Chapter 7

Arthur stood at the window of his office and stared out toward the west. The sun was setting, but upon what a scene!

Where, from this same window Arthur had seen the sun setting behind the Jersey hills, all edged with the angular roofs of factories, with their chimneys emitting columns of smoke, he now saw the same sun sinking redly behind a mass of luxuriant foliage. And where he was accustomed to look upon the tops of high buildings--each entitled to the name of “skyscraper”--he now saw miles and miles of waving green branches.

The wide Hudson flowed on placidly, all unruffled by the arrival of this strange monument upon its shores--the same Hudson Arthur knew as a busy thoroughfare of puffing steamers and chugging launches. Two or three small streams wandered unconcernedly across the land that Arthur had known as the most closely built-up territory on earth. And far, far below him--Arthur had to lean well out of his window to see it--stood a collection of tiny wigwams. Those small bark structures represented the original metropolis of New York.

His telephone rang. Van Deventer was on the wire. The exchange in the building was still working. Van Deventer wanted Arthur to come down to his private office. There were still a great many things to be settled--the arrangements for commandeering offices for sleeping quarters for the women, and numberless other details. The men who seemed to have best kept their heads were gathering there to settle upon a course of action.

Arthur glanced out of the window again before going to the elevator. He saw a curiously compact dark cloud moving swiftly across the sky to the west.

“Miss Woodward,” he said sharply, “What is that?”

Estelle came to the window and looked.

“They are birds,” she told him. “Birds flying in a group. I’ve often seen them in the country, though never as many as that.”

“How do you catch birds?” Arthur asked her. “I know about shooting them, and so on, but we haven’t guns enough to count. Could we catch them in traps, do you think?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” said Estelle thoughtfully. “But it would be hard to catch many.”

“Come down-stairs,” directed Arthur. “You know as much as any of the men here, and more than most, apparently. We’re going to make you show us how to catch things.”

Estelle smiled, a trifle wanly. Arthur led the way to the elevator. In the car he noticed that she looked distressed.

“What’s the matter?” he asked. “You aren’t really frightened, are you?”

“No,” she answered shakily, “but--I’m rather upset about this thing. It’s so--so terrible, somehow, to be back here, thousands of miles, or years, away from all one’s friends and everybody.”

“Please”--Arthur smiled encouragingly at her--”please count me your friend, won’t you?”

She nodded, but blinked back some tears. Arthur would have tried to hearten her further, but the elevator stopped at their floor. They walked into the room where the meeting of cool heads was to take place.

No more than a dozen men were in there talking earnestly but dispiritedly. When Arthur and Estelle entered Van Deventer came over to greet them.

“We’ve got to do something,” he said in a low voice. “A wave of homesickness has swept over the whole place. Look at those men. Every one is thinking about his family and contrasting his cozy fireside with all that wilderness outside.”

“You don’t seem to be worried,” Arthur observed with a smile.

Van Deventer’s eyes twinkled.

“I’m a bachelor,” he said cheerfully, “and I live in a hotel. I’ve been longing for a chance to see some real excitement for thirty years. Business has kept me from it up to now, but I’m enjoying myself hugely.”

Estelle looked at the group of dispirited men.

“We’ll simply have to do something,” she said with a shaky smile. “I feel just as they do. This morning I hated the thought of having to go back to my boarding-house to-night, but right now I feel as if the odor of cabbage in the hallway would seem like heaven.”