Darkness and Dawn (10 page)

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 dominance of nature.

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 first days of the new, solitary, unsocialized life.

But neither he nor the girl had very much time for introspective
thought. Each moment brought its immediate task, and every day seemed
busier than the last had been.

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 their own escape.

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 sleep.

Again, they tried to imagine the scenes just following the
catastrophe, the horror of that long-past day, and the slow,
irrevocable decay of all the monuments of the human race.

Often they talked till past midnight, by the glow of their stone
fireplace, and many were the aspects of the case that they developed.
These hours seemed to Stern the happiest of his life.

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 heart for her was not without its answer in her own.

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 basis—and 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 human beings—civilized I
mean—left alive anywhere in the world.

"If anybody else had been spared, whether in Chicago or San Francisco,
in London, Paris or Hong-Kong, 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 ourselves. Could they
have succeeded in making themselves known to us so soon?"

He shook a dubious head.

"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. And you—well, you're Eve! But the tree? We haven't found
that—yet."

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 mount.

And for a little space the man forgot to smoke. At her he gazed, a
strange gleam in his eyes.

And no word passed between them for a while. But their thoughts—?

The idea that there might possibly be others of their kind in
far-distant parts of the earth worked strongly on the mind of the
girl. Next day she broached the subject again to her companion.

"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
thousands may have slept, like us, only to wake up to starvation!"

"There's no telling, of course," he answered seriously. "Undoubtedly
that may be very possible. Some may have escaped the great death, on
high altitudes—on 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 colony—don'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 speak now."

"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 copper-shop, to
the remains of the telegraph office opposite the Flatiron.

Into it he penetrated with some difficulty. A mournful sight it was,
this one-time busy ganglion of the nation's nerve-system. Benches and
counters were quite gone, instruments corroded past recognition,
everything in hideous disorder.

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 think the first step toward
success will have been taken."

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 fifteen-foot ladder that Stern had built
for the purpose out of rough branches.

"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. I'll tap with the ax, and if the roof holds me you'll be
safe."

Thus, after a little while, they found a secure path to the little
station.

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 ashes of the operator.

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 accomplished.

And thus they set to work in earnest.

First, with the girl's help, he strung his copper-wire 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 finish.

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 sub-basement.

All this took two and a half days of severe labor, in intervals of
food-getting, cooking and household tasks. At last, when it was done—

"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 running order.

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 Twenty-Third Street, had by some freak of
chance been protected by a canvas cover.

This cover was now only a mass of rotten rags, but it had at least
safeguarded the machine for so long that no very serious deterioration
had set in.

Stern worked the better part of a week with such tools as he could
find or make—he 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 would run.

"Steam now!" was his next watchword, when he had wired the dynamo to
connect with the station on the roof. And this was on the eighth day
since he had begun his labor.

An examination of the boiler-room, which he reached by moving a ton of
fallen stone-work from the doorway into the dynamo-room, encouraged
him still further. As he penetrated into this place, feeble-shining
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 Gizeh—though the place smelled dank and close and stifling—time
seemed to have lost much of its destructive power. He chose one boiler
that looked sound, and began looking for coal.

Of this he found a plentiful supply, well-preserved, in the bunkers.
All one afternoon he labored, wheeling it in a steel barrow and
dumping it in front of the furnace.

Where the smoke-stack led to and what condition it was in he knew not.
He could not tell where the gases of combustion would escape to; but
this he decided to leave to chance.

He grimaced at sight of the rusted flues and the steam-pipes
connecting with the dynamo-room-pipes now denuded of their asbestos
packing and leaky at several joints.

A strange, gnome-like 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 companions—those, 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. Water-glasses leaky, gauges plugged up,
safety-valve rusted into its seat—the devil!"

But still he kept on. Something drove him inexorably forward. For he
was an engineer—and 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 took him three days.

Thus, after eleven days of heart-breaking 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 the experiment—the strangest, surely, in the annals of the
human race.

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 the leaks in the long pipe.

"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 forehead.

"Bull luck!" repeated he. "But by the Almighty, I'll send that Morse,
or bust!"

Panting with exhaustion and excitement, Stern made his way back
to the engine-room. It was a strangely critical moment when he seized
the corroded throttle-wheel to start the dynamo. The wheel stuck, and
would not budge.

Stern, with a curse of sheer exasperation, snatched up his long
spanner, shoved it through the spokes, and wrenched.

Groaning, the wheel gave way. It turned. The engineer hauled again.

"Go on!" shouted the man. "Start! Move!"

With a hissing plaint, as though rebellious against this awakening
after its age-long sleep, the engine creaked into motion.

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 "drive" of tarred hemp strained and quivered, but held.

And like the one-hoss 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, absurd and shocking imitation of its one-time beauty and
power.

At sight of this ghastly resurrection, the engineer (whose whole life
had been passed in the love and service of machinery) felt a strange
and sad emotion.

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 to work.

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 fairly steady heat for an hour or so.

This done, he toiled back up to where Beatrice was eagerly awaiting
him in the little wireless station on the roof.