicality. "Bath for you, breakfast for both of usthen we must

Working together in a strong and frank companionshipthe past temporarily forgotten and the future still

put far awayhalf a day's labor advanced them a long distance on the road to safety.

Even these few hours sufficed to prove that, unless some strange, untoward accident befell, they stood a more

Realizing to begin with, that a home on the fortyeighth story of the tower was entirely impractical, since it

would mean that most of their time would have to be used in laborious climbing, they quickly changed their

They chose a suite of offices on the fifth floor, looking directly out over and into the cool green beauty of

Madison Forest. In an hour or so, they cleared out the bats and spiders, the rubbish and the dust, and made the

"Well, that's a good beginning, anyhow," remarked the engineer, standing back and looking critically at the

"I don't see why we shouldn't make a fairly comfortable home out of this, for a while. It's not too high for

ease, and it's high enough for safetyto keep prowling bears and wolves andand other things from

He laughed, but memories of the spearhead tinged his merriment with apprehension. "In a day or two I'll

make some kind of an outer door, or barricade. But first, I need that ax and some other things. Can you spare

"I'd rather go along, too," she answered wistfully, from the windowsill where she sat resting.

"No, not this time, please!" he entreated. "First I've got to go 'way to the top of the tower and bring down my

"Then I'm going out on a hunt for dishes, a lamp, some oil and no end of things. You save your strength for a

"All right," she acceded, smiling a little sadly. "But really, I feel quite able to go."

"This afternoon, perhaps; not now. Goodby!" And he started for the door. Then a thought struck him. He

"By the way," said he, "if we can fix up some kind of a holster, I'll take one of those revolvers. With the best

of this leather here," nodding at the Gladstone bag, "I should imagine we could manufacture something

They planned the holster together, and he cut it out with his knife, while she slit leather thongs to lash it with.

Presently it was done, and a strap to tie it round his waist witha crude, rough thing, but just as useful as

"We'll make another for you when I get home this noon," he remarked picking up the automatic and a handful

of cartridges. Quickly he filled the magazine. The shells were green with verdigris, and many a rustspot

As he stepped over to the window, aimed and pulled the trigger, a sharp and welcome report burst from the

weapon. And a few leaves, clipped from an oak in the forest, zigzagged down in the bright, warm sunlight.

"I guess she'll do all right!" he laughed, sliding the ugly weapon into his new holster. "You see, the powder

and fulminate, sealed up in the cartridges, are practically imperishable. Here, let me load yours, too.

"If you want something to do, you can practice on that dead limb out there, see? And don't be afraid of

wasting ammunition. There must be millions of cartridges in this old burgmillionsall ours!"

Again he laughed, and handing her the other pistol, now fully loaded, took his leave. Before he had climbed a

hundred feet up the tower stair, he heard a slow, uneven poppoppopping, and with satisfaction knew that

"And she may need it, toowe both may, badlybefore we know it!" thought he, frowning, as he kept upon

This reflection weighed in so heavily upon him, all due to the flint assegaipoint, that he made still another

excuse that afternoon and so got out of taking the girl into the forest with him on his exploring trip.

The excuse was all the more plausible inasmuch as he left her enough work at home to do, making some real

clothing and some sandals for them both. This task, now that the girl had scissors to use, was not too hard.

Stern brought her great armfuls of the furs from the shop in the arcade, and left her busily and happily

He spent the afternoon in scouting through the entire neighborhood from Sixth Avenue as far east as Third

Revolver in his left hand, knife in his right to cut away troublesome bush or brambles, or to slit impeding

He kept his eyes open for big game, butthough he found moosetracks at the corner of Broadway and

Nineteenthhe ran into nothing more formidable than a lynx which snarled at him from a tree overhanging

One shot sent it bounding and screaming with pain, out of view. Stern noted with satisfaction that blood

"Guess I haven't forgotten how to shoot in all these x years!" he commented, stooping to examine the spoor.

"Nothing but lines and monstrous rubbishheaps of ruins," he sized up the situation, "traversed by lanes of

"Every wooden building completely wiped out. Brick and stone ones practically gone. Steel alone standing,

and that in rotten shape. Nothing at all intact but the few concrete structures.

"Ha! ha!" And he laughed satirically. "If the builders of the twentieth century could have foreseen this they

Useless though it was, he felt a certain pride in noting that the Osterhaut Building, on Seventeenth Street, had

Into the Subway he penetrated at Eighteenth Street, climbing with difficulty down the choked stairway,

through bushes and over masses of ruin that had fallen from the roof. The great tube, he saw, was choked

Slimy and damp it was, with a mephitic smell and ugly pools of water settled in the ancient roadbed. The

rails were wholly gone in places. In others only rotten fragments of steel remained.

A goggleeyed toad stared impudently at him from a long tangle of rubbish that had been a trainstalled

Through the broken arches overhead the rain and storms of ages had beaten down, and lush grasses flourished

No human dustheaps here, as in the shelter of the arcade. Long since every vestige of man had been swept

away. Stern shuddered, more depressed by the sight here than at any other place so far visited.

"And they boasted of a work for all time!" whispered he, awed by the horror of it. "They boastedlike the

financiers, the churchmen, the merchants, everybody! Boasted of their institutions, their city, their country.

Out he clambered presently, terribly depressed by what he had witnessed, and set to work laying in still more

supplies from the wrecked shops. Now for the first time, his wonder and astonishment having largely abated,

"No life here! Nobody to speak toexcept the girl..." he exclaimed aloud, the sound of his own voice

uncanny in that woodland street of death. "All gone, everything! My Heavens, suppose I didn't have her?

The thought terrified him. He put it resolutely away and went to work. Wherever he stumbled upon anything

The labor, he found, kept him from the subconscious dread of what might happen to Beatrice or to himself if

either should meet with any mishap. The consequences of either one dying, he knew, must be horrible beyond

Up Broadway he found much to keepthings which he garnered in the upcaught hem of his bearskin,

things of all kinds and uses. He found a clay pipeall the wooden ones had vanished from the shopand a

These he took as priceless treasures. More jars of edibles he discovered, also a stock of rare wines. Coffee

and salt he came upon. In the ruins of the little French brassware shop, opposite the Flatiron, he made a rich

Strangely enough, it still had oil in it. The fluid hermetically sealed in, had not been able to evaporate.

At last, when the lengthening shadows in Madison Forest warned him that day was ending, he betook

himself, heavy laden, once more back past the spring, and so through the path which already was beginning

"Now for a great surprise for the girl!" thought he, laboriously toiling up the stair with his burden: "What will

she say, I wonder, when she sees all these housekeeping treasures?" Eagerly he hastened.

But before he had reached the third story he heard a cry from above. Then a spatter of revolvershots

"Beatrice! Oh, Beatrice!" he hailed, his voice falling flat and stifled in those ruinous passages.

Hastily he put down his burden, and, spurred by a great terror, bounded up the broken stairs.

SICKENED with a numbing anguish of fear such as in all his life he had never known, Stern stood there a

Then he turned. Out into the hall he ran, and his voice, reechoing wildly, rang through those longdeserted

He wheeled about, trembling and spent. Out his arms went, in eager greeting. For the girl, laughing and

Never had the engineer beheld a sight so wonderful to him as this woman, clad in the Bengal robe; this girl

"What? Were you frightened?" she asked, growing suddenly serious, as he stood there speechless and pale.

His only answer was to take her in his arms and whisper her name. But she struggled to be free.

