A diminutive object and a skilfully-formed one. At any other time or place, the engineer would have considered the finding a good fortune; but now--!
“Yet after all,” he said aloud, as if to convince himself, “it's only a bit of stone! What can it prove?”
His subconsciousness seemed to make answer: “So, too, the sign that Robinson Crusoe found on the beach was only a human foot-mark. Do not deceive yourself!”
In deep thought the engineer stood there a moment or two. Then, “Bah!” cried he. “What does it matter, anyhow? Let it come--whatever it is! If I hadn't just happened to find this, I'd have been none the wiser.” And he dropped the bit of flint into the bag along with the other things.
Again he picked up his sledge, and, now more cautiously, once more started forward.
“All I can do,” he thought, “is just to go right ahead as though this hadn't happened at all. If trouble comes, it comes, that's all. I guess I can meet it. Always have got away with it, so far. We'll see. What's on the cards has got to be played to a finish, and the best hand wins!”
He retraced his way to the spring, where he carefully rinsed and filled the Cosmos bottle for Beatrice. Then back to the Metropolitan he came, donned his bear--skin, which he fastened with a wire nail, and started the long climb. His sledge he carefully hid on the second floor, in an office at the left of the stairway.
“Don't think much of this hammer, after all,” said he. “What I need is an ax. Perhaps this afternoon I can have another go at that hardware place and find one.
“If the handle's gone, I can heft it with green wood. With a good ax and these two revolvers--till I find some rifles--I guess we're safe enough, spearheads or not!”
About him he glanced at the ever-present molder and decay. This office, he could easily see, had been both spacious and luxurious, but now it offered a sorry spectacle. In the dust over by a window something glittered dully.