A RIVEN CONTINENT
But back to the world. No one knew about Charley Huyck nor what was
occurring on the desert. Even if we had it would have been impossible
to construe connection.
After the news out of Oakland, and the destruction of Mt. Heckla, we
were far too appalled. The whole thing was beyond us. Not even the
scientists with all their data could find one thing to work on. The
wires of the world buzzed with wonder and with panic. We were
civilized. It is really strange how quickly, in spite of our boasted
powers, we revert to the primitive.
Superstition cannot die. Where was no explanation must be miracle. The
thing had been repeated. When would it strike again. And where?
There was not long to wait. But this time the stroke was of far more
consequence and of far more terror. The sheer might of the thing shook
the earth. Not a man or government that would not resign in the face
of such destruction.
It was omnipotent. A whole continent had been riven. It would be
impossible to give description of such catastrophe; no pen can tell it
any more than it could describe the creation. We can only follow in
its path.
On the morning after the first catastrophe, at eight o’clock, just
south of the little city of Santa Cruz, on the north shore of the Bay
of Monterey, the same light and the same, though not quite the same,
instantaneousness. Those who beheld it report a vast ball of azure
blue and opalescent fire and motion; a strange sensation of vitalized
vibration; of personified living force. In shape like a marble, as
round as a full moon in its glory, but of infinitely more beauty.
It came from nowhere; neither from above the earth nor below it.
Seeming to leap out of nothing, it glided or rather vanished to the
eastward. Still the effect of winking, though this time, perhaps from
a distanced focus, more vivid. A dot or marble, like a full moon,
burning, opal, soaring to the eastward.
And instantaneous. Gone as soon as it was come; noiseless and of
phantom beauty; like a finger of the Omnipotent tracing across the
world, and as terrible. The human mind had never conceived a thing so
vast.
Beginning at the sands of the ocean the whole country had vanished; a
chasm twelve miles wide and of unknown depth running straight to the
eastward, where had been farms and homes was nothing; the mountains
had been seared like butter. Straight as an arrow.
Then the roar of the deluge. The waters of the Pacific breaking
through its sands and rolling into the Gulf of Mexico. That there was
no heat was evidenced by the fact that there was no steam. The thing
could not be internal. Yet what was it?
One can only conceive in figures. From the shores of Santa Cruz to the
Atlantic—a few seconds; then out into the eastern ocean straight out
into the Sea of the Sargasso. A great gulf riven straight across the
face of North America.
The path seemed to follow the sun; it bore to the eastward with a
slight southern deviation. The mountains it cut like cheese. Passing
just north of Fresno it seared through the gigantic Sierras halfway
between the Yosemite and Mt. Whitney, through the great desert to
southern Nevada, thence across northern Arizona, New Mexico, Texas,
Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia, entering the Atlantic at
a point halfway between Brunswick and Jacksonville. A great canal
twelve miles in width linking the oceans. A cataclysmic blessing.
Today, with thousands of ships bearing freight over its water, we can
bless that part of the disaster.
But there was more to come. So far the miracle had been sporadic.
Whatever had been its force it had been fatal only on point and
occasion. In a way it had been local. The deadly atmospheric
combination of its aftermath was invariable in its recession. There
was no suffering. The death that it dealt was the death of
obliteration. But now it entered on another stage.
The world is one vast ball, and, though large, still a very small
place to live in. There are few of us, perhaps, who look upon it, or
even stop to think of it, as a living being. Yet it is just that. It
has its currents, life, pulse, and its fevers; it is coordinate; a
million things such as the great streams of the ocean, the swirls of
the atmosphere, make it a place to live in. And we are conscious only,
or mostly, through disaster.
A strange thing happened.
The great opal like a mountain of fire had riven across the continent.
From the beginning and with each succession the thing was magnified.
But it was not until it had struck the waters of the Atlantic that we
became aware of its full potency and its fatality.
The earth quivered at the shock, and man stood on his toes in terror.
In twenty-four hours our civilization was literally falling to pieces.
We were powerful with the forces that we understood; but against this
that had been literally ripped from the unknown we were insignificant.
The whole world was frozen. Let us see.
Into the Atlantic! The transition. Hitherto silence. But now the roar
of ten thousand million Niagaras, the waters of the ocean rolling,
catapulting, roaring into the gulf that had been seared in its bosom.
The Gulf Stream cut in two, the currents that tempered our
civilization sheared in a second. Straight into the Sargasso Sea. The
great opal, liquid fire, luminescent, a ball like the setting sun, lay
poised upon the ocean. It was the end of the earth!
What was this thing? The whole world knew of it in a second. And not a
one could tell. In less than forty hours after its first appearance in
Oakland it had consumed a mountain, riven a continent, and was
drinking up an ocean. The tangled sea of the Sargasso, dead calm for
ages, was a cataract; a swirling torrent of maddened waters rushed to
the opal—and disappeared.
It was hellish and out of madness; as beautiful as it was uncanny. The
opal high as the Himalayas brooding upon the water; its myriad colors
blending, winking in a phantasm of iridescence. The beauty of its
light could be seen a thousand miles. A thing out of mystery and out
of forces. We had discovered many things and knew much; but had
guessed no such thing as this. It was vampirish, and it was literally
drinking up the earth.
Consequences were immediate. The point of contact was fifty miles
across, the waters of the Atlantic with one accord turned to the
magnet. The Gulf Stream veered straight from its course and out across
the Atlantic. The icy currents from the poles freed from the warmer
barrier descended along the coasts and thence out into the Sargasso
Sea. The temperature of the temperate zone dipped below the point of a
blizzard.
The first word come out of London. Freezing! And in July! The fruit
and entire harvest of northern Europe destroyed. Olympic games at
Copenhagen postponed by a foot of snow. The river Seine frozen. Snow
falling in New York. Crops nipped with frost as far south as Cape
Hatteras.
A fleet of airplanes was despatched from the United States and another
from the west coast of Africa. Not half of them returned. Those that
did reported even more disaster. The reports that were handed in were
appalling. They had sailed straight on. It was like flying into the
sun; the vividness of the opalescence was blinding, rising for miles
above them alluring, drawing and unholy, and of a beauty that was
terror.
Only the tardy had escaped. It even drew their motors, it was like
gravity suddenly become vitalized and conscious. Thousands of machines
vaulted into the opalescence. From those ahead hopelessly drawn and
powerless came back the warning. But hundreds could not escape.
“Back,” came the wireless. “Do not come too close. The thing is a
magnet. Turn back before too late. Against this man is insignificant.”
Then like gnats flitting into fire they vanished into the opalescence.
The others turned back. The whole world freezing shuddered in horror.
A great vampire was brooding over the earth. The greatness that man
had attained to was nothing. Civilization was tottering in a day. We
were hopeless.
Then came the last revelation; the truth and verity of the disaster
and the threatened climax. The water level of all the coast had gone
down. Vast ebb tides had gone out not to return. Stretches of sand
where had been surf extended far out into the sea. Then the truth! The
thing, whatever it was, was drinking up the ocean.