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Authors: George England
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and monstrous rubbish-heaps of ruins," he sized up
the situation, "traversed by lanes of forest and overgrown with every
sort of vegetation.
"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 wouldn't have thrown
quite such a chest, eh? And
they
talked of engineering!"
Useless though it was, he felt a certain pride in noting that the
Osterhaut Building, on Seventeenth Street, had lasted rather better
than the average.
"
My
work!" said he, nodding with grim satisfaction, then passed on.
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
with litter.
Slimy and damp it was, with a mephitic smell and ugly pools of water
settled in the ancient road-bed. The rails were wholly gone in places.
In others only rotten fragments of steel remained.
A goggle-eyed toad stared impudently at him from a long tangle of
rubbish that had been a train—stalled there forever by the final
block-signal of death.
Through the broken arches overhead the rain and storms of ages had
beaten down, and lush grasses flourished here and there, where
sunlight could penetrate.
No human dust-heaps 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 boasted—like the financiers, the churchmen, the
merchants, everybody! Boasted of their institutions, their city, their
country. And
now
—"
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, he began to feel the horror of this loneliness.
"No life here! Nobody to speak to—except 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?
How long could I go on alone, and keep my mind?"
The thought terrified him. He put it resolutely away and went to work.
Wherever he stumbled upon anything of value he eagerly seized it.
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 all thinking for the survivor.
Up Broadway he found much to keep—things which he garnered in the
up-caught hem of his bearskin, things of all kinds and uses. He found
a clay pipe—all the wooden ones had vanished from the shop—and a
glass jar of tobacco.
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 brass-ware shop, opposite the
Flatiron, he made a rich haul of cups and plates and a still
serviceable lamp.
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
to be visible back to the shelter of the Metropolitan.
"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 revolver-shots
the situation, "traversed by lanes of forest and overgrown with every
sort of vegetation.
"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 wouldn't have thrown
quite such a chest, eh? And
they
talked of engineering!"
Useless though it was, he felt a certain pride in noting that the
Osterhaut Building, on Seventeenth Street, had lasted rather better
than the average.
"
My
work!" said he, nodding with grim satisfaction, then passed on.
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
with litter.
Slimy and damp it was, with a mephitic smell and ugly pools of water
settled in the ancient road-bed. The rails were wholly gone in places.
In others only rotten fragments of steel remained.
A goggle-eyed toad stared impudently at him from a long tangle of
rubbish that had been a train—stalled there forever by the final
block-signal of death.
Through the broken arches overhead the rain and storms of ages had
beaten down, and lush grasses flourished here and there, where
sunlight could penetrate.
No human dust-heaps 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 boasted—like the financiers, the churchmen, the
merchants, everybody! Boasted of their institutions, their city, their
country. And
now
—"
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, he began to feel the horror of this loneliness.
"No life here! Nobody to speak to—except 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?
How long could I go on alone, and keep my mind?"
The thought terrified him. He put it resolutely away and went to work.
Wherever he stumbled upon anything of value he eagerly seized it.
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 all thinking for the survivor.
Up Broadway he found much to keep—things which he garnered in the
up-caught hem of his bearskin, things of all kinds and uses. He found
a clay pipe—all the wooden ones had vanished from the shop—and a
glass jar of tobacco.
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 brass-ware shop, opposite the
Flatiron, he made a rich haul of cups and plates and a still
serviceable lamp.
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
to be visible back to the shelter of the Metropolitan.
"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 revolver-shots
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