THE WATERS BEGIN TO RISE
Cosmo Versál had begun the construction of his ark in the latter part of
June. It was now the end of November. The terrors of the _third
sign_ had occurred in September. Since then the sky had nearly
resumed its normal color, there had been no storms, but the heat of
summer had not relaxed. People were puzzled by the absence of the usual
indications of autumn, although vegetation had shriveled on account of
the persistent high temperature and constant sunshine.
"An extraordinary year," admitted the meteorologists, "but there have
been warm falls before, and it is simply a question of degree. Nature
will restore the balance and in good time, and probably we shall have a
severe winter."
On the 31st of November, the brassy sky at New York showed no signs of
change, when the following dispatch, which most of the newspapers
triple-leaded and capped with stunning headlines, quivered down from
Churchill, Keewatin:
During last night the level of the water in Hudson Bay rose
fully nine feet. Consternation reigned this morning when
ship-owners found their wharves inundated, and vessels straining
at short cables. The ice-breaker "Victoria" was lifted on the
back of a sandy bar, having apparently been driven by a heavy
wave, which must have come from the East. There are other
indications that the mysterious rise began with a "bore" from
the eastward. It is thought that the vast mass of icebergs set
afloat on Davis's Strait by the long continued hot weather
melting the shore glaciers, has caused a jam off the mouth of
Hudson Strait, and turned the Polar current suddenly into the
bay. But this is only a theory. A further rise is anticipated.
Startling as was this news, it might not, by itself, have greatly
disturbed the public mind if it had not been followed, in a few hours,
by intelligence of immense floods in Alaska and in the basin of the
Mackenzie River.
And the next day an etherogram from Obdorsk bordered on the grotesque,
and filled many sensitive readers with horror.
It is said that in the vast tundra regions of Northern Siberia the
frozen soil had dissolved into a bottomless slough, from whose depths
uprose prehistoric mammoths, their long hair matted with mud, and their
curved tusks of ivory gleaming like trumpets over the field of their
resurrection. The dispatch concluded with a heart-rending account of the
loss of a large party of ivory hunters, who, having ventured too far
from the more solid land, suddenly found the ground turning to black
ooze beneath their feet, and, despite their struggles, were all engulfed
within sight of their friends, who dared not try to approach them.
Cosmo Versál, when interviewed, calmly remarked that the flood was
beginning in the north, because it was the northern part of the globe
that was nearest the heart of the nebula. The motion of the earth being
northward, that end of its axis resembled the prow of a ship.
"But this," he added, "is not the true deluge. The Arctic ice-cap is
melting, and the frozen soil is turning into a sponge in consequence of
the heat of friction developed in the air by the inrush of nebulous
matter. The aqueous vapor, however, has not yet touched the earth. It
will begin to manifest its presence within a few days, and then the
globe will drink water at every pore. The vapor will finally condense
into falling oceans."
"What would you advise people to do?" asked one of the reporters.
The reply was given in a perfectly even voice, without change of
countenance:
"_Commit suicide_! They have practically done that already."
It was nearly two weeks later when the first signs of a change of
weather were manifested in middle latitudes. It came on with a rapid
veiling of the sky, followed by a thin, misty, persistent rain. The heat
grew more oppressive, but the rain did not become heavier, and after a
few days there would be, for several consecutive hours, a clear spell,
during which the sun would shine, though with a sickly, pallid light.
There was a great deal of mystification abroad, and nobody felt at ease.
Still, the ebullitions of terror that had accompanied the earlier
caprices of the elements were not renewed. People were getting used to
these freaks.
In the middle of one of the clear spells a remarkable scene occurred at
Mineola.
It was like a panorama of the seventh chapter of Genesis.
It was the procession of the beasts.
Cosmo Versál had concluded that the time was come for housing his
animals in the ark. He wished to accustom them to their quarters before
the voyage began. The resulting spectacle filled the juvenile world with
irrepressible joy, and immensely interested their elders.
No march of a menagerie had ever come within sight of equaling this
display. Many of the beasts were such as no one there had ever seen
before. Cosmo had consulted experts, but, in the end, he had been guided
in his choice by his own judgment. Nobody knew as well as he exactly
what was wanted. He had developed in his mind a scheme for making the
new world that was to emerge from the waters better in every respect
than the old one.
