Chapter 21: Lost in the Great Abyss

For two days they camped beside the chasm, resting, planning, discussing, while Stern, with improvised transits, pendulums and other apparatus, made tests and observations to determine, if possible, the properties of the great gap.

During this time they developed some theories regarding the catastrophe which had swept the world a thousand years ago.

“It seems highly and increasingly probable to me,” the engineer said, after long thought, “that we have here the actual cause of the vast blight of death that left us two alone in the world. I rather think that at the time of the great explosion which produced this rent, certain highly poisonous gases were thrown off, to impregnate the entire atmosphere of the world. Everybody must have been killed at once. The poison must have swept the earth clean of human life.”

“But how did we escape?” asked the girl.

“That’s hard telling. I figure it this way: The mephitic gas probably was heavy and dense, thus keeping to the lower air-strata, following them, over plain and hill and mountain, like a blanket of death.

“Just what happened to us, who can tell? Probably, tightly housed up there in the tower, the very highest inhabited spot in the world, only a very slight infiltration of the gas reached us. If my theory won’t work, can you suggest a better one? Frankly, I can’t; and until we have more facts, we’ve got to take what we have. No matter, the condition remains--we’re alive and all the rest are dead; and I’m positive this cleft here is the cause of it.”

“But if everybody’s dead, as you say, why hunt for men?”

“Perhaps a handful may have survived among the highlands of the Rockies. I imagine that after the first great explosion there followed a series of terrible storms, tornadoes, volcanic eruptions, tidal waves and so on. You remember how I found the bones of a whale in lower Broadway; and many of the ruins in New York show the action of the sea--they’re laid flat in such a manner as to indicate that the island was washed on one or two occasions by monster waves.

“Well, all these disturbances probably finished up what few survivors escaped, except possibly among the mountains of the West. A few scattered colonies may have survived a while--mining camps, for instance, or isolated prospectors, or what-not. They may all have died out, or again, they may have come together and reestablished some primitive form of barbarous or even savage life by this time. There’s no telling. Our imperative problem is to reach that section and explore it thoroughly. For there, if anywhere, we’ll find survivors of our race.”

“How about that great maelstrom that nearly got us?” asked the girl.” Can you connect that with the catastrophe?”

“I think so. My idea is that, in some way or other, the sea is being sucked down into the interior of the earth and then hurled out again; maybe there’s a gradual residue being left; maybe a great central lake or sea has formed. Who knows? At any rate all the drainage system of the country seems to have been changed and reversed in the most curious and unaccountable manner. I think we should find, if we could investigate everything thoroughly, that this vast chasm here is intimately connected with the whole thing.”

These and many other questions perplexed the travelers, but most of all they sought to know the breadth of the vast gap and to determine if it had, as they hoped, another side, or if it were indeed the edge of an enormous mass split bodily off the earth.

Stern believed he had an answer to this problem on the afternoon of the second day. For many hours he had hung his pendulums over the cliff, noted deflections, taken triangulations, and covered the surface of the smooth stone with X’s, Y’s, Z’s, sines and cosines and abstruse formulae--all scrawled with charcoal, his only means of writing.

At last he finished the final equation, and, with a smile of triumph and relief, got to his feet again.

Back to the girl, who was cooking over an odorous fire of cedar, he made his way, rejoicing.

“I’ve got it!” he shouted gladly. “Making reasonable allowances for depth, I’ve got it!”

“Got what?”

“The probable width!”

“Oh!” And she stood gazing at him in admiration, beautiful and strong and graceful. “You mean to say--”

“I’m giving the chasm a hundred miles’ depth. That’s more than anybody could believe possible--twice as much. On that assumption, my tests show the distance to the other side--and there is another side, by the way!--can’t be over--”

“Five hundred miles?”

“Nonsense! Not over one hundred to one-fifty. I’m going on a liberal allowance for error, too. It may not be over seventy-five. The--”

“But if that’s as far as it is, why can’t we see the other side?”

“With all that chemicalized vapor rising constantly? Who knows what elements may be in it? Or what polarization may be taking place?”

“Polarization?”

“I mean, what deflection and alteration of light? No wonder we can’t see! But we can fly! And we’re going to, what’s more!”

“Going to make a try for Chicago, then?” she asked, her eyes lighting up joyfully at thought of the adventure.

“To-morrow morning, sure!”

“But the alcohol?”

“We’ve still got what we started with from Detroit, minus only what we’ve burned reaching this place. And we reckoned when we set out that it would far more than be enough. Oh, that part of it’s all right!”

“Well, you know best,” she answered. “I trust you in all things, Allan. But now just look at this roast partridge; come, dear, let to-morrow take care of itself. It’s supper-time now!”

After the meal they went to the flat rock and sat for an hour while the sun went down beyond the void. Its disappearance seemed to substantiate the polarization theory. There was no sudden obliteration of the disk by a horizon. Rather the sun faded away, redder and duller; then slowly losing form and so becoming a mere blur of crimson, which in turn grew purple and so gradually died away to nothing.

For a long time they sat in the deepening gloom, their rifles close at hand, saying little, but thinking much. The coming of night had sobered them to a sense of what now inevitably lay ahead. The solemn purple pall that adumbrated the world and the huge nothingness before them, so silent, so immutable and pregnant with terrible mysteries, brought them close together.

The vague, untrodden forest behind them, where the night-sounds of the wild dimly reechoed now and then, filled them with indefinable emotions. And that night sleep was slow in coming.

Each realized that, despite all calculations and all skill, the morrow might be their last day of life. But the morning light, golden and clear above the eastern sky-line of tall conifers, dispelled all brooding fears. They were both up early and astir, in preparation for the crucial flight. Stern went over the edge of the chasm, while Beatrice prepared breakfast, and made some final observations of wind, air currents and atmosphere density.

An eagle which he saw soaring over the abyss, more than half a mile from its edge, convinced him a strong upward current existed to-day, as on the day when they had made their short flight over the void. The bird soared and circled and finally shot away to northward, without a wing-flap, almost in the manner of a vulture. Stern knew an eagle could not imitate the feat without some aid in the way of an up-draft.