imagine it?”
“Hardly.”
“Why, what’s the matter? You—speak as though you weren’t—saved!”
“I didn’t mean to. It’s—just surprise, I guess.”
“Come! Let’s signal them with a fire from the tower top. I’ll help carry wood. Let’s hurry down and run and meet them!”
Highly excited, the girl had got to her feet again, and now, clutched the engineer’s arm in burning eagerness.
“Let’s go! Go—at once! This minute!”
But he restrained her.
“You don’t really think that would be quite prudent, do you?” asked he. “Not just yet?”
“Why not?”
“Why, can’t you see? We—that is, there is no way to tell—”
“But they’re coming to save us, can’t you see? Somehow, somewhere, they must have caught that signal! And shall we wait, and perhaps let them lose us, after all?”
“Certainly not. But first we—why, we ought to make quite sure, you understand. Sure that they—they’re really civilized, you know.”
“But they must be, to have read the wireless!”
“Oh, you’re counting on that, are you? Well, that’s a big assumption. It won’t do. No, we’ve got to go slow in this game. Got to wait. Wait, and see. Easy does it!”
He tried to speak boldly and with nonchalance, but the girl’s keen ear detected at least a little of the emotion that was troubling him. She kept a moment’s silence, while the quivering lights drew on and on, steadily, slowly, like a host of fireflies on the bosom of the night.
“Why don’t you get the telescope, and see?” she asked, at length.
“No use. It isn’t a night-glass. Couldn’t see a thing.”
“But anyhow, those lights mean men, don’t they?”
“Naturally. But until we know what kind, we’re better off right where we are. I’m willing to welcome the coming guest, all right, if he’s peaceful. Otherwise, it’s powder and ball, hot water, stones and things for him!”
The girl stared a moment at the engineer, while this new idea took root within her brain.
“You—you don’t mean,” she faltered at last, “that these may be—savages!”
He started at the word. “What makes you think that?” he parried, striving to spare her all needless alarm.
She pondered a moment, while the fire-dots, like a shoal of swimming stars, drew slowly nearer, nearer the Manhattan shore.
“Tell me, are they savages?”
“How do I know?”
“It’s easy enough to see you’ve got an opinion about it. You think they’re savages, don’t you?”
“I think it’s very possible.”
“And if so—what then?”
“What then? Why, in case they aren’t mighty nice and kind, there’ll be a hot time in the old town, that’s all. And somebody’ll get hurt. It won’t be us!”
Beatrice asked no more, for a minute or two, but the engineer felt her fingers tighten on his arm.
“I’m with you, till the end!” she whispered.
Another pregnant silence, while the nightwind stirred her hair and wafted the warm feminine perfume of her to his nostrils. Stern took a long, deep breath. A sort of dizziness crept over him, as from a glass of wine on an empty stomach. The Call of Woman strove to master him, but he repelled it. And, watching the creeping lights, he spoke; spoke to himself as much as to the girl; spoke, lest he think too much.
“There’s a chance, a mere possibility,” said he, “that those boats, canoes, coracles or whatever they may be, belong to white people, far descendants of the few suppositions survivors of the cataclysm. There’s some slight chance that these people may be civilized, or partly so.
“Why they’re coming across the Hudson, at this time o’ night, with what object and to what place, we can’t even guess. All we can do is wait, and watch and—be ready for anything.”
“For anything!” she echoed. “You’ve seen me shoot! You know!”
He took her hand, and pressed it. And silence fell again, as the long vigil started, there in the shadow of the tower, on the roof.
For some quarter of an hour, neither spoke. Then at last, said Stern:
“See, now! The lights seem to be winking out. The canoes must have come close in toward the shore of the island. They’re being masked behind the trees. The people—whoever they are—will be landing directly now!”
“And then?”
“Wait and see!”
They resigned themselves to patience. The girl’s breath came quickly, as she watched. Even the engineer felt his heart throb with accelerated haste.
Now, far in the east, dim over the flat and dreary ruins of Long Island, the sky began to silver, through a thin veil of cirrus cloud. A pallid moon was rising. Far below, a breeze stirred the tree-fronds in Madison Forest. A bat staggered drunkenly about the tower, then reeled away into the gloom; and, high aloft, an owl uttered its melancholy plaint.
Beatrice shuddered.
“They’ll be here pretty soon!” whispered she. “Hadn’t we better go down, and get our guns? In case —”
“Time enough,” he answered. “Wait a while.”
“Hark! What’s that?” she exclaimed suddenly, holding her breath.
Off to northward, dull, muffled, all but inaudible, they both heard a rhythmic pulsing, strangely barbaric.
“Heavens!” ejaculated Stern. “War-drums! Tom-toms, as I live!”
CHAPTER XVI. THE GATHERING OF THE HORDES
“TOM-TOMS? So they are savages?” exclaimed the girl, taking a quick breath. “But—what then?”
“Don’t just know, yet. It’s a fact, though; they’re certainly savages. Two tribes, one with torches, one with drums. Two different kinds, I guess. And they’re coming in here to parley or fight or something Regular powwow on hand. Trouble ahead, whichever side wins!”
“For us?”
“That depends. Maybe we’ll be able to lie hidden, here, till this thing blows over, whatever it may be. If not, and if they cut off our water-supply, well—”
He ended with a kind of growl. The sound gave Beatrice a strange sensation. She kept a moment’s silence, then remarked:
“They’re up around Central Park now, the drums are, don’t you think so? How far do you make that?”
“Close on to two miles. Come, let’s be moving.”
In silence they climbed the shaky ladder, reached the tower stairs and descended the many stories to their dwelling.
Here, the first thing Stern did was to strike a light, which he masked in a corner, behind a skin stretched like a screen from one wall to the other. By this illumination, very dim yet adequate, he minutely examined all their firearms.
He loaded every one to capacity and made sure all were in working order. Then he satisfied himself that the supply of cartridges was ample. These he laid carefully along by the windows overlooking Madison Forest, by
