VI.
With wild energy the men threw out of the car everything that had asemblance of weight. Aeronauts well know the difference that a fewounces make to safety when the gas has been exhausted from theirballoon. Professor Ariel had cast everything overboard with maniacalcelerity, and now, clad only in his undershirt and trousers, was hackingat the trailing ladder to cut that off. The balloon had risen some fiftyor a hundred feet. It now halted irresolute. Could it recover itself andmount? or would it lose courage and fall, dragging its passengers to acertain death?
But far more fearful than the latter imminent danger was the sight ofthe threatening sky. Not one of these imperilled people had ever seensuch whirling masses of mad, black, revengeful clouds. These centredfrom all sides upon the site of the lost city. They rushed together andformed eddies and funnels. They roared like live things. It was in oneof these smaller whirlwinds that the balloon was caught.
The massive folds of silk beat and writhed and tried to tear themselvesloose from the clutches of the elements. The four in the car clung to itwith terror, watching the mad-cap play of the wind.
"It's no use--I can't!" cried the professor with damp, white face,throwing down his knife. "The wire is too strong. We must get to therigging, cut off the car, and God help us!"
The situation was indeed appalling. The ladder, for purposes of greaterstability, was made of wire woven over with manila. The sharp knifecould not cut that useless weight.
In this crisis the young lady recovered her equipoise. She began to takeoff her shoes.
"It will help a little," she said. Then she began shyly to loose heroverskirt. But the whirlwind caught the car and nearly upset it. Itswirled and almost touched the ground.
"Up!" cried the professor. He caught the girl and tied her indexterously. Every man held himself in the ropes that bound the car tothe balloon as best he might. It was a fearful chance. The professor cuta rope and made bowline chairs. Each sat in his noose and held on fordear life. The professor, who never lost his coolness, worked as if hehad done this before. And indeed he had.
Swift had the presence of mind or the presence of heart to support theyoung lady in this perilous moment.
Cut! cut! The car had been caught in a counter eddy, and was fivehundred feet or so in the air, but rapidly descending. Then the laststrand parted. Relieved of several hundred-weight, the balloon boundedup. It was buffeted and whirled and tossed from cloud to cloud. Themaddened elements clutched at it. Balls of fire danced upon the groundbeneath, and darted here and there from cloud to cloud. As the professorgave the last cut and the balloon soared aloft, there was a report as ifa thousand rounds of artillery were concentrated in one shot. There wasa dazzling streak of light. It smote the adventurers blind. It smotethem deaf. It stunned them into insensibility. Like limp corpses thefour sat as they were whirled on high, each clasping his armsinstinctively about the rope that held him.
It seemed as if death had overtaken them all and petrified them with itstouch.
"I have solved the problem." Mr. Ticks opened his eyes and gasped. "Bymy faith, where are we?"
Far below were opaque blackness, storm and wind. Above, the blue,infinite ether. The sun shone brilliantly. It warmed the balloon. Itexpanded the gas. The _High Tariff_ kept rising. The stillness was amiracle. Beneath stretched the panorama of a stricken country. Thehighest peaks of the Buzzard mountains were below the balloon. The stormraged over the lake and the lost city like a mock storm, it was sodistant and so unimportant. Now and then there was a flash of yellowlight and a distant reverberation. The storm was fearful, but it wasonly a small blot upon a fair landscape when viewed from such a height.
"Yes," mused Mr. Ticks aloud, pulling his energies together. "I know nowwhat it all means. I know the secret of Russell's unparalleleddisaster."
As he spoke he reached out and shook the professor, then Swift; then hetouched the young lady with gentle deference. The three opened theireyes, one after another.
"We're saved! Oh, what luck! We're saved!" cried Professor Ariel. Tearsof joy started from his eyes. "Say, mister," his devil-may-care mannerreturning to him in the fulness of his ecstasy. "Say," punching Swift,"you ain't got a chaw about you, have you?"
But Swift, lifting up his bewildered eyes, took in the glorious blue skyand sun, then his gaze fell upon the horror from which they hadescaped. Mechanically he searched the pockets of his trousers. Out ofhis pistol pocket he pulled a flask of brandy--all that survived to himof his outfit for this ghastly journey. This he had forgotten, otherwiseit would have gone by the rail along with his pocketbook, to lighten thecar.
"Not yet," he said, pushing aside the professor's longing hand, "thelady first!"
The brandy, the warm sun and the prospect of safety roused the girlconsiderably. Possibly Swifts supporting arm hastened her recuperation.
Swift passed the bottle to Mr. Ticks, who drank, and coughed, and drankagain.
"It's St. Croix, vintage of forty-two," said Mr. Ticks, gratefully. Theprofessor got what he could. But Swift would not touch any. He wasexperiencing a finer intoxication. His eyes met those of the girl, whohad been the unconscious cause of all their danger. She seemed toperceive this, for she soon broke the profound silence by suggestingwith a blush:
"You needn't hold me so tight, sir. I'll try not to fall."