"Don't! you mustn't!" she exclaimed. "I didn't mean to alarm you. Didn't even know you were here!"

"Only this," and she laughed again. "I was getting supper ready, as you see," with a nod at their provision laid

"Why, a blundering great hawk swooped in through the window there, circled around, pounced on the last of

Stern heaved a sigh of relief. "So that was all?" asked he. "But the shots? And your absence?"

"I struck at him. He showed fight. I blocked the window. He was determined to get away with the food. I was

"That confused him. He flapped out into the hall. I chased him. Away up the stairs he circled. I shot again.

Then I pursued. Went up two stories. But he must have got away through some opening or other. Our beef's

"Never mind, I've got a lot more stuff downstairs. But tell me, did you wing him?"

"I'm afraid not," she admitted. "There's a feather or two on the stairs, though."

"Good work!" cried he laughing, his fear all swallowed in the joy of having found her again, safe and unhurt.

"But please don't give me another such panic, will you? It's all right this time, however.

"And now if you'll just wait here and not get fighting with any more wild creatures, I'll go down and bring my

"But I don't want you chasing things in this old shell of a building. No telling what crevice you might fall into

Her smile as he left her was inscrutable, but her eyes, strangely bright, followed him till he had vanished once

. . . . . Broad strokes, a line here, one there, with much left to the imaginingsuch will serve best for the

painting of a picture like thisa picture wherein every ordinary bond of human life, the nexus of man's

society, is shattered. Where everything must strive to reconstruct itself from the dust. Where the future, if any

Broad strokes, for detailed ones would fill too vast a canvas. Impossible to describe a tenth of the activities of

Beatrice and Stern the next four days. Even to make a list of their hardwon possessions would turn this

So let these pass for the most part. Day by day the man, issuing forth sometimes alone, sometimes with

Though more than ninety per cent. of the city's onetime wealth had long since vanished, and though all

Infinitudes of things, more or less damaged, they bore up to their shelter, up the stairs which here and there

For now he had an ax, found in that treasurehouse of Currier Brown's, brought to a sharp edge on a wet, flat

This implement was of incredible use, and greatly enheartened the engineer. More valuable it was than a

The same store yielded also a wellpreserved enameled waterpail and some smaller dishes of like ware,

three more knives, quantities of nails, and some small tools; also the tremendous bonanza of a magazine rifle

and a shotgun, both of which Stern judged would come into shape by the application of oil and by careful

tinkering. Of ammunition, here and elsewhere, the engineer had no doubt he could unearth unlimited

"With steel," he reflected, "and with my flint spearhead, I can make fire at any time. Wood is plenty, and

there's lots of 'punk.' So the first step in reestablishing civilization is secure. With fire, everything else

"After a while, perhaps, I can get around to manufacturing matches again. But for the present my few ounces

Beatrice, like the true woman she was, addressed herself eagerly to the fascinating task of making a real

home out of the barren desolation of the fifth floor offices. Her splendid energy was no less than the

Stern manufactured a broom for her by cutting willow withes and lashing them with hide strips onto a

trimmed branch. Spiders and dust all vanished. A true housekeeping appearance set in.

To supplement the supply of canned food that accumulated along one of the walls, Stern shot what game he

Metal dishes, especially of solid gold, ravished from Fifth Avenue shops, took their place on the crude table

he had fashioned with his ax. Not for esthetic effect did they now value gold, but merely because that metal

In the ruins of a magnificent store near ThirtyFirst Street, Stern found a vault burst open by frost and slow

Here something over a quart of loose diamonds, big and little, rough and cut, were lying in confusion all

about. Stern took none of these. Their value now was no greater than that of any pebble.

But he chose a massive clasp of gold for Beatrice, for that could serve to fasten her robe. And in addition he

gathered up a few rings and onetime costly jewels which could be worn. For the girl, after all, was one of

Bit by bit he accumulated many necessary articles, including some toothbrushes which he found sealed in

glass bottles, and a variety of gold toilet articles. Use was his first consideration now. Beauty came far

In the corner of their rooms, after a time, stood a fair variety of tools, some already serviceable, others

waiting to be polished, ground and hefted, and in some cases retempered. Two rough chairs made their

The north room, used only for cooking, became their forge and oven all in one. For here, close to a window

And here Beatrice presided over her copper casseroles and saucepans from the little shop on Broadway. Here,

too, Stern planned to construct a pair of skin bellows, and presently to set up the altars of Vulcan and of

Both of them "thanked whatever gods there be" that the girl was a good cook. She amazed the engineer by the

variety of dishes she managed to concoct from the canned goods, the game that Stern shot, and fresh

dandelion greens dug near the spring. These edibles, with the blackest of black coffee, soon had them in fine

"I certainly have begun to put on weight," laughed the man after dinner on the fourth day, as he lighted his

"My bearskin is getting tight. You'll have to let it out for me, or else stop such magic in the kitchen."

She smiled back at him, sitting there at ease in the sunshine by the window, sipping her coffee out of a gold

Stern, feeling the May breeze upon his face, hearing the birdsongs in the forest depths, felt a wellbeing, a

glow of health and joy such as he had never in his whole life knownthe health of outdoor labor and sound

sleep and perfect digestion, the joy of accomplishment and of the girl's near presence.

"I suppose we do live pretty well," she answered, surveying the remnants of the feast. "Potted tongue and

"I would like some buttered toast and some cream for my coffee, and some sugar."

"You don't want much!" he exclaimed, vastly amused, the while he blew a cloud of Latakia smoke. "Well,

"You mustn't expect me to do magic. On the fourth day you don't imagine I've had time enough to round up

"Or grow cane and make sugar? Or find grain for seed, clear some land, plow, harrow, plant, hoe, reap,

She pouted at his raillery. For a moment there was silence, while he drew at his pipe. At the girl he looked a

little while. Then, his eyes a bit faraway, he remarked in a tone he tried to render casual:

"By the way, Beatrice, it occurs to me that we're doing rather well for old peoplevery old."

"Very, indeed!" he answered. "Yes, I've got some sort of an idea about it. I hope it won't alarm you when you

"Yes, because, you see, it's rather a long time since we went to sleep. Quite so. You see, I've been doing a

little calculating, off and on, at odd times. Been putting two and two together, as it were.

"First, there was the matter of the dust in sheltered places, to guide me. The rate of deposition of what, in one

or two spots, can't have been anything less than cosmic or stardust, is fairly certain.

"Then again, the rate of this present deterioration of stone and steel has furnished another index. And last

night I had a little peek at the polestar, through my telescope, while you were asleep.

"The good old star has certainly shifted out of place a bit. Furthermore, I've been observing certain

evolutionary changes in the animals and plants about us. Those have helped, too."

"Well, I think I've got the answer, more or less correctly. Of course it's only an approximate result, as we say

in engineering. But the different items check up with some degree of consistency.

"And I'm safe in believing I'm within at least a hundred years of the date one way or the other. Not a bad

The girl's eyes widened. From her hand fell the empty gold cup; it rolled away across the cleanswept floor.

"What?" cried she. "You've got it, within a hundred years! Why, thenyou mean it's more than a hundred?"

"Come, now," he coaxed. "Just guess, for instance, how old you really areand growing younger every

"Listen," bade he. "If I count your twentyfour years, when you went to sleep, you're now"

"You're now at the very minimum calculation, just about one thousand and twentyfour! Some age, that, eh?"

