Before daybreak the engineer was up again, and active. Now that
he faced the light of morning, with a thousand difficult problems
closing in on every hand, he put aside his softer moods, his visions
and desires, and--like the scientific man he was--addressed himself to
the urgent matters in hand.

"The girl's safe enough alone, here, for a while," thought he, looking
in upon her where she lay, calm as a child, folded within the clinging
masses of the tiger-skin.

"I must be out and away for two or three hours, at the very least. I
hope she'll sleep till I get back. If not--what then?"

He thought a moment; then, coming over to the charred remnants of last
night's fire, chose a bit of burnt wood. With this he scrawled in
large, rough letters on a fairly smooth stretch of the wall:

"Back soon. All O. K. Don't worry."

Then, turning, he set out on the long, painful descent again to the
earth-level.

Garish now, and doubly terrible, since seen with more than double
clearness by the graying dawn, the world-ruin seemed to him.

Strong of body and of nerve as he was, he could not help but shudder
at the numberless traces of sudden and pitiless death which met his
gaze.