"Can you talk now?" asked Mr. Ticks of their lady companion.
This question deflected a possible embarrassment, but Swift, deeming itsafe to allow no risk, did not relax his hold of the girl.
"Are you a reporter?" he asked, with an unaccountable desire to keep theconversation in his own hands. "This gentleman and myself are on the_Daily Planet_, the other man is professor of the balloon."
"How did you know?" she answered with a first approach to a smile. "Iam, or at least I was, society reporter on the _Russell Telegraph_." Thelast word started Mr. Ticks up again.
"You witnessed the destruction of Russell? Do you know that its cause isthe despair of the world? Do you know----"
"Oh, it was dreadful! dreadful! dreadful!" interrupted the girl with ashudder. "I was out in my boat alone and saw it all!"
The lady hid her face. "I was so tired that morning I couldn't breathe.It was oppressive. The air was over-charged so strangely. You touched aniron post and a spark shot out and gave you a shock. I couldn't stay, soI begged off and took my lunch and my work in my little skiff and rowedtwo miles out and anchored and tried to write."
"Can you state for the _Planet_, Miss----?"
"Insula Magnet, that's my name, sir."
"Miss Magnet, can you state at what exact hour the catastropheoccurred?"
The balloon had now come to a standstill, and floated quietly above thelake and the doomed city. The four wriggled uncomfortably in theimprovised seats. The ropes cut them. The sun beat upon them hotly. Theywere exhausted and hungry and parched.
"Can't we go down?" suggested Swift. His brain reeled at the great depthbelow him. The person who lost his hold and fell would die before hereached the earth. The first stage in the Strasburg cathedral is twohundred and fifty feet high, and it is a terrible sight to look over itsstone balustrade. No one forgets his sensation when he leans over thetop of the Eiffel tower, a thousand feet from the asphalt pavementbelow. Judge what it was to those inexperienced travellers to be overten thousand feet high, clinging like weather-beaten flies to thesestraining ropes!
"No, I wouldn't descend yet in this calm for as many dollars as we arefeet high. We're safe enough here. Look up, man! Look up! Shut youreyes. That's best!"
But Mr. Ticks pugnaciously returned to his question. What was a littlematter of falling ten thousand feet or so? A fact startling and valuablewas at stake and at hand.
"It was just a quarter of ten," answered Miss Magnet, in a low,horror-stricken tone. "I was writing. Suddenly a bitter vapor envelopedeverything. There was no wind, no sun, no clouds, only this dense,strange atmosphere. It prostrated me. There were a number of boats nearme. These were al
l of the new patent. They were steel. I saw great ballsof fire dance from boat to boat. Then there came from the city a lightsuch as I never saw before. It flashed like an enormous meteor, like anincandescent flame. It enveloped Russell. I was scorched even where Iwas by the flash. I heard a hissing sound like water on melted iron. Andthen--"
"And then?" persisted Mr. Ticks in a kind of rapture.
"And then I must have fainted away. When I came to there was no city,only masses of blackness and--and--Oh, the boats! The people! They wereall gone! Not capsized--not drowning--but gone. There were no boats.There were no people. There wasn't even a dead body to keep me company.I, only I, was left, living and alone upon the hissing water.... When Iwas able I rowed back. The shore looked horrible and ridged, as ifmolten lead had been poured into it. When I came nearer an awful heatand a deadly odor overcame me. I had barely strength to row back andanchor again. Then the mist settled everywhere except where I was." Thegirl stopped for a moment, breathless.
"I couldn't see anything. It was hot, and then it was cold. I tried toeat my luncheon. I tried to get some sleep. I called and called forhelp. I couldn't tell night from day. I can't say whether it was four orfive days. I said five. I must have been faint a good deal. The worstthing was being alone. I expected to die. I got pretty weak.... Then Isaw the balloon." The girl bowed the face which she could not hide, andsobbed at her own dreadful story.
Swift was greatly moved. "Miss Magnet," he said gently, putting her headupon his shoulder. "I think you had better rest. You are tired out. Thisis different, you know. You needn't when you get safely down." The girlgave him a grateful glance and obeyed him quietly.
"How did she escape?" soliloquized Mr. Ticks, loud enough to beoverheard.
"Oh, I don't know--don't ask me--unless it was that I was in a woodenboat. All the rest on the lake go by storage battery and are made ofsteel. Mine is the only old-fashioned boat, but I was always afraid.Everybody laughed at me, but I did what I do at home. I cut off the legsof a chair and fixed them in glass tumblers. I always sit in my officeon glass tumblers. My bed rests on glass tumblers, too. It's anon-conductor, you know. I used to get shocked every day. Everybody gotshocked in Russell, but they pretended not to mind it."