"No disputing that fact, no dodging it. The thing's as certain as that you're now the most beautiful woman in

DAYS passed, busy days, full of hard labor and achievement, rich in experience and learning, in happiness,

Beatrice made and finished a considerable wardrobe of garments for them both. These, when the fur had been

clipped close with the scissors, were not oppressively warm, and, even though on some days a bit

Plenty of bathing and good food put them in splendid physical condition, to which their active exercise

contributed much. And thus, judging partly by the state of the foliage, partly by the height of the sun, which

Stern determined with considerable accuracy by means of a simple, homemade quadrantthey knew

The housekeeping by no means took up all the girl's time. Often she went out with him on what he called his

"pirating expeditions," that now sometimes led them as far afield as the sad ruins of the wharves and piers, or

to the stark desolation and wreckage of lower Broadway and the onetime busy hives of newspaperdom, or up

These two places, the former tidegates of the city's life, impressed Stern most painfully of anything. The

disintegrated tracks, the jumbled remains of locomotives and luxurious Pullmans with weeds growing rank

upon them, the sunlight beating down through the cavedin roof of the Pennsylvania station "concourse,"

where millions of human beings once had trod in all the haste of men's paltry, futile affairs, filled him with

melancholy, and he was glad to get away again leaving the place to the jungle, the birds and beasts that now

"Sic transit gloria mundi!" he murmured, as with sad eyes he mused upon the downtumbled columns along

the facade, the overgrown entranceway, the cracked and falling arches and architraves. "And this, they said,

It was on one of these expeditions that the engineer found and pocketedunknown to Beatriceanother

This was a bone, broken and splintered, and of no very great age, gnawed with perfectly visible toothmarks.

He picked it up, by chance, near the west side of the ruins of the old City Hall.

Stern recognized the manner in which the bone had been cracked open with a stone to let the marrow be

sucked out. The sight of this gruesome relic revived all his fears, tenfold more acutely than ever, and filled

This was the more keen, because the engineer knew at a glance that the bone was the upper end of a human

femurhuman, or, at the very least, belonging to some highly anthropoid animal. And of apes or gorillas he

Long he mused over his find. But not a single word did he ever say to Beatrice concerning it or the flint

spearpoint. Only he kept his eyes and ears well open for other bits of corroborative evidence.

And he never ventured a foot from the building unless his rifle and revolver were with him, their magazines

The girl always went armed, too, and soon grew to be such an expert shot that she could drop a squirrel from

Once her quick eyes spied a deer in the tangles of the onetime Gramercy Park, now no longer neatly hedged

with iron palings, but spread in wild confusion that joined the riot of growth beyond.

Stern's shot, echoing hers, missed. Already the deer was away, out of range through the forest. With some

difficulty they pursued down a glenlike strip of woods that must have once been Irving Place.

Two hundred yards south of the park they sighted the animal again. And the girl with a single shot sent it

"Bravo, Diana!" hurrahed Stern, running forward with enthusiasm. The "deer fever" was on him, as strong as

in his old days in the Hudson Bay country. Hot was the pleasure of the kill when that meant food. As he ran

Thus they had fresh venison to their heart's contentvenison broiled over whitehot coals in the fireplace,

A good deal of the meat they smoked and salted down for future use. Stern undertook to tan the hide with

strips of hemlock bark laid in a water pit dug near the spring. He added also some oakbark, nutgalls and a

"I guess that ought to hit the mark if anything will," remarked he, as he immersed the skin and weighed it

"It's like the old 'shotgun' prescriptions of our extinct doctorsa little of everything, bound to do the trick,

The great variety of labors now imposed upon him began to try his ingenuity to the full. In spite of all his

wealth of practical knowledge and his scientific skill, he was astounded at the huge demands of even the

The girl and he now faced these, without the social cooperation which they had formerly taken entirely for

granted, and the change of conditions had begun to alter Stern's concepts of almost everything.

He was already beginning to realize how true the old saying was: "One man is no man!" and how the world

had been the world merely because of the interrelations, the interdependencies of human beings in vast

He was commencing to get a glimpse of the vanished social problems that had enmeshed civilization, in their

true light, now that all he confronted and had to struggle with was the unintelligent and overbearing

All this was of huge value to the engineer. And the strong individualism (essentially anarchistic) on which he

had prided himself a thousand years ago, was now beginning to receive some mortal blows, even during these

But neither he nor the girl had very much time for introspective thought. Each moment brought its immediate

At meals, however, or at evening, as they sat together by the light of their lamp in the now homelike offices,

Stern and Beatrice found pleasure in a little random speculation. Often they discussed the catastrophe and

Stern brought to mind some of Professor Raoul Pictet's experiments with animals, in which the Frenchman

had suspended animation for long periods by sudden freezing. This method seemed to answer, in a way, the

girl's earlier questions as to how they had escaped death in the many long winters since they had gone to

Again, they tried to imagine the scenes just following the catastrophe, the horror of that longpast day, and

Often they talked till past midnight, by the glow of their stone fireplace, and many were the aspects of the

For the rapprochement between this beautiful woman and himself at such times became very close and

fascinatingly intimate, and Stern felt, little by little, that the love which now was growing deep within his

But for the present the man restrained himself and spoke no overt word. For that, he understood, would

immediately have put all things on a different basisand there was urgent work still waiting to be done.

"There's no doubt in my mind," said he one day as they sat talking, "that you and I are absolutely the last

"If anybody else had been spared, whether in Chicago or San Francisco, in London, Paris or HongKong,

they'd have made some determined effort before now to get in touch with New York. This, the prime center

of the financial and industrial world, would have been their first objective point."

"But suppose," asked she, "there were others, just a few here or there, and they'd only recently waked up, like

"There may be some one else, somewhere," he answered slowly, "but there's nobody else in this part of the

world, anyhow. Nobody in this particular Eden but just you and me. To all intents and purposes I'm Adam.

She gave him a quick, startled glance, then let her head fall, so that he could not see her eyes. But up over her

neck, her cheek and even to her temples, where the lustrous masses of hair fell away, he saw a tide of color

And for a little space the man forgot to smoke. At her he gazed, a strange gleam in his eyes.

THE idea that there might possibly be others of their kind in fardistant parts of the earth worked strongly on

"Suppose," theorized she, "there might be a few score of others, maybe a few hundred, scattered here and

there? They might awaken one by one, only to die, if less favorably situated than we happen to be. Perhaps

"There's no telling, of course," he answered seriously. "Undoubtedly that may be very possible. Some may

have escaped the great death, on high altitudeson the Eiffel Tower, for instance, or on certain mountains or

lofty plateaus. The most we can do for the moment is just to guess at the probabilities. And"

"But if there are people elsewhere?" she interrupted eagerly, her eyes glowing with hope, "isn't there any way

to get in touch with them? Why don't we hunt? Suppose only one or two in each country should have

survived; if we could get them all together again in a single colonydon't you see?"

"You mean the different languages and arts and all the rest might still be preserved? The colony might grow

and flourish, and mankind again take possession of the earth and conquer it, in a few decades? Yes, of course.

But even though there shouldn't be anybody else, there's no cause for despair. Of that, however, we won't

"But why don't we try to find out about it?" she persisted. "If there were only the remotest chance"

"By Jove, I will try it!" exclaimed the engineer, fired with a new thought, a fresh ambition. "How? I don't

know just yet, but I'll see. There'll be a way, right enough, if I can only think it out!"

