CHAPTER VIII
A SIGN OF PERIL
Stern's weakness--as he judged it--lasted but a minute. Then,realizing even more fully than ever the necessity for immediate laborand exploration, he tightened his grip upon the sledge and set forthinto the forest of Madison Square.
Away from him scurried a cotton-tail. A snake slid, hissing, out ofsight under a jungle of fern. A butterfly, dull brown and ocher,settled upon a branch in the sunlight, where it began slowly openingand shutting its wings.
"Hem! That's a _Danaus plexippus_, right enough," commented the man."But there are some odd changes in it. Yes, indeed, certainly someevolutionary variants. Must be a tremendous time since we went tosleep, for sure; probably very much longer than I dare guess. That's aproblem I've got to go to work on, before many days!"
But now for the present he dismissed it again; he pushed it aside inthe press of urgent matters. And, parting the undergrowth, he brokehis crackling way through the deep wood.
He had gone but a few hundred yards when an exclamation of surpriseddelight burst from his lips.
"Water! Water!" he cried. "What? A spring, so close? A pool, righthere at hand? Good luck, by Jove, the very first thing!"
And, stopping where he stood, he gazed at it with keen, unalloyedpleasure.
There, so near to the massive bulk of the tower that the vast shadowlay broadly across it, Stern had suddenly come upon as beautiful alittle watercourse as ever bubbled forth under the yews of Arden orlapped the willows of Hesperides.
He beheld a roughly circular depression in the woods, fern-banked andfringed with purple blooms; at the bottom sparkled a spring,leaf-bowered, cool, Elysian.
From this, down through a channel which the water must have worn foritself by slow erosion, a small brook trickled, widening out into apool some fifteen feet across; whence, brimming over, it purled awaythrough the young sweet-flags and rushes with tempting little woodlandnotes.
"What a find!" cried the engineer. Forward he strode. "So, then?Deer-tracks?" he exclaimed, noting a few dainty hoof-prints in thesandy margin. "Great!" And, filled with exultation, he dropped besidethe spring.
Over it he bent. Setting his bearded lips to the sweet water, he drankenormous, satisfying drafts.
Sated at last, he stood up again and peered about him. All at once heburst out into joyous laughter.
"Why, this is certainly an old friend of mine, or I'm a liar!" hecried out. "This spring is nothing more or less than the linealdescendant of Madison Square fountain, what? But good Lord, what achange!
"It would make a splendid subject for an article in the 'Annals ofApplied Geology.' Only--well, there aren't any annals, now, and what'smore, no readers!"
Down to the wider pool he walked.
"Stern, my boy," said he, "here's where you get an A-1, first-classdip!"
A minute later, stripped to the buff, the man lay splashing vigorouslyin the water. From top to toe he scrubbed himself vigorously with thefine, white sand. And when, some minutes later, he rose up again, thetingle and joy of life filled him in every nerve.
For a minute he looked contemptuously at his rags, lying there on theedge of the pool. Then with a grunt he kicked them aside.
"I guess we'll dispense with those," judged he. "The bear-skin, backin 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 yearsyounger, already. Ten, from what? X minus ten, equals--?"
Thoughtfully, as he walked across the elastic moss and over thepine-needles, he stroked his beard.
"Now, if I could only get a hair-cut and shave!" said he. "Well, whynot? Wouldn't that surprise _her_, though?"
The idea strong upon him, he hastened his steps, and soon was back atthe door close to the huge Norway pine. But here he did not enter.Instead, he turned to the right.
Plowing through the woods, climbing over fallen columns and shatteredbuilding-stones, flushing a covey of loud-winged partridges, partingthe bushes that grew thickly along the base of the wall, he now foundhimself in what had long ago been Twenty-Third Street.
No sign, now of paving or car-tracks--nothing save, on the other sideof the way, crumbling lines of ruin. As he worked his way among thedetritus of the Metropolitan, he kept sharp watch for the wreckage ofa hardware store.
Not until he had crossed the ancient line of Madison Avenue andpenetrated some hundred yards still further along Twenty-Third Street,did he find what he sought. "Ah!" he suddenly cried. "Here's somethingnow!"
And, scrambling over a pile of grass-grown rubbish with a couple oftime-bitten iron wheels peering out--evidently the wreckage of anelectric car--he made his way around a gaping hole where a side-walkhad caved in and so reached the interior of a shop.
"Yes, prospects here, certainly prospects!" he decided carefullyinspecting the place. "If this didn't use to be Currier & Brown'splace, I'm away off my bearings. There ought to be _something_ left."
"Ah! Would you?" and he flung a hastily-snatched rock at a rattlesnakethat had begun its dry, chirring defiance on top of what once had beena counter.
The snake vanished, while the rock rebounding, crashed through glass.
Stern wheeled about with a cry of joy. For there, he saw, still stoodnear the back of the shop a showcase from within which he caught asheen of tarnished metal.
Quickly he ran toward this, stumbling over the loose dooring, mossyand grass-grown. There in the case, preserved as you have seenEgyptian relics two or three thousand years old, in museums, theengineer beheld incalculable treasures. He thrilled with a savage,strange delight.
Another blow, with the sledge, demolished the remaining glass.
He trembled with excitement as he chose what he most needed.
"I certainly do understand now," said he, "why the New Zealanders tookCaptain Cook's old barrel-hoops and refused his cash. Same here! Allthe money in this town couldn't buy this rusty knife--" as he seized acorroded blade set in a horn handle, yellowed with age. And eagerly hecontinued the hunt.
Fifteen minutes later he had accumulated a pair of scissors, tworubber combs, another knife, a revolver, an automatic, severalhandfuls of cartridges and a Cosmos bottle.
All these he stowed in a warped, mildewed remnant of a Gladstone bag,taken from a corner where a broken glass sign, "Leather Goods," layamong the rank confusion.
"I guess I've got enough, now, for the first load," he judged, moreexcited than if he had chanced upon a blue-clay bed crammed withCullinan diamonds. "It's a beginning, anyhow. Now for Beatrice!"
Joyously as a schoolboy with a pocketful of new-won marbles, he madehis exit from the ruins of the hardware store, and started back towardthe tower.
But hardly had he gone a hundred feet when all at once he drew backwith a sharp cry of wonder and alarm.
There at his feet, in plain view under a little maple sapling, laysomething that held him frozen with astonishment.
He snatched it up, dropping the sledge to do so.
"What? _What?_" he stammered; and at the thing he stared with widened,uncomprehending eyes.
"Merciful God! How--what--?" cried he.
The thing he held in his hand was a broad, fat, flint assegai-point!