"See the post-office, down there on the left? Think of the millions in
real money, gold and silver, in all these safes here and all over the
city--in the banks and vaults! Millions! Billions!

"Jewels, diamonds, wealth simply inconceivable! Yet now a good water
supply, some bread, meat, coffee, salt, and so on, a couple of beds, a
gun or two and some ordinary tools would outweigh them all!"

"Clothes, too," the girl suggested. "Plain cotton cloth is worth ten
million dollars an inch now."

"Right," answered Stern, gazing about him with wonder.

"And I offer a bushel of diamonds for a razor and a pair of scissors."
Grimly he smiled as he stroked his enormous beard.

"But come, this won't do. There'll be plenty of time to look around
and discuss things in the morning. Just now we've got a definite
errand. Let's get busy!"

Thus began their search for a few prime necessities of life, there in
that charnel-house of civilization, by the dull reflections of the
firelight and the pallid torch glow.

Though they forced their way into ten or twelve of the arcade shops,
they found no clothing, no blankets or fabric of any kind that would
serve for coverings or to sleep upon. Everything at all in the nature
of cloth had either sunk back into moldering annihilation or had at
best grown far too fragile to be of the slightest service.