That afternoon he made his way down Broadway, past the coppershop, to the remains of the telegraph office

Into it he penetrated with some difficulty. A mournful sight it was, this onetime busy ganglion of the

nation's nervesystem. Benches and counters were quite gone, instruments corroded past recognition,

But in a rear room Stern found a large quantity of copper wire. The wooden drums on which it had been

wound were gone; the insulation had vanished, but the coils of wire still remained.

"Fine!" said the explorer, gathering together several coils. "Now when I get this over to the Metropolitan, I

By nightfall he had accumulated enough wire for his tentative experiments. Next day he and the girl explored

the remains of the old wireless station on the roof of the building, overlooking Madison Avenue.

They reached the roof by climbing out of a window on the east side of the tower and descending a

"You see it's fairly intact as yet," remarked the engineer, gesturing at the bread expanse. "Only, falling stones

have made holes here and there. See how they yawn down into the rooms below! Well, come on, follow me.

This diminutive building, fortunately constructed of concrete, still stood almost unharmed. Into it they

penetrated through the crumbling door. The winds of heaven had centuries ago swept away all trace of the

But there still stood the apparatus, rusted and sagging and disordered, yet to Stern's practiced eye showing

signs of promise. An hour's careful overhauling convinced the engineer that something might yet be

First, with the girl's help, he strung his copperwire antennae from the tiled platform of the tower to the roof

of the wireless station. Rough work this was, but answering the purpose as well as though of the utmost

He connected up the repaired apparatus with these antennae, and made sure all was well. Then he dropped the

wires over the side of the building to connect with one of the dynamos in the subbasement.

All this took two and a half days of severe labor, in intervals of foodgetting, cooking and household tasks.

"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

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 TwentyThird Street, had by some freak of chance been

This cover was now only a mass of rotten rags, but it had at least safeguarded the machine for so long that no

Stern worked the better part of a week with such tools as he could find or makehe 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

"Steam now!" was his next watchword, when he had wired the dynamo to connect with the station on the

An examination of the boilerroom, which he reached by moving a ton of fallen stonework from the

doorway into the dynamoroom, encouraged him still further. As he penetrated into this place,

feebleshining 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 Gizehthough the place smelled

dank and close and stiflingtime seemed to have lost much of its destructive power. He chose one boiler

Of this he found a plentiful supply, wellpreserved, in the bunkers. All one afternoon he labored, wheeling it

Where the smokestack led to and what condition it was in he knew not. He could not tell where the gases of

He grimaced at sight of the rusted flues and the steampipes connecting with the dynamoroompipes now

A strange, gnomelike 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 companionsthose, 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. Waterglasses leaky, gauges plugged up, safetyvalve rusted into its

But still he kept on. Something drove him inexorably forward. For he was an engineerand 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

Thus, after eleven days of heartbreaking 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

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

"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

PANTING with exhaustion and excitement, Stern made his way back to the engineroom. It was a strangely

critical moment when he seized the corroded throttlewheel to start the dynamo. The wheel stuck, and would

Stern, with a curse of sheer exasperation, snatched up his long spanner, shoved it through the spokes, and

With a hissing plaint, as though rebellious against this awakening after its agelong sleep, the engine creaked

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

And like the onehoss 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,

At sight of this ghastly resurrection, the engineer (whose whole life had been passed in the love and service

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

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

This done, he toiled back up to where Beatrice was eagerly awaiting him in the little wireless station on the

In he staggered, all but spent. Panting for breath, wildeyed, his coalblackened arms stretching out from the

"It's going!" he exclaimed. "I've got currentit's good for a while, anyhow. Nownow 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

By the dim light that filtered through the doorway, Beatrice looked at his deeplined, bearded face, now

reeking with sweat and grimed with dust and coal. An ugly facebut 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

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 headreceiver. He laid his hand upon the key and tried a

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 lifeforce of the world that once had been, exulted with a wild

emotion. Yet, scienceworshiper 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

He reached for the ondometer. Carefully, slowly, he "tuned up" the wavelengths; up, up to five thousand

Out, ever out into the thickening gloom, across the void and vacancy of the dead world, he flung his

"Anything? Any answer?" asked Beatrice, laying a hand upon his shouldera 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 invitationthe last lone call of man to manof the last New Yorker

to any other human being who, by the merest chance, might possibly hear him in the wreck of other cities,

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 callin 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"

For suddenly, far down below them, as though buried in the entrails of the earth, shuddered a stifled,

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

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

The crash sent them recoiling. The whole roof shook and trembled like honeycombed ice in a spring thaw.

Both of them expected nothing but that the entire structure would collapse like a cardhouse and shatter

The grinding, the booming of downhurled stones and walls died away; the echoes ceased. A windwhipped

cloud of steam and smoke burst up, fanlike, beyond the edge of the roof. It bellied away, dim in the night,

"No! Nothing to burn. But come, come; let's get out o' this anyhow. There's nothing doing, any more. All

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

"Look!" suddenly exclaimed the engineer, pointing. A vast, gaping canon of blackness opened at their very

feeta yawning gash forty feet long and ten or twelve broad, with roughly jagged edges, leading down into

"Hm!" said he. "One of the halfton hands of the big clock up there has just taken a drop, that's all. One

drop too much, I call it. Now if weor our roomshad just happened to be underneath? Some excitement,

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

Immobile with astonishment and fear, she stood pointing out and away, to westward, toward the Hudson.

There, very far away and very small, yet clearly visible in swarms upon the inkyblack expanse of waters, a

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.

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

spearhead and the gnawed legbone, cracked open so the marrow could be sucked out, all gashed with

A certain creepy sensation began to develop along his spine. He felt a prickling on the nape of his neck, as the

"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 rightgood

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

"Come! Let's signal them with a fire from the tower top. I'll help carry wood. Let's hurry down and run and

Highly excited, the girl had got to her feet again, and now, clutched the engineer's arm in burning eagerness.

"You don't really think that would be quite prudent, do you?" asked he. "Not just yet?"

"But they're coming to save us, can't you see? Somehow, somewhere, they must have caught that signal! And

"Certainly not. But first wewhy, we ought to make quite sure, you understand. Sure that theythey're

"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

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,

"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

The girl stared a moment at the engineer, while this new idea took root within her brain.

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 firedots, like a shoal of swimming stars, drew slowly nearer, nearer the

"It's easy enough to see you've got an opinion about it. You think they're savages, don't you?"

"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.

Beatrice asked no more, for a minute or two, but the engineer felt her fingers tighten on his arm.

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

"Why they're coming across the Hudson, at this time o' night, with what object and to what place, we can't

He took her hand, and pressed it. And silence fell again, as the long vigil started, there in the shadow of the

"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 peoplewhoever they arewill be landing directly

They resigned themselves to patience. The girl's breath came quickly, as she watched. Even the engineer felt

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 treefronds in Madison Forest.

A bat staggered drunkenly about the tower, then reeled away into the gloom; and, high aloft, an owl uttered

"They'll be here pretty soon!" whispered she. "Hadn't we better go down, and get our guns? In case"

Off to northward, dull, muffled, all but inaudible, they both heard a rhythmic pulsing, strangely barbaric.

"TOMTOMS? So they are savages?" exclaimed the girl, taking a quick breath. "Butwhat then?"

"Don't just know, yet. It's a fact, though; they're certainly savages. Two tribes, one with torches, one with

drums. Two different kinds, I guess. And they're coming in here to parley or fight or something Regular

"That depends. Maybe we'll be able to lie hidden, here, till this thing blows over, whatever it may be. If not,

He ended with a kind of growl. The sound gave Beatrice a strange sensation. She kept a moment's silence,

"They're up around Central Park now, the drums are, don't you think so? How far do you make that?"

