The Washington times., 1912-04-22
THE TIMES DAILY SERIAL STORY.
Darkness andDaWn
By George Allan England cine ysSs ssDsrsAt s, a,n CO,
Copyright. 1911
tThe Frank A. Munsey Coz

that's about all I can tell as yet. Per-
haps all the white and yellow peoples
perished utterly in the cataclysm, leav-
ing only a few scattered blacks. You
know blacks are immune to several
germ infections that destroy other
races"
Yes. And you mean"
ITS quite possible these fellows are
the far-distant and degenerate survivors
of that other time"
80 the whole world may have gone
to pieces the way Liberia and Haiti and
santo Domingo once did. when white
rule ceased?''
Yes, only a million times more so.
see you know your history! II my
hypothesis is correct and only few
thousand blacks escaped. you can
pened.
For a while. maybe fifty or a hum
dred years, they may have kept some
sort of dwindling civilization. Probably
the English language for a while con-
tinued, In ever more and more corrupt
forms. There may have been some
pretense of maintaining the school sys-
tom, railroads, steamship lines, news
papers. and churches, banks. and all the
rest OF that wonderfully complex sys-
tenn We once knew. But after
Yes? What them"
why, the whole false shell crumbled.
that's all. 1t must have! History shows
It. II didn't take 100 years after Tous-
saint TOverture and Dessalines. in Haiti,
for the blacks to shuck off French civ
ilizatlon and go back to grass huts and
human sacrihce-to make another little
Central Africa out of 1t. In the back
woods districts, at any rate. And We
have had $40 years. nearly 1000, Bea-
trtce, since the white man died."
She thought a moment and shook her
head.
What a story she murmured,
what an Incredible. horribly fascinat-
ing story that would make IL It could
ever be known, or written! Think OF the
ebb-tide OF everything! Railroads ahan-
doned and falling to pieces, cities
crumbling. ships no longer sailing, Ian
guage and arts and letters forgotten,
agriculture shrinking back to a few
nothing at ali, everything changing, dy-
ing. stopping-and the ever-increasing
ruins. which they could not rebuild
taking to the fields, the forests, the
mountaineering down, down. down.
back toward the primeval state, down
through barbarism, through savagery.
to--what?"
ITO what we see answered the en-
gineer, bitterly. ITO animals, retaining
by ghastly mockery some use of ire
and of tools An this, according to one
theory"
"Is there another?" she asked eagerly.
Yes, and wish We had the, shade
of Darwin. of Haeckel, or of Clodd here
with us to help us work II out'
How do you Imagine it?"
why, like this. Maybe, after all,
even the entire black race was swept
cht along with the others, too. Perhaps
you and were really the only two hn-
man beings left alive anyhere " the
world"
Yes but in that case. how"
How came they here? Listen! May
they not be the product OF some entirely
different process and development. May
not some animal stock, under changed
environment. have easily evolved them
May not some other semi-human or
near-human race be now in process of
arising, here on earth, eventually to
conquer and subdue it all again.
For a moment sne made no answer.
Her breath came little quickly as she
tried TO grasp the full significance of
thiS tremendous concept.
I'm million years or So" the en-
gineer continued. may not the de-
be men. or something very like them?
In other words, aren't We possibly witt
Messing the recreation of the human
type? Aren't these the real pithecan-
thropl erecU. rather than the brown
skinned. reddish-hai creatures of
the, biological textbooks? There's our
problemv"
She made no answer. but sudden
oyermastering curiosity leaped into her
Let me see them for myself! must:
/ Ylll.'
And before ne could ietaIn her the
girl had started back into the room
whence they had come.
"NO, no! No, Beatrice" he whis-
pered. but she paid no need to hlnI.
Across the Uttered floor she made her
way. And by the time Stera could
reach her side she had set her face 10
the long, crumbling crack in the wall
and with burning eagerness was peer
ing out into the forest.
4 Continuation Of This Story VIII
he Found In TOmOrrOw'S
Issue OF The Times.