"But, Miss Magnet, do you know what is the cause of Russell's fate? ofthis deadly atmosphere beneath us?"
"N-no--unless--of course that can't be. I guess it's a visitation ofProvidence--but I don't know for what." The girl stopped, awed at thethoughts she had evoked.
"A visitation of Providence!" repeated Mr. Ticks, slowly. "Yes, she isright. The sin of presumptuousness was visited upon that unhappy place."
"Do you mean to say"--Swift started up. Somehow he had forgottenRussell, its mysterious fate, his mission, everything but the girl. Hehad awaked to his duty. "Do you mean to say that the whole thing is dueto e--?"
"Hold on! Look below!" interrupted the professor.
They clung to the ropes and glued their gaze upon the sight so farbeneath them. The storm had magically cleared away. The sunlight nowpierced the whole landscape for the first time since the disaster. Thelost city, in black, shapeless ruins, lay directly beneath them.
"We will go down." The professor opened the safety-valve cautiously."The devil has been chased away by the storm," he said emphatically.
Indeed, the baleful vapor had gone. As they swiftly descended strangesights met their eyes. They could still see everything microscopicallyfor a radius of twenty miles around. Black specks were rushing up thestricken railroad tracks, along the roads, hurrying to the city of doom.Linemen began to extend the wires; trackmen began laying new tracks.Fully fifty thousand impatient men were madly plunging these twentymiles from different points of the circumference, converging towardRussell. The dead line had become a mysterious thing of the past. Thedanger to life was over, and it became an unprecedented race to see whowould get first upon the spot.
"If this calm lasts, as I think it will, we will be on the ground twohours ahead of the crowd."
Swift's eyes sparkled in reportorial ecstasy.
There was no time now nor inclination for words. In ten minutes the_High Tariff_ was within a few hundred feet of the doomed city. Buzzardsfollowed its descent curiously.
"My kingdom for a notebook!" cried Swift, in anguish.
"Take mine," said his companion, shyly, "and my stylo, too."
Swift would have been more moved by this attention had he not beenabsorbed in the sight at his feet.
"Do you mean," he turned to Mr. Ticks, "that this is all the effect ofe----?"
"Look sharp, now!" interrupted Professor Ariel. "Stand ready to be cutdown!" The Professor had manipulated the safety-valve so skilfully thatin another minute they grazed the serrated ground. They were not hurt.One wide sweep of the professor's knife, and the _High Tariff_ freed nowfrom all restraint, bounded away never to be seen again.
"I am sorry, Professor Ariel," said Swift, immediately, "thatcircumstances compel me to postpone my part of the contract. But, as weare responsible for your loss, I will guarantee that the _Planet_ willmake it all right."
The professor did not answer. Absorbed, he followed the _High Tariff_ inits capricious departure with tender interest.
When the three turned and stared about them, they stood palsied by theterrible sight before them: a sight never permitted to mortal viewbefore, and we pray that such be withheld from the gaze of our poor racehenceforth forever.
The wide-awake, the proud, the busy city of Russell had vanished.Russell in its short and meteoric career had spent hundreds of thousandsof dollars on its tall, iron, fireproof blocks, its steel grainelevators, its gilded capitol, its granite churches, its hundredfactories, its indestructible depots. Where were they? Where was the"busy hum of men"? Not a girder, not a column, not a trace of thecomplicated iron vertebrae of this metal city was left to mourn thegrandeur of its structures. Not a corpse, not even a bone remained totell the tale of the death agony.
Stricken as dumb as the lower brute creation, this one poor girl, thesole survivor of thirty thousand hopeful citizens, bereft of home, offriends, of employment, of hope, of everything in life but this hideousmemory, uttered a low cry and sank senseless. Swift laid her gently onthe parched, cracked ground; it was yet heated as if a conflagration hadpassed over the place. Where but five days ago haughty, frowning, ironblocks of stores, of hotels and exchanges stood, there were raggedgullies and deep fissures and jagged ravines, shining in the sunlightwith a black, streaked crust. The sight was dreary and dead and desertedas if our travellers had been suddenly dropped upon the surface of themoon. The ground was riven as by some prehistoric upheaval. It looked asif subterranean springs of molten steel lava had spurted from the groundand had melted the unhappy city in their onward path and had carried itdown in liquid solution to the lake.
Mr. Statis Ticks picked up a piece of this plutonian slag and examinedit attentively.
"I didn't know that brick would melt like this," he said. Then again:"Here is platinum fused with iron and another substance I do not know."In a second or two he added:
"I see no remains of glass. It must have evaporated." He then took a fewsteps. "It is lucky," he said meditatively; "if we had been landed a fewmore feet to the left we should have been broiled to death. A part ofthis lava is still in a liquid state."