In silence they climbed the shaky ladder, reached the tower stairs and descended the many stories to their

Here, the first thing Stern did was to strike a light, which he masked in a corner, behind a skin stretched like a

screen from one wall to the other. By this illumination, very dim yet adequate, he minutely examined all their

He loaded every one to capacity and made sure all were in working order. Then he satisfied himself that the

supply of cartridges was ample. These he laid carefully along by the windows overlooking Madison Forest,

by the door leading into the suite of offices, and by the stairhead that gave access to the fifth floor.

"Two revolvers, one shotgun, and one rifle, all told," said he. "All magazine arms. I guess that'll hold them

"Never better!" she whispered, from the dark. He saw the dim white blur that indicated her face, and it was

"Good little girl!" he exclaimed, giving her the rifle. A moment his hand pressed hers. Then with a quick

intake of the breath, he strode over to the window and once more listened. She followed.

Louder now the drums sounded, dull, ominous, pulsating like the hammering of a feverpulse inside a sick

man's skull. A dull, confused hum, a noise as of a swarming mass of bees, drifted downwind.

There, far off along the forestlane of Fourteenth Street, a sudden gleam of light flashed out among the trees,

vanished, reappeared, was joined by two, ten, a hundred others. And now the whole approach to Madison

Forest, by several streets, began to sparkle with these feuxfollets, weaving and flickering unsteadily toward

Here, there, everywhere through the dense masses of foliage, the watchers could already see a dim and

moving mass, fitfully illuminated by torches that now burned steady, now flared into red and smoky

"Like monster glowworms, crawling among the trees!" the girl exclaimed. "We could mow them down,

Now, from the other horde: coming from the north, sounds of warlike preparation were growing ever louder.

With quicker beats the insistent tomtoms throbbed their rhythmic melancholy rune, hollow and dissonant.

Then all at once the drums ceased; and through the night air drifted a minor chant; a wail, that rose, fell, died,

And from the square, below, a shrill, highpitched, halfanimal cry responded. Creeping shudders chilled the

"What I need, now," thought he, "is about a hundred pounds of highgrade dynamite, or a gallon of

nitroglycerin. Better still, a dozen capsules of my own invention, my 'Pulverite!'

"I guess that would settle things mighty quick. It would be the joker in this game, all right! Well, why not

make some? With what chemicals I've got left, couldn't I work up a halfpint? Bottled in glass flasks, I guess

She pointed toward the spring. Stern saw moving shadows in the dark. Then, through an opening, he got a

"Blackyes, blueblack! They seem so, anyhow. Andwhy, did you see the size of them? No bigger than

Involuntarily he shuddered. For now, like a dreamhorde of hideous creatures seen in a nightmare, the

Away from the building out across by the spring and even to Fifth Avenue the mob extended, here thick,

there thin, without order or coherencea shifting, murmuring, formless, seemingly planless congeries of dull

Here or there, where the swaying of the trees parted the branches a little, the wavering lights brought some

No white thing showed anywhere. All was dark and vague. Indistinctly, waveringly as in a vision, dusky

heads could be made out. There showed a naked arm, greasily shining for a second in the ruddy glow which

now diffused itself through the whole wood. Here the watchers saw a glistening back; again, an outthrust

And once again the engineer got a glimpse of a misshapen hand, a long, lean, hideous hand that clutched a

"Seems as though malformed human members, black and bestial, had been flung at random into a ghastly

kaleidoscope, turned by a madman!" whispered Stern. The girl answering nothing, peered out in fascinated

Up, up to the watchers rose a steady droning hum; and from the northward, ever louder, ever clearer, came

now the warsong of the attacking party. The drums began again, suddenly. A highpitched, screaming laugh

Still in through the western approaches of the square, more and more lights kept straggling. Thicker and still

more thick grew the press below. Now the torchglow was strong enough to cast its lurid reflections on the

vacantstaring wrecks of windows and of walls, gaping like the shattered skulls of a civilization which was

no more. To the nostrils of the man and woman up floated an acrid, pitchy smell. And birds, dislodged from

sleep, began to zigzag about, aimlessly, with frightened cries. One even dashed against the building, close at

Stern, with a word of hot anger, fingered his revolver. But Beatrice laid her hand upon his arm.

He glanced down at her, where she stood beside him at the empty embrasure of the window. The dim light

from the vast and empty overarch of sky, powdered with a wonder of stars, showed him the vague outline of

her face. Wistful and pale she was, yet very brave. Through Stern welled a sudden tenderness.

For, all at once, a snarling cry rang through the wood; and, with a northward surge of the torchbearers, a

confused tumult of shrieks, howls, simian chatterings and dull blows, the battle joined between those two

HOW long it lasted, what its meaning, its details, the watchers could not tell. Impossible, from that height

and in that gloom, broken only by an occasional pale gleam of moonlight through the drifting cloudrack, to

They knew not the point at issue nor yet the tide of victory or loss. Only they knew that back and forth the

torches flared, the wardrums boomed and rattled, the yelling, slaughtering, demoniac hordes surged in a

And so time passed, and fewer grew the drums, yet the torches flared on; and, as the first gray dawn went

Dimly the man and woman, up aloft, saw things that ran and shrieked and were cut downsaw things, there

in the forest, that died even as they killed, and mingled the howl of triumph with the bubbling gasp of

"Ugh! A beast war!" shuddered the engineer, at length, drawing Beatrice away from the window. "Come, it's

She yielded, waking as it were from the horrid fascination that had held her spellbound. Down she sat on

her bed of furs, covered her eyes with her hands, and for a while remained quite motionless. Stern watched

"I ought to have waded into that bunch, long ago," thought he. "We both ought to have. What it's all about,

who could tell? But it's an outrage against the night itself, against the world, even dead though it be. If it

A curious, guttural whine, down there in the forest, attracted his attention. Over to the window he strode, and

A change had come upon the scene, a sudden, radical change. No more the sounds of combat rose; but now a

Already in the center of the wood, hard by the spring, a little fire had been lighted. Even as Stern looked, dim,

moving figures heaped on wood. The engineer saw whirling droves of sparks spiral upward; he saw dense

And, grouped around this, already some hundreds of the now paling torches cast their livid glare.

Off to one side he could just distinguish what seemed to be a group engaged in some activitybut what this

might be, he could not determine. Yet, all at once a scream of pain burst out, therefrom; and then a gasping

Another shriek, and still a third; and now into the leaping flames some dark, misshapen things were flung,

Then rose, also, a shrill, singsong whine; and suddenly drams roared, now with a different cadence.

"Hark!" said the engineer. "The torchmen must have exterminated the other bunch, and got possession of the

By the firelight vague shapes came and went, their shadows grotesquely flung against the leafy screens. The

figures quickened their paces and their gestures; then suddenly, with cries, flung themselves into wild

activity. And all about the fire, Stern saw a wheeling, circling, eddying mob of black and frightful shapes.

Even as he spoke, the concourse grew quiet with expectancy. A silence fell upon the forest. Something was

The wind freshened. With it, increased the volume of smoke. Another frightened bird, cheeping forlornly,

Then rose a cry, a shriek longdrawn and ghastly, that climbed till it broke in a bubbling, choking gasp.

And all at once the drums crashed; and the dance began again, madder, more obscenely hideous than ever.

"Voodoo!" gulped Stern. "Obeahwork! Andand the quicker I get my Pulverite to working, the better!"

Undecided no longer, determined now on a course of definite action without further delay, the engineer

turned back into the room. Upon his forehead stood a cold and prickling sweat, of horror and disgust. But to

his lips he forced a smile, as, in the half light of the red and windy dawn, he drew close to Beatrice.

Utterly worn out, exhausted and spent with the long strain, the terrible fatigues of the past thirtysix hours,

she had lain down and had dropped off to sleep. There she lay at full length. Very beautiful she looked, half

seen in the morning gloom. One arm crossed her full bosom; the other pillowed her cheek. And, bending

With strange emotion he heard her even breathing; he caught the perfume of her warm, ripe womanhood.

Never had she seemed to him so perfect, so infinitely to be loved, to be desired.

And at thought of that beasthorde in the wood below, at realization of what might be, if they two should

chance to be discovered and made captive, his face went hard as iron. An ugly, savage look possessed him,

For a brief second he stooped still closer; he laid his lips soundlessly, gently upon her hair. And when again

he stood up, the look in his eyes boded scant good to anything that might threaten the sleeping girl.

Into his own room he stepped quietly, his room where he had collected his various implements and

chemicals. First of all he set out, on the floor, a twoquart copper teakettle; and beside this, choosing

carefully, he ranged the necessary ingredients for a "making" of his secret explosive.

Over to the waterpail he walked. Then he stopped, suddenly, frowning a black and puzzled frown.

"What?" he exclaimed. "Butthere isn't a pint left, all together! Hem! Now then, here is a situation."

Hastily he recalled how the great labors of the previous day, the wireless experiments and all, had prevented

him from going out to the spring to replenish his supply. Now, though he bitterly cursed himself for his

"Scant pint, maybe!" said he. "And I've got to have a gallon, at the very least. To say nothing of drink for two

Softly he whistled to himself; then, trying to solve this vital, unexpected problem, fell to pacing the floor.

Day, slowly looming through the window, showed his features set and hard. Close at hand, the breath of

morning winds stirred the treetops. But of the usual busy twitter and gossip of birds among the branches, now

there was none. For down below there, in the forest, the ghoulish vampire revels still held sway.

Stern, at a loss, swore hotly under his breath. Then suddenly he found himself; he came to a decision. "I'm

NOW that his course lay clear before him, the man felt an instant and a huge relief. Whatever the risks, the

dangers, this adventuring was better than a mere inaction, besieged there in the tower by that ugly, misshapen

First of all, as he had done on the first morning of the awakening, when he had left the girl asleep, he wrote a

brief communication to forestall any possible alarm on her part. This, scrawled with charcoal on a piece of

"Have had to go down to get water and lay of the land. Absolutely necessary. Don't be afraid. Am between

you and them, well armed. Will leave you both the bilge and the shotgun. Stay here, and have no fear. Will

He laid this primitive letter where, on awakening, she could not fail to see it. Then, making sure again that all

the arms were fully charged, he put the rifle and the gun close beside his "note," and saw to it that his

One more reconnaissance he made at the front window. This done, he took the waterpail and set off quietly

At every landing he stopped, listening intently. Down, ever down, story by story he crept.

To his chagrinthough he had half expected worsehe found that the boilerexplosion of the previous

night had really made the way impassible, from the third story downward. These lowest flights of steps had

All that remained of them was a jumbled mass of wreckage, below the gaping hole in the thirdfloor hallway.

"That means," said Stern to himself, "I've got to find another way down. And quick, too!"

He set about the task with a will. Exploration of several lateral corridors resulted in nothing; but at last good

fortune led him to stairs that had remained comparatively uninjured. And down these he stole, pail in one

He found himself, at length, in the shattered and dismembered wreckage of the oncefamed "Marble Court."

Fallen now were the carved and gilded pillars; gone, save here or there for a fragment, the wondrous

balustrade. One of the huge newelposts at the bottom lay on the cracked floor of marble squares; the other,

But Stern had neither time nor inclination to observe these woful changes. Instead, he pressed still forward,

Here the effects of the explosion were very marked. A ghastly hole opened into the subcellar below; masses

of fallen ceiling blocked the way; and every pane of glass in the shopfronts had shattered down. Smoke had

blackened everything. Ashes and dirt, ad infinitum, completed the dreary picture, seen there by the still

"In case of a mixup," thought he, "there couldn't be a better place for ambushing these infernal

cannibalsfor mowing them down, wholesalefor sending them skyhooting to Tophet, in bunches!"

And with a grim smile, he worked his way cautiously toward Madison Forest and the pinetree gate.

Into a littered wreck of an office at the right of the exit he silently crept. Here, he knew, the outer wall of the

building was deeply fissured. He hoped he might be able to find some peephole where, unseen, he could

He set his waterpail down, and on hands and knees, hardly breathing, taking infinite pains not to stir the

loose rubbish on the floor, not even to crunch the fallen lumps of mortar, forward he crawled.

Yes, there was a glimmer of light through the crack in the wall. Stern silently wormed in between a corroded

steel Ibeam and a cracked granite block, about the edges of which the small green tendrils of a vine had laid

This way, then that, he craned his neck. And all at once, with a sharp breath, he grew rigid in horrified, eager

Though, from the upper stories and by torchlight, he had already formed some notion of the Horde, he had

in no wise been prepared for what he now was actually beholding through a screen of sumacs that grew along

"Whywhy, this can't be real!" thought he. "Itmust be some damned hallucination. Eh? Am I awake?

Paling a little, his eyes staring, mouth agape, the engineer stayed there for a long minute unable to credit his

own senses. For now he, he, the only white man living in the twentyeighth century, was witnessing the

strangest sight that ever a civilized being had looked upon in the whole history of the world.

No vision of DeQuincey, no drugborn dream of Poe could equal it for grisly fascination. Frankenstein, de

Maupassant's "Horla," all the fantastic literary monsters of the past faded to tawdry, childish bogeys beside

the actual observations of Stern, the engineer, the man of science and cold fact.

"Whywhat are these?" he asked himself, shuddering despite himself at the mere sight of what lay outside

there in the forest. "What? Men? Animals? Neither! God help me, whatwhat are these things?"

AN ALMOST irresistible repugnance, a compelling aversion, more of the spirit than of the flesh, instantly

seized the man at sight of even the few members of the Horde which lay within his view.

Though he had been expecting to see something disgusting, something grotesque and horrible, his mind was

wholly unprepared for the real hideousness of these creatures, now seen by the everstrengthening light of

And slowly, as he stared, the knowledge dawned on him that here was a monstrous problem to face, far

greater and more urgent than he had foreseen; here were factors not yet understood; here, the product of

"II certainly did expect to find a small race," thought he. "Small, and possibly misshapen, the descendants,

And again, fascinated by the ghastly spectacle, he laid his eye to the chink in the wall, and looked.

A tenuous fog still drifted slowly among the forest trees, veiling the deeper recesses. Yet, near at hand, within

the limited segment of vision which the engineer commanded, everything could be made out with reasonable

Some of the Things (for so he mentally named them, knowing no better term) were squatting, lying or

moving about, quite close at hand. The fire by the spring had now almost died down. It was evident that the

revel had ceased, and that the Horde was settling down to restglutted, no doubt, with the raw and bleeding

Stern could easily have poked his pistol muzzle through the crack in the wall and shot down many of them.

For an instant the temptation lay strong upon him to get rid of at least a dozen or a score; but prudence

"No use!" he told himself. "Nothing to be gained by that. But, once I get my proper chance at them!"

