CHAPTER XIX
TO PARIS UNDER THE SEA
De Beauