MOCKING AT FATE
When New York recovered from its first astonishment over the
extraordinary posters, it indulged in a loud laugh. Everybody knew who
Cosmo Versál was. His eccentricities had filled many readable columns in
the newspapers. Yet there was a certain respect for him, too. This was
due to his extraordinary intellectual ability and unquestionable
scientific knowledge. But his imagination was as free as the winds, and
it often led him upon excursions in which nobody could follow him, and
which caused the more steady-going scientific brethren to shake their
heads. They called him able but flighty. The public considered him
brilliant and amusing.
His father, who had sprung from some unknown source in southeastern
Europe, and, beginning as a newsboy in New York, had made his way to the
front in the financial world, had left his entire fortune to Cosmo. The
latter had no taste for finance or business, but a devouring appetite
for science, to which, in his own way, he devoted all his powers, all
his time, and all his money. He never married, was never seen in
society, and had very few intimates--but he was known by sight, or
reputation, to everybody. There was not a scientific body or association
of any consequence in the world of which he was not a member. Those
which looked askance at his bizarre ideas were glad to accept pecuniary
aid from him.
The notion that the world was to be drowned had taken possession of him
about three years before the opening scene of this narrative. To work
out the idea, he built an observatory, set up a laboratory, invented
instruments, including his strange spectroscope, which was scoffed at by
the scientific world.
Finally, submitting the results of his observations to mathematical
treatment, he proved, to his own satisfaction, the absolute correctness
of his thesis that the well-known "proper motion of the solar system"
was about to result in an encounter between the earth and an invisible
watery nebula, which would have the effect of inundating the globe. As
this startling idea gradually took shape, he communicated it to
scientific men in all lands, but failed to find a single disciple,
except his friend Joseph Smith, who, without being able to follow all
his reasonings, accepted on trust the conclusions of Cosmo's more
powerful mind. Accordingly, at the end of his investigation, he enlisted
Smith as secretary, propagandist, and publicity agent.
New York laughed a whole day and night at the warning red letters. They
were the talk of the town. People joked about them in cafés, clubs, at
home, in the streets, in the offices, in the exchanges, in the
street-cars, on the Elevated, in the Subways. Crowds gathered on corners
to watch the flapping posters aloft on the kite lines. The afternoon
newspapers issued specials which were all about the coming flood, and
everywhere one heard the cry of the newsboys: _"Extra-a-a! Drowning of
a Thousand Million people! Cosmo Versál predicts the End of the
World!"_ On their editorial pages the papers were careful to discount
the scare lines, and terrific pictures, that covered the front sheets,
with humorous jibes at the author of the formidable prediction.
_The Owl,_ which was the only paper that put the news in half a
column of ordinary type, took a judicial attitude, called upon the city
authorities to tear down the posters, and hinted that "this absurd
person, Cosmo Versál, who disgraces a once honored name with his
childish attempt to create a sensation that may cause untold harm among
the ignorant masses," had laid himself open to criminal prosecution.
In their latest editions, several of the papers printed an interview
with Cosmo Versál, in which he gave figures and calculations that, on
their face, seemed to offer mathematical proof of the correctness of his
forecast. In impassioned language, he implored the public to believe
that he would not mislead them, spoke of the instant necessity of
constructing arks of safety, and averred that the presence of the
terrible nebula that was so soon to drown the world was already manifest
in the heavens.
Some readers of these confident statements began to waver, especially
when confronted with mathematics which they could not understand. But
still, in general, the laugh went on. It broke into boisterousness in
one of the largest theaters where a bright-witted "artist," who always
made a point of hitting off the very latest sensation, got himself up in
a lifelike imitation of the well-known figure of Cosmo Versál, topped
with a bald head as big as a bushel, and sailed away into the flies with
a pretty member of the ballet, whom he had gallantly snatched from a
tumbling ocean of green baize, singing at the top of his voice until
they disappeared behind the proscenium arch:
"Oh, th' Nebula is coming
To drown the wicked earth,
With all his spirals humming
'S he waltzes in his mirth.
_Chorus_
"Don't hesitate a second,
Get ready to embark,
And skip away to safety
With Cosmo and his ark.