And again, striving to observe them with the cool and calculating eye of science, he studied the shifting,

Then he realized that the feature which, above all else, struck him as ghastly and unnatural, was the color of

"Not black, not even brown," said he. "I thought so, last night, but daylight corrects the impression. Not red,

He could hardly name it. Through the fog, it struck him as a dull slategray, almost a blue. He recalled that

once he had seen a child's modelingclay, muchused and very dirty, of the same shade, which certainly had

no designation in the chromatic scale. Some of the Things were darker, some a trifle lighterthese, no

doubt, the younger onesbut they all partook of this same characteristic tint. And the skin, moreover, looked

dull and sickly, rather mottled and wholly repulsive, very like that of a Mexican dog.

Like that dog's hide, too, it was sparsely overgrown with whitish bristles. Here or there, on the bodies of

some of the larger Things, bulbous warts had formed, somewhat like those on a toad's back; and on these

warts the bristles clustered thickly. Stern saw the hair, on the neck of one of these creatures, crawl and rise

like a jackal's, as a neighbor jostled him; and from the Thing's throat issued a clicking grunt of purely animal

"Merciful Heavens! What are they?" wondered Stern, again, utterly baffled for any explanation. "What can

Another, in the group close by, attracted his attention. It was lying on its side, asleep maybe, its back directly

toward the engineer. Stern clearly saw the narrow shoulders and the thin, long arms, covered with that white

One sprawling, spatulate, clawlike hand lay on the forest moss. The twisted little apelike legs,

disproportionately short, were curled up; the feet, prehensile and with a wellmarked thumb on each,

twitched a little now and then. The head, enormously too big for the body, to which it was joined by a thin

neck, seemed to be scantily covered with a fine, curling down, of a dirty yellowish drab color.

"What a target!" thought the engineer. "At this distance, with my .38, I could drill it without half trying!"

All at once, another of the group sat up, shoved away a burnedout torch, and yawned with a noisy, doglike

whine Stern got a quick yet definite glimpse of the sharp canine teeth; he saw that the Thing's fleshless lips

and retreating chin were caked with dried blood. The tongue he saw was long and lithe and apparently rasped.

Then the creature stood up, balancing on its absurd bandy legs, a spear in its handa flintpointed spear of

"I've known savages, as such," thought he. "I understand them. I know animals. They're animals, that's all.

And at the realization that it was neither beast nor man, the engineer's blood chilled within his veins.

Yet he forced himself still to look and to observe, unseen. There was practically no forehead at all. The nose

was but a formless lump of cartilage, the ears large and pendulous and hairy. Under heavy browridges, the

dull, lackluster eyes blinked stupidly, bloodshot and cruel. As the mouth closed, Stern noted how the under

incisors closed up over the upper lip, showing a gleam of dull yellowish ivory; a slaver dripped from the

He realized now that he was in the presence of an unknown semihuman type, different in all probability from

any that had ever yet existed. It was less their bestiality that disgusted him, than their utter, hopeless,

What race had they descended from? He could not tell. He thought he could detect a trace of the Mongol in

the region of the eye, in the cheekbones and the general contour of what, by courtesy, might be called the

face. There were indications, also, of the negroid type, still stronger. But the colorwhence could that have

Again he looked. And now one of the potbellied little horrors, shambling and bulbouskneed, was

scratching its warty, blue hide with its black claws as it trailed along through the forest. It looked up, grinning

and jabbering; Stern saw the teeth that should have been molars. With repulsion he noted that they were not

"Nothing herbivorous here," thought the scientist. "All fleshfood ofwho knows what sort!"

Quickly his mind ran over the outlines of the problem. He knew at once that these Things were lower than

any human race ever recorded, far lower even than the famed Australian bushmen, who could not even count

as high as five. Yet, strange and more than strange, they had the use of fire, of the tomtom, of some sort of

voodooism, of flint, of spears, and of a rude sort of tanningwitness the loinclouts of hide which they all

"Worse than any troglodyte!" he told himself. "Far lower than De Quatrefage's Neanderthal man, to judge

from the cephalic indexworse than that Java skull, the pithecanthropus erectus, itself! And I am with my

His hand froze to the butt of the automatic as he drew back from the cleft in the wall, and, staring, whirled

Then he started back. His jaw dropped, his eyes widened and imply fell his arm. The pistol swung loosely at

There at the door of the great empty room, magnificent m her tigerskin, the Krag gripped in her supple

AT HIM the girl peered eagerly, a second, as though to make quite sure he was not hurt in any way, to satisfy

Then with a little gasp of relief, she ran to him. Her sandaled feet lightly disturbed the rubbish on the floor;

"Back! Back! Go back, quick!" he formed the words of command on his trembling lips. The idea of this girl's

close proximity to the beasthorde terrified him, for the moment. "Back! What on earth are you here for?"

"I had to come! How could I stay up there, alone, when youwereoh! maybe in dangermaybe in need

"Come!" he commanded, in his perturbation heedless of the look she gave him. He took her hand. "Come, we

Even excited as the engineer was, he realized that for the first time the girl had called him by his Christian

name. Not even the perilous situation could stifle the thrill that ran through him at the sound of it. But all he

"No, I don't know what to call them. Have no idea, as yet. I've seen them, yes; but what they are, Heaven

"Let me see, too!" she pleaded eagerly. "Is it through that crack in the wall? Is that the place to look?"

She moved toward it, her face blanched with excitement, eyes shining, lips parted. But Stern held her back.

"No, no, little girl!" he whispered. "Youyou mustn't! Really must not, you know. It's too awful!"

Up at him she looked, knowing not what to think or say for a moment. Their eyes met, there in that wrecked

and riven place, lighted by the dull, misty, morning gray. Then Stern spoke, for in her gaze abode questions

"I'd much rather you wouldn't look out at them, not just yet," said he, speaking very low, fearful lest the

murmur of his voice might penetrate the wall. "Just what they are, frankly, there's no telling."

"Come back into the arcade, where we'll be safer from discovery, and we can talk. Not here. Come!"

"You see," he commented, nodding at the empty waterpail. "I haven't been to the spring yet. Not very likely

to get there for a while, either, unlesswell, unless something pretty radical happens. I think these chaps

have settled down for a good long stay in their happy huntingground, after the fight and the big feast. It's

sort of a notion I've got, that this place, here, is some ancient, ceremonial ground of theirs."

"Yes, if they've got any religious ideas at all, or rather superstitions, such would very likely center round the

most conspicuous object in their world. Probably the spring is a regular voodoo hangout. The row, last night,

must have been a sort of periodic argument to see who was going to run the show."

"But," exclaimed the girl, in alarm"but if they do stay a while, what about us? We simply must have

"True enough. And, inasmuch as we can't drink brine and don't know where there's any other spring, it looks

as though we'd either have to make up to these fellows or wade into them, doesn't it? But we'll get water safe

enough, never fear. Just now, for the immediate present, I want to get my bearings a little, before going to

work. They seem to be resting up, a bit, after their pleasant little soiree. Now, if they'd only all go to sleep,

"You mustn't go out there alone, whatever happens!" she exclaimed. "I just won't let you! But tell me," she

questioned again, "how much have you really found out about themwhatever they are."

"Not much. They seem to be part of a nomadic race of halfhuman things, that's about all I can tell as yet.

Perhaps all the white and yellow peoples perished utterly in the cataclysm, leaving only a few scattered

blacks. You know blacks are immune to several germinfections that destroy other races."