Mingled with such familiar creatures as sheep, cows, dogs, and barn-yard
fowls, were animals of the past, which the majority of the onlookers had
only read about or seen pictures of, or perhaps, in a few cases, heard
described in childhood, by grandfathers long since sleeping in their
graves.
Cosmo had rapidly collected them from all parts of the world, but as
they arrived in small consignments, and were carried in closed vans,
very few persons had any idea of what he was doing.
The greatest sensation was produced by four beautiful horses, which had
been purchased at an enormous price from an English duke, who never
would have parted with them--for they were almost the last living
representatives of the equine race left on the earth--if financial
stress had not compelled the sacrifice.
These splendid animals were dapple gray, with long white tails, and
flowing manes borne proudly on their arching necks, and as they were led
at the head of the procession, snorting at the unwonted scene about
them, their eyes bright with excitement, prancing and curvetting, cries
of admiration and rounds of applause broke from the constantly growing
throngs of spectators.
Those who had only known the horse from pictures and sculptures were
filled with astonishment by its living beauty. People could not help
saying to themselves:
"What a pity that the honking auto, in its hundred forms of mechanical
ugliness, should have driven these beautiful and powerful creatures out
of the world! What could our forefathers have been thinking of?"
A few elephants, collected from African zoölogical gardens, and some
giraffes, also attracted a great deal of attention, but the horses were
the favorites with the crowd.
Cosmo might have had lions and tigers, and similar beasts, which had
been preserved, in larger numbers than the useful horse, but when Joseph
Smith suggested their inclusion he shook his head, declaring that it was
better that they should perish. As far as possible, he averred, he would
eliminate all carnivores.
In some respects, even more interesting to the onlookers than the
animals of the past, were the animals of the future that marched in the
procession. Few of them had ever been seen outside the experimental
stations where they had been undergoing the process of artificial
evolution.
There were the stately white Californian cattle, without horns, but of
gigantic stature, the cows, it was said, being capable of producing
twenty times more milk than their ancestral species, and of a vastly
superior quality.
There were the Australian rabbits, as large as Newfoundland dogs, though
short-legged, and furnishing food of the most exquisite flavor; and the
Argentine sheep, great balls of snowy wool, moving smartly along on legs
three feet in length.
The greatest astonishment was excited by the "grand astoria terrapin," a
developed species of diamond-back tortoise, whose exquisitely sculptured
convex back, lurching awkwardly as it crawled, rose almost three feet
above the ground; and the "new century turkey," which carried its beacon
head and staring eyes as high as a tall man's hat.
The end of the procession was formed of animals familiar to everybody,
and among them were cages of monkeys (concerning whose educational
development Cosmo Versál had theories of his own) and a large variety of
birds, together with boxes of insect eggs and chrysalids.
The delight of the boys who had chased after the procession culminated
when the animals began to ascend the sloping ways into the ark.
The horses shied and danced, making the metallic flooring resound like a
rattle of thunder; the elephants trumpeted; the sheep baaed and crowded
themselves into inextricable masses against the guard-rails; the huge
new cattle moved lumberingly up the slope, turning their big white heads
inquiringly about; the tall turkeys stretched their red coral necks and
gobbled with Brobdingnagian voices; and the great terrapins were
ignominiously attached to cables and drawn up the side of the ark,
helplessly waving their immense flappers in the air.
And when the sensational entry was finished, the satisfied crowd turned
away, laughing, joking, chattering, with never a thought that it was
anything more than the most amusing exhibition they had ever seen!
But when they got back in the city streets they met a flying squadron of
yelling newsboys, and seizing the papers from their hands read, in big
black letters:
"AWFUL FLOOD IN THE MISSISSIPPI!
"Thousands of People Drowned!
"THE STORM COMING THIS WAY!"
It was a startling commentary on the recent scene at the ark, and many
turned pale as they read.
But the storm did not come in the way expected. The deluging rains
appeared to be confined to the Middle West and the Northwest, while at
New York the sky simply grew thicker and seemed to squeeze out moisture
in the form of watery dust. This condition lasted for some time, and
then came what everybody, even the most skeptical, had been secretly
dreading.
The ocean began to rise!
The first perception of this startling fact, according to a newspaper
account, came in a very strange, roundabout way to a man living on the
outskirts of the vast area of made ground where the great city had
spread over what was formerly the Newark meadows and Newark Bay.
About three o'clock in the morning, this man, who it appears was a
policeman off duty, was awakened by scurrying sounds in the house. He
struck a light, and seeing dark forms issuing from the cellar, went down
to investigate. The ominous gleam of water, reflecting the light of his
lamp, told him that the cellar was inundated almost to the top of the
walls.
"Come down here, Annie!" he shouted to his wife. "Sure 'tis Cosmo Versál
is invadin' the cellar with his flood. The rats are lavin' us."
Seeing that the slight foundation walls were crumbling, he hurried his
family into the street, and not too soon, for within ten minutes the
house was in ruins.
Neighbors, living in equally frail structures, were awakened, and soon
other undermined houses fell. Terror spread through the quarter, and
gradually half the city was aroused.
When day broke, residents along the water-front in Manhattan found their
cellars flooded, and South and West Streets swimming with water, which
was continually rising. It was noted that the hour was that of
flood-tide, but nobody had ever heard of a tide so high as this.
Alarm deepened into terror when the time for the tide to ebb arrived and
there was no ebbing. On the contrary, the water continued to rise. The
government observer at the Highlands telephoned that Sandy Hook was
submerged. Soon it was known that Coney Island, Rockaway, and all the
seaside places along the south shore of Long Island were under water.
The mighty current poured in through the Narrows with the velocity of a
mill-race. The Hudson, set backward on its course, rushed northward with
a raging bore at its head that swelled higher until it licked the feet
of the rock chimneys of the Palisades.
But when the terror inspired by this sudden invasion from the sea was at
its height there came unexpected relief. The water began to fall more
rapidly than it had risen. It rushed out through the Narrows faster than
it had rushed in, and ships, dragged from their anchorage in the upper
harbor, were carried out seaward, some being stranded on the sandbanks
and shoals in the lower bay.
Now again houses standing on made ground, whose foundations had been
undermined, fell with a crash, and many were buried in the ruins.
Notwithstanding the immense damage and loss of life, the recession of
the waters immediately had a reassuring effect, and the public, in
general, was disposed to be comforted by the explanation of the weather
officials, who declared that what had occurred was nothing more than an
unprecedentedly high tide, probably resulting from some unforeseen
disturbance out at sea.
The phenomenon had been noted all along the Atlantic coast. The chief
forecaster ventured the assertion that a volcanic eruption had occurred
somewhere on the line from Halifax to Bermuda. He thought that the
probable location of the upheaval had been at Munn's Reef, about halfway
between those points, and the more he discussed his theory the readier
he became to stake his reputation on its correctness, for, he said, it
was impossible that any combination of the effects of high and low
pressures could have created such a surge of the ocean, while a volcanic
wave, combining with the regular oscillation of the tide, could have
done it easily.
But Cosmo Versál smiled at this explanation, and said in reply:
"The whole Arctic ice-cap is dissolved, and the condensation of the
nebula is at hand. But there is worse behind. When the wave comes back
it will rise higher."
As the time for the next flood-tide grew near, anxious eyes were on the
watch to see how high the water would go. There was something in the
mere manner of its approach that made the nerves tingle.
It speeded toward the beaches, combing into rollers at an unwonted
distance from shore; plunged with savage violence upon the sands of the
shallows, as if it would annihilate them; and then, spreading swiftly,
ran with terrific speed up the strand, seeming to devour everything it
touched. After each recoil it sprang higher and roared louder and grew
blacker with the mud that it had ground up from the bottom. Miles inland
the ground trembled with the fast-repeated shocks.
Again the Hudson was hurled backward until a huge bore of water burst
over the wharves at Albany. Every foot of ground in New York less than
twenty feet above the mean high tide level was inundated. The
destruction was enormous, incalculable. Ocean liners moored along the
wharves were, in some cases, lifted above the level of the neighboring
streets, and sent crashing into the buildings along the water-front.
Etherograms told, in broken sentences, of similar experiences on the
western coasts of Europe, and from the Pacific came the news of the
flooding of San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland, Tacoma, Seattle, and,
in fact, every coast-lying town. On the western coast of South America
the incoming waves broke among the foothills of the Andes.
It was as if the mighty basins of the world's two greatest oceans were
being rocked to and fro, sending the waters spinning from side to side.