"Th' Nebula is a direful bird
'S he skims the ether blue!
He's angry over what he's heard,
'N's got his eye on you.
_Chorus_
"Don't hesitate a second, etc.
"When Nebulas begin to pipe
The bloomin' O.H.[subscript]2
Y'bet yer life the time is ripe
To think what you will do.
_Chorus_
"Don't hesitate a second, etc.
"He'll tip th' Atlantic o'er its brim,
And swamp the mountains tall;
He'll let the broad Pacific in,
And leave no land at all.
_Chorus_
"Don't hesitate a second, etc.
"He's got an option on the spheres;
He's leased the Milky Way;
He's caught the planets in arrears,
'N's bound to make 'em pay.
_Chorus_
"Don't hesitate a second, etc."
The roars of laughter and applause with which this effusion of
vaudeville genius was greeted, showed the cheerful spirit in which the
public took the affair. No harm seemed to have come to the "ignorant
masses" yet.
But the next morning there was a suspicious change in the popular mind.
People were surprised to see new posters in place of the old ones, more
lurid in letters and language than the original. The morning papers had
columns of description and comment, and some of them seemed disposed to
treat the prophet and his prediction with a certain degree of
seriousness.
The savants who had been interviewed overnight, did not talk very
convincingly, and made the mistake of flinging contempt on both Cosmo
and "the gullible public."
Naturally, the public wouldn't stand for that, and the pendulum of
opinion began to swing the other way. Cosmo helped his cause by sending
to every newspaper a carefully prepared statement of his observations
and calculations, in which he spoke with such force of conviction that
few could read his words without feeling a thrill of apprehensive
uncertainty. This was strengthened by published dispatches which showed
that he had forwarded his warnings to all the well-known scientific
bodies of the world, which, while decrying them, made no effective
response.
And then came a note of positive alarm in a double-leaded bulletin from
the new observatory at Mount McKinley, which affirmed that during the
preceding night _a singular obscurity_ had been suspected in the
northern sky, seeming to veil many stars below the twelfth magnitude. It
was added that the phenomenon was unprecedented, but that the
observation was both difficult and uncertain.
Nowhere was the atmosphere of doubt and mystery, which now began to hang
over the public, so remarkable as in Wall Street. The sensitive currents
there responded like electric waves to the new influence, and, to the
dismay of hard-headed observers, the market dropped as if it had been
hit with a sledge-hammer. Stocks went down five, ten, in some cases
twenty points in as many minutes.
The speculative issues slid down like wheat into a bin when the chutes
are opened. Nobody could trace the exact origin of the movement, but
selling-orders came tumbling in until there was a veritable panic.
From London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, St. Petersburg, flashed dispatches
announcing that the same unreasonable slump had manifested itself there,
and all united in holding Cosmo Versál solely responsible for the
foolish break in prices. Leaders of finance rushed to the exchanges
trying by arguments and expostulations to arrest the downfall, but in
vain.
In the afternoon, however, reason partially resumed its sway; then a
quick recovery was felt, and many who had rushed to sell all they had,
found cause to regret their precipitancy. The next day all was on the
mend, as far as the stock market was concerned, but among the people at
large the poison of awakened credulity continued to spread, nourished by
fresh announcements from the fountain head.
Cosmo issued another statement to the effect that he had perfected plans
for an ark of safety, which he would begin at once to construct in the
neighborhood of New York, and he not only offered freely to give his
plans to any who wished to commence construction on their own account,
but he urged them, in the name of Heaven, to lose no time. This produced
a prodigious effect, and multitudes began to be infected with a nameless
fear.
Meanwhile an extraordinary scene occurred, behind closed doors, at the
headquarters of the Carnegie Institution in Washington. Joseph Smith,
acting under Cosmo Versál's direction, had forwarded an elaborate
_précis_ of the latter's argument, accompanied with full
mathematical details, to the head of the institution. The character of
this document was such that it could not be ignored. Moreover, the
savants composing the council of the most important scientific
association in the world were aware of the state of the public mind, and
felt that it was incumbent upon them to do something to allay the alarm.
Of late years a sort of supervisory control over scientific news of all
kinds had been accorded to them, and they appreciated the fact that a
duty now rested upon their shoulders.
Accordingly, a special meeting was called to consider the communication
from Cosmo Versál. It was the general belief that a little critical
examination would result in complete proof of the fallacy of all his
work, proof which could be put in a form that the most uninstructed
would understand.
But the papers, diagrams, and mathematical formulae had no sooner been
spread upon the table under the knowing eyes of the learned members of
the council, than a chill of conscious impuissance ran through them.
They saw that Cosmo's mathematics were unimpeachable. His formulae were
accurately deduced, and his operations absolutely correct.
They could do nothing but attack his fundamental data, based on the
alleged revelations of his new form of spectroscope, and on telescopic
observations which were described in so much detail that the only way to
combat them was by the general assertion that they were illusory. This
was felt to be a very unsatisfactory method of procedure, as far as the
public was concerned, because it amounted to no more than attacking the
credibility of a witness who pretended to describe only what he himself
had seen--and there is nothing so hard as to prove a negative.
Then, Cosmo had on his side the whole force of that curious tendency of
the human mind which habitually gravitates toward whatever is
extraordinary, revolutionary, and mysterious.
But a yet greater difficulty arose. Mention has been made of the strange
bulletin from the Mount McKinley observatory. That had been incautiously
sent out to the public by a thoughtless observer, who was more intent
upon describing a singular phenomenon than upon considering its possible
effect on the popular imagination. He had immediately received an
expostulatory dispatch from headquarters which henceforth shut his
mouth--but he had told the simple truth, and how embarrassing that was
became evident when, on the very table around which the savants were now
assembled, three dispatches were laid in quick succession from the great
observatories of Mount Hekla, Iceland, the North Cape, and Kamchatka,
all corroborating the statement of the Mount McKinley observer, that an
inexplicable veiling of faint stars had manifested itself in the boreal
quarter of the sky.
When the president read these dispatches--which the senders had taken
the precaution to mark "confidential"--the members of the council looked
at one another with no little dismay. Here was the most unprejudiced
corroboration of Cosmo Versál's assertion that the great nebula was
already within the range of observation. How could they dispute such
testimony, and what were they to make of it?
Two or three of the members began to be shaken in their convictions.
"Upon my word," exclaimed Professor Alexander Jones, "but this is very
curious! And suppose the fellow should be right, after all?"
"Right!" cried the president, Professor Pludder, disdainfully. "Who ever
heard of a watery nebula? The thing's absurd!"
"I don't see that it's absurd," replied Professor Jones. "There's plenty
of proof of the existence of hydrogen in some of the nebulae."
"So there is," chimed in Professor Abel Able, "and if there's hydrogen
there may be oxygen, and there you have all that's necessary. It's not
the idea that a nebula may consist of watery vapor that's absurd, but it
is that a watery nebula, large enough to drown the earth by condensation
upon it could have approached so near as this one must now be without
sooner betraying its presence."
"How so?" demanded a voice.
"By its attraction. Cosmo Versál says it is already less than three
hundred million miles away. If it is massive enough to drown the earth,
it ought long ago to have been discovered by its disturbance of the
planetary orbits."
"Not at all," exclaimed Professor Jeremiah Moses. "If you stick to that
argument you'll be drowned sure. Just look at these facts. The earth
weighs six and a half sextillions of tons, and the ocean one and a half
quintillions. The average depth of the oceans is two and one-fifth
miles. Now--if the level of the oceans were raised only about 1,600
feet, practically all the inhabited parts of the world would be flooded.
To cause that increase in the level of the oceans only about one-eighth
part would have to be added to their total mass, or, say, one-seventh
part, allowing for the greater surface to be covered. That would be one
thirty-thousandth of the weight of the globe, and if you suppose that
only one-hundredth of the entire nebula were condensed on the earth, the
whole mass of the nebula would not need to exceed one three-hundredth of
the weight of the earth, or a quarter that of the moon--and nobody here
will be bold enough to say that the approach of a mass no greater than
that would be likely to be discovered through its attraction when it was
three hundred million miles away."
Several of the astronomers present shook their heads at this, and
Professor Pludder irritably declared that it was absurd.
"The attraction would be noticeable when it was a thousand millions of
miles away," he continued.
"Yes, 'noticeable' I admit," replied Professor Moses, "but all the same
you wouldn't notice it, because you wouldn't be looking for it unless
the nebula were visible first, and even then it would require months of
observation to detect the effects. And how are you going to get around
those bulletins? The thing is beginning to be visible now, and I'll bet
that if, from this time on, you study carefully the planetary motions,
you will find evidence of the disturbance becoming stronger and
stronger. Versál has pointed out that very thing, and calculated the
perturbations. This thing has come like a thief in the night."
"You'd better hurry up and secure a place in the ark," said Professor
Pludder sarcastically.
"I don't know but I shall, if I can get one," returned Professor Moses.
"You may not think this is such a laughing matter a few months hence."
"I'm surprised," pursued the president, "that a man of your scientific
standing should stultify himself by taking seriously such balderdash as
this. I tell you the thing is absurd."
"And I tell you, _you_ are absurd to say so!" retorted Professor
Moses, losing his temper. "You've got four of the biggest telescopes in
the world under your control; why don't you order your observers to look
for this thing?"
Professor Pludder, who was a very big man, reared up his rotund form,
and, bringing his fist down upon the table with a resounding whack,
exclaimed:
"I'll do nothing so ridiculous! These bulletins have undoubtedly been
influenced by the popular excitement. There has possibly been a little
obscurity in the atmosphere--cirrus clouds, or something--and the
observers have imagined the rest. I'm not going to insult science by
encouraging the proceedings of a mountebank like Cosmo Versál. What
we've got to do is to prepare a dispatch for the press reassuring the
populace and throwing the weight of this institution on the side of
common sense and public tranquillity. Let the secretary indite such a
dispatch, and then we'll edit it and send it out."
Professor Pludder, naturally dictatorial, was sometimes a little
overbearing, but being a man of great ability, and universally respected
for his high rank in the scientific world, his colleagues usually bowed
to his decisions. On this occasion his force of character sufficed to
silence the doubters, and when the statement intended for the press had
received its final touches it contained no hint of the seeds of discord
that Cosmo Versál had sown among America's foremost savants. The next
morning it appeared in all the newspapers as follows:
_Official Statement from the Carnegie Institution_
In consequence of the popular excitement caused by the
sensational utterance of a notorious pretender to scientific
knowledge in New York, the council of this institution
authorizes the statement that it has examined the alleged
grounds on which the prediction of a great flood, to be caused
by a nebula encountering the earth, is based, and finds, as all
real men of science knew beforehand, that the entire matter is
simply a canard.
The nebulae are not composed of water; if they were composed of
water they could not cause a flood on the earth; the report that
some strange, misty object is visible in the starry heavens is
based on a misapprehension; and finally, the so-called
calculations of the author of this inexcusable hoax are baseless
and totally devoid of validity.
The public is earnestly advised to pay no further attention to
the matter. If there were any danger to the earth--and such a
thing is not to be seriously considered--astronomers would know
it long in advance, and would give due and official warning.
Unfortunately for the popular effect of this pronouncement, on the very
morning when it appeared in print, thirty thousand people were crowded
around the old aviation field at Mineola, excitedly watching Cosmo
Versál, with five hundred workmen, laying the foundations of a huge
platform, while about the field were stretched sheets of canvas
displaying the words:
THE ARK OF SAFETY
Earnest Inspection Invited by All
Attendants will Furnish Gratis Plans for Similar
Constructions
Small Arks Can Be Built for Families
Act While There Is Yet Time
The multitude saw at a glance that here was a work that would cost
millions, and the spectacle of this immense expenditure, the evidence
that Cosmo was backing his words with his money, furnished a silent
argument which was irresistible. In the midst of all, flying about among
his men, was Cosmo, impressing every beholder with the feeling that
intellect was in charge.
Like the gray coat of Napoleon on a battlefield, the sight of that
mighty brow bred confidence.