Darkness and Dawn | Page 5

have something to put on. Great Heavens what a situation!"
He tried to peel off his remnant of a coat, but at the merest touch it tore to shreds and fell

away. The girl restrained him.
"Never mind," said she, with quiet, modest dignity. "My hair protects me very well for
the present. If you and I are all that's left of the people in the world, this is no time for
trifles."
A moment he studied her. Then he nodded, and grew very grave.
"Forgive me," he whispered, laying a hand on her shoulder. Once more he turned to the
window and looked out.
"So then, it's all gone?" he queried, speaking as to himself. "Only a skyscraper standing
here or there? And the bridges and the islands--all changed.
"Not a sign of life anywhere; not a sound; the forests growing thick among the ruins? A
dead world if--if all the world is like this part of it! All dead, save you and me!"
In silence they stood there, striving to realize the full import of the catastrophe. And Stern,
deep down in his heart, caught some glimmering insight of the future and was glad.

CHAPTER III
ON THE TOWER PLATFORM
Suddenly the girl started, rebelling against the evidence of her own senses, striving again
to force upon herself the belief that, after all, it could not be so.
"No, no, no!" she cried. "This can't be true. It mustn't be. There's a mistake somewhere.
This simply must be all an illusion, a dream!
"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, and know--"
He shook his head.
"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 any harm to extend our radius of observation.
"Come, let's go on up to the top of the tower, up to the observation-platform. The quicker
we know all the available facts the better. Now, if I only had a telescope--!"
He thought hard a moment, then turned and strode over to a heap of friable disintegration
that lay where once his instrument case had stood, containing his surveying tools.
Down on his ragged knees he fell; his rotten shreds of clothing tore and ripped at every

movement, like so much water-soaked paper.
A strange, hairy, dust-covered figure, he knelt there. Quickly he plunged his hands into
the rubbish and began pawing it over and over with eager haste.
"Ah!" he cried with triumph. "Thank Heaven, brass and lenses haven't crumbled yet!"
Up he stood again. In his hand the girl saw a peculiar telescope.
"My 'level,' see?" he exclaimed, holding it up to view. "The wooden tripod's long since
gone. The fixtures that held it on won't bother me much.
"Neither will the spirit-glass on top. The main thing is that the telescope itself seems to be
still intact. Now we'll see."
Speaking, he dusted off the eye-piece and the objective with a bit of rag from his
coat-sleeve.
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.
"Come, now; come with me," he bade.
Out through the doorway into the hall he made his way while the girl followed. As she
went she gathered her wondrous veil of hair more closely about 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 rust-bitten steel showed
through the corroded stone and cement in a thousand places, they cautiously climbed.
Here, spider-webs thickly shrouded the way, and had to be brushed down. There, still
more bats bung and chippered in protest as the intruders passed.
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 mud-swallows which had ensconced themselves
comfortably along a broken balustrade.
At last, however, despite all unforeseen incidents of this sort, they reached the upper
platform, nearly a thousand feet above the earth.
Out through the relics of the revolving door they crept, he leading, testing each foot of the
way before the girl. They reached the narrow platform of red tiling that surrounded the
tower.
Even here they saw with growing amazement that the hand of time and of this maddening
mystery had laid its heavy imprint.

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