an
adventure, or, like Estelle, who had no immediate fear because
all her family was provided for without her help and lived far
from New York, so they would not learn of the catastrophe for
some time. Many, however, felt instant and pressing fear for the
families whose expenses ran always so close to their incomes that
the disappearance of the breadwinner for a week would mean actual
want or debt. There are very many such families in New York.

The people, therefore, that gathered hopelessly at the call of Van
Deventer's watchmen were dazed and spiritless. Their excitement
after Arthur's first attempt to explain the situation to them had
evaporated. They were no longer keyed up to a high pitch by the
startling thing that had happened to them.

Nevertheless, although only half comprehending what had actually
occurred, they began to realize what that occurrence meant.
No matter where they might go over the whole face of the globe,
they would always be aliens and strangers. If they had been carried
away to some unknown shore, some wilderness far from their own
land, they might have thought of building ships to return to their
homes. They had seen New York vanish before their eyes, however.
They had seen their civilization disappear while they watched.

They were in a barbarous world. There was not, for example,
a single sulfur match on the whole earth except those in the
runaway skyscraper.

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 fragm