telescope, that the Williamsburg Bridge had "buckled" downward and
that the farther span of the Blackwell's Island Bridge was in ruinous
disrepair.

"How horrible, how ghastly is all this waste and ruin!" thought the
engineer. "Yet, even in their overthrow, how wonderful are the works
of man!"

A vast wonder seized him as he stood there gazing; a fierce desire to
rehabilitate all this wreckage, to set it right, to start the wheels
of the world-machinery running once more.

At the thought of his own powerlessness a bitter smile curled his
lips.

Beatrice seemed to share something of his wonder.

"Can it be possible," whispered she, "that you and--and I--are really
like Macaulay's lone watcher of the world-wreck on London Bridge?"

"That we are actually seeing the thing so often dreamed of by prophets
and poets? That 'All this mighty heart is lying still,' at
last--forever? The heart of the world, never to beat again?"

He made no answer, save to shake his head; but fast his thoughts were
running.

So then, could he and Beatrice, just they two, be in stern reality the
sole survivors of the entire human race? That race for whose material
welfare he had, once on a time, done such tremendous work?