"It's quite possible these fellows are the fardistant and degenerate survivors of that other time."

"So the whole world may have gone to pieces the way Liberia and Haiti and Santo Domingo once did, when

"Yes, only a million times more so. I see you know your history! If my hypothesis is correct, and only a few

"For a while, maybe fifty or a hundred years, they may have kept some sort of dwindling civilization.

Probably the English language for a while continued, in ever more and more corrupt forms. There may have

been some pretense of maintaining the school system, railroads, steamship lines, newspapers and churches,

banks and all the rest of that wonderfully complex system we once knew. But after a while"

"Why, the whole false shell crumbled, that's all. It must have! History shows it. It didn't take a hundred years

after Toussaint L'Ouverture and Dessalines, in Haiti, for the blacks to shuck off French civilization and go

back to grass huts and human sacrificeto make another little Central Africa out of it, in the backwoods

districts, at any rate. And wehave had a thousand, Beatrice, since the white man died!"

"What a story," she murmured, "what an incredible, horribly fascinating story that would make, if it could

ever be known, or written! Think of the ebbtide of everything! Railroads abandoned and falling to pieces,

cities crumbling, ships no longer sailing, language and arts and letters forgotten, agriculture shrinking back to

a few patches of corn and potatoes, and then to nothing at all, everything changing, dying, stoppingand the

everincreasing yet degenerating people leaving the city ruins, which they could not rebuildtaking to the

fields, the forests, the mountainsgoing down, down, back toward the primeval state, down through

"To what we see!" answered the engineer, bitterly. "To animals, retaining by ghastly mockery some use of

"Yes, and I wish we had the shade of Darwin, of Haeckel or of Clodd here with us to help us work it out!"

"Why, like this. Maybe, after all, even the entire black race was swept out along with the others, too. Perhaps

"How came they here? Listen! May they not be the product of some entirely different process of

development? May not some animal stock, under changed environment, have easily evolved them? May not

some other semihuman or nearhuman race be now in process of arising, here on earth, eventually to

For a moment she made no answer. Her breath came a little quickly as she tried to grasp the full significance

"In a million years, or so," the engineer continued, "may not the descendants of these things once more be

men, or something very like them? In other words, aren't we possibly witnessing the recreation of the human

type? Aren't these the real pithecanthropic erecti, rather than the brownskinned, reddishhaired creatures of

And before he could detain her, the girl had started back into the room whence they had come.

"No, no! No, Beatrice!" he whispered, but she paid no heed to him. Across the littered floor she made her

way. And by the time Stern could reach her side, she had set her face to the long, crumbling crack in the wall

STERN laid a hand on her shoulder, striving to draw her away. This spectacle, it seemed to him, was no fit

sight for her to gaze on. But she shrugged her shoulders as if to say: "I'm not a child! I'm your equal, now,

and I must see!" So the engineer desisted. And he, too, set his eye to the twisting aperture.

At sight of the narrow segment of forest visible through it, and of the several members of the Horde, a strong

Up welled a deepseated love for the memory of the race of men and women as they once had beenthe

people of the other days. Stern almost seemed to behold them again, those tall, athletic, straightlimbed men;

those lithe, deepbreasted women, fairskinned and with luxuriant hair; all alike now plunged for a thousand

Never before had the engineer realized how dear, how infinitely close to him his own race had been. Never

had he so admired its diverse types of force and beauty, as now, now when all were but a dream.

"Ugh!" thought he, disgusted beyond measure at the sight before him. "And all these things are just as much

alike as so many ants in a hill! I question if they've got the reason and the socialized intelligence of ants!"

He heard the girl breathe quick, as she, too, watched what was going on outside. A certain change had taken

place there. The mist had somewhat thinned away, blown by the freshening breeze through Madison Forest

and by the higherrising sun. Both watchers could new see further into the woods; and both perceived that

Only a few vague, uncertain figures were now moving about, with a strangely unsteady gait, weakkneed and

In the nearest group, which Stern had already had a chance to study, all save one of the creatures had lain

down. The man and woman could quite plainly hear the raucous and bestial snoring of some halfdozen of

"Come away, you've seen enough, more than enough!" he whispered in the girl's ear.

For Stern, trying to readjust his position, laid his right hand on the wall above his head.

A little fragment of loose marble, long since ready to fall, dislodged itself and bounced with a sharp click

The sound, perhaps, was no greater than you would make in snapping an ordinary leadpencil in your

fingers; yet on the instant three of the Things raised their bulbous and exaggerated heads in an attitude of

intense, suspicious listening. Plain to see that their senses, at least, excelled those of the human being, even as

The individual which, alone of them all, had been standing, wheeled suddenly round and made a step or two

toward the building. Both watchers saw him with terrible distinctness, there among the sumacs and birches,

Plain now was the simian aspect, plain the sidelong and uncertain gait, bent back and crooked legs, the long,

And as the Thing listened, its hair bristling, it thrust its villainous, apelike head well forward. Open fell the

A wrinkle creased the low, dull brow. Watching with horrified fascination, Stern and Beatrice beheldand

heardthe creature sniff the air, as though taking up some scent of danger or of the hunt.

Then up came the right arm; they saw the clawhand with a spear, poise itself a moment. From the open

mouth burst with astounding force and suddenness a snarling yowl, inarticulate, shrill, horrible beyond all

An instant agitation took place all through the forest. The watchers could see only a small, fanlike space of

itand even this, only a few rods from the buildingyet by the confused, vague noise that began, they

Here, there, the cry was repeated. A shifting, moving sound began. In the visible group, the Things were

getting to their handlike feet, standing unsteadily on their looseskinned, scaly legs, gawping about them,

Sudden, numbing fear seized Beatrice. Now for the first time she realized the imminent peril; now she

He still, for a moment, kept his eye to the crack, fascinated by the very horror of the sight. Then all at once

"A female one!" he realized, shuddering. Too monstrously hideous, this sight, to be endured. With a gasp, the

About Beatrice he drew his arm. Together, almost as soundlessly as wraiths, they stole away, out through the

Here, for a few moments, they knew that they were safe. Retreat through the Marble Court and up the stairs

was fairly clear. There was but one entrance open into the arcade, the one through Pine Tree Gate; and this

was blocked so narrowly by the giant bole that Stern knew there could be no general mobrush through

itno attack which he could not for a while hold back, so long as his ammunition and the girl's should last.

Thus they breathed more freely now. Most of the tumult outside had been cut off from their hearing, by the

"Oh, oh, Allanhow horrible!" she whispered. "It was all my fault for having been so headstrong, for having

"Sh!" he cautioned again. "No matter about that. The main thing, now, is whether we attack or wait?"

"I don't think much of going upstairs without that pail of water. We'll have a frightful time with thirst, to say

nothing of not being able to make the Pulverite. Water we must have! If it weren't for your being here, I'd

mighty soon wade into that bunch and see who wins! Butwell, I haven't any right to endanger"

"Come on!" cried she. "If you and I aren't a match for them, we don't deserve to live, that's all. You know

Her eyes gleamed with the light of battle, battle for liberty, for life; her cheeks glowed with the tides of

generous blood that coursed beneath the skin. Never had Stern beheld her half so beautiful, so regal in that

clinging, barbaric Bengal robe of black and yellow, caught at the throat with the clasp of raw gold.

A sudden impulse seized him, dominant, resistless. For a brief moment he detained her; he held her back;

She raised her face in wonder. He bent, a little, and on the brow he kissed her rapturously.