And to add to the horror of the situation, every volcano on the globe
seemed to burst simultaneously into activity, probably through the
effects of the invasion of sea water into the subterranean fire, while
the strain of the unwonted weight thrown upon the coasts broke open the
tectonic lines of weakness in the earth's crust, causing the most
terrible earthquakes, which destroyed much that the water could not
reach.
From Alaska to Patagonia, from Kamchatka through Japan to the East
Indies, from Mount Hecla to Vesuvius, Etna, and Teneriffe, the raging
oceans were bordered with pouring clouds of volcanic smoke, hurled
upward in swift succeeding puffs, as if every crater had become the
stack of a stupendous steam-engine driven at its maddest speed; while
immense rivers of lava flamed down the mountain flanks and plunged into
the invading waters with reverberated roarings, hissings, and explosions
that seemed to shake the framework of the globe.
During the second awful shoreward heave of the Atlantic a scene occurred
off New York Bay that made the stoutest nerves quiver. A great crowd had
collected on the Highlands of the Navesink to watch the ingress of the
tidal wave.
Suddenly, afar off, the smoke of an approaching ocean liner was seen. It
needed but a glance to show that she was struggling with tremendous
surges. Sometimes she sank completely out of sight; then she reappeared,
riding high on the waves. Those who had glasses recognized her. Word ran
from mouth to mouth that it was the great _Atlantis_, the mightiest
of the ocean monarchs, of a hundred thousand tons register, coming from
Europe, and bearing, without question, many thousands of souls.
She was flying signals of distress, and filling the ether with her
inarticulate calls for help, which quavered into every radiograph
station within a radius of hundreds of miles.
But, at the same time, she was battling nobly for herself and for the
lives of her passengers and crew. From her main peak the Stars and
Stripes streamed in the tearing wind. There were many in the watching
throngs who personally knew her commander, Captain Basil Brown, and who
felt that if any human being could bring the laboring ship through
safely, he could. Aid from land was not to be thought of for a moment.
As she swiftly drew nearer, hurled onward by the resistless surges with
the speed of an express train, the captain was recognized on his bridge,
balancing himself amid the lurches of the vessel; and even at that
distance, and in those terrible circumstances, there was something in
his bearing perceptible to those who breathlessly watched him, through
powerful glasses, which spoke of perfect self-command, entire absence of
fear, and iron determination to save his ship or die with her under his
feet.
It could be seen that he was issuing orders and watching their
execution, but precisely what their nature was, of course, could only be
guessed. His sole hope must be to keep the vessel from being cast
ashore. There was no danger from the shoals, for they were by this time
deeply covered by the swelling of the sea.
Slowly, slowly, with a terrific straining of mechanic energies, which
pressed the jaws of the watchers together with spasmodic sympathy, as if
their own nervous power were cooperating in the struggle, the gallant
ship bore her head round to face the driving waves. From the ten huge,
red stacks columns of inky black smoke poured out as the stokers crammed
the furnaces beneath. It was man against nature, human nerve and
mechanical science against blind force.
It began to look as if the _Atlantis_ would win the battle. She was
now fearfully close to the shore, but her bow had been turned into the
very eye of the sea, and one could almost feel the tension of her steel
muscles as she seemed to spring to the encounter. The billows that split
themselves in quick succession on her sharp stem burst into shooting
geysers three hundred feet high.
The hearts of the spectators almost ceased to beat. Their souls were
wrapped up with the fate of the brave ship. They forgot the terrors of
their own situation, the peril of the coming flood, and saw nothing but
the agonized struggle before their eyes. With all their inward strength
they prayed against the ocean.
Such a contest could not last long. Suddenly, as the _Atlantis_
swerved a little aside, a surge that towered above her loftiest deck
rushed upon her. She was lifted like a cockleshell upon its crest, her
huge hull spun around, and the next minute, with a crash that resounded
above the roar of the maddened sea, she was dashed in pieces.
At the very last moment before the vessel disappeared in the whirling
breakers, to be strewed in broken and twisted bits of battered metal
upon the pounding sands, Captain Basil Brown was seen on the commander's
bridge.
No sooner had this tragedy passed than the pent-up terror broke forth,
and men ran for their lives, ran for their homes, ran to _do
something_--something, but what?--to save themselves and their dear
ones.
For now, at last, they _believed!_