The dead woman had closed her eyes, to open them no more.
CHAPTER VI.
It is sweet to live. Love atones for every loss; in its joys all else is forgotten. Ineffable music of the heart, thy divine melody fill the soul with an ecstasy of infinite happiness! What illustrious historians have celebrated the heroes of the world’s progress, the glories of war, the conquests of mind and of spirit! Yet after so many centuries of labor and struggle, there remained only two palpitating hearts, the kisses of two lovers. All had perished except love; and love, the supreme sentiment, endured, shining like an inextinguishable beacon over the immense ocean of the vanished ages.
Death! They did not dream of it. Did they not suffice for each other? What if the cold froze their very marrow? Did they not possess in their hearts a warmth which defied the cold of nature? Did not the sun still shine gloriously, and was not the final doom of the world yet far distant? Omegar bent every energy to the maintenance of the marvellous system which had been devised for the automatic extraction by chemical processes of the nutritive principles of the air, water and plants, and in this he seemed to be successful. So in other days, after the fall of the Roman empire, the barbarians had been seen to utilize during centuries the aqueducts, baths and thermal springs, all the creations of the civilization of the Cæsars, and to draw from a vanished industry the sources of their own strength.
But one day, wonderful as it was, this system gave out. The subterranean waters themselves ceased to flow. The soil was frozen to a great depth. The rays of the sun still warmed the air within the glass-covered dwellings, but no plant could live longer; the supply of water was exhausted.
The combined efforts of science and industry were impotent to give to the atmosphere the nutritive qualities possessed by those of other worlds, and the human organism constantly clamored for the regenerating principles which, as we have seen, had been derived from the air, water and plants. These sources were now exhausted.
This last human pair struggled against these insurmountable obstacles, and recognized the uselessness of farther contest, yet they were not resigned to death. Before knowing each other they had awaited it fearlessly. Now each wished to defend the other, the beloved one, against pitiless destiny. The very idea of seeing Omegar lying inanimate beside her, filled Eva with such anguish that she could not bear the thought. And he, too, vainly longed to carry away his well beloved from a world doomed to decay, to fly with her to that brilliant Jupiter which awaited them, and not to abandon to the earth the body he adored.
He thought that, perhaps, there still existed, somewhere upon the earth, a spot which had retained a little of that life-giving water without which existence was impossible; and, although already they were both almost without strength, he formed the supreme resolution of setting out to seek for it. The electric aeronef was still in working order. Forsaking the city which was now only a tomb, the two last survivors of a vanished humanity abandoned these inhospitable regions and set out to seek some unknown oasis.
The ancient kingdoms of the world passed under their feet. They saw the remains of great cities, made illustrious by the splendors of civilization, lying in ruins along the equator. The silence of death covered them all. Omegar recognized the ancient city which he had recently left, but he knew that there, also the supreme source of life was lacking, and they did not stop. They traversed thus, in their solitary air-ship, the regions which had witnessed the last stages of the life of humanity; but death, and silence, and the frozen desert was everywhere. No more fields, no more vegetation; the watercourses were visible as on a map, and it was evident that along their banks life had been prolonged; but they were now dried up forever. And when, at times, some motionless lake was distinguished in the lower level, it was like a lake of stone; for even at the equator the sun was powerless to melt the eternal ice. A kind of bear, with long fur, was still to be seen wandering over the frozen earth, seeking in the crevices of the rocks its scanty vegetable food. From time to time, also, they descried a kind of penguin and sea-cows walking upon the ice, and large, gray polar birds in awkward flight, or alighting mournfully.