Darkness and Dawn Read Free

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 we can't tell. But to judge by the appearance
up here, it's even longer than I thought. See, the very tiles are
cracked and crumbling.
    "Tilework is usually considered highly recalcitrant—but
this
is
gone. There's grass growing in the dust that's settled between the
tiles. And—why, here's a young oak that's taken root and forced a
dozen slabs out of place."
    "The winds and birds have carried seeds up here, and acorns," she
answered in an awed voice. "Think of the time that must have passed.
Years and years.
    "But tell me," and her brow wrinkled with a sudden wonder, "tell me
how we've ever lived so long?
I
can't understand it.
    "Not only have we escaped starvation, but we haven't frozen to death
in all these bitter winters.