IX.


Arthur and Van Deventer, in turn with the others of the cooler
heads, thundered at the apathetic people, trying to waken them
to the necessity for work. They showered promises of inevitable
return to modern times, they pledged their honor to the belief that
a way would ultimately be found by which they would all yet find
themselves safely back home again.

The people, however, had seen New York disintegrate, and Arthur's
explanation sounded like some wild dream of an imaginative
novelist. Not one person in all the gathering could actually realize
that his home might yet be waiting for him, though at the same time
he felt a pathetic anxiety for the welfare of its inmates.

Every one was in a turmoil of contradictory beliefs. On the one hand
they knew that all of New York could not be actually destroyed and
replaced by a splendid forest in the space of a few hours, so the
accident or catastrophe must have occurred to those in the tower,
and on the other hand, they had seen all of New York vanish by
bits and fragments, to be replaced by a smaller and dingier town,
had beheld that replaced in turn, and at last had landed in the
midst of this forest.

Every one, too, began to feel am unusual and uncomfortable sensation
of hunger. It was a mild discomfort as yet, but few of them had
experienced it before without an immediate prospect of assuaging the
craving, and the knowledge that there was no food to be had somehow
increased the desire for it. They were really in a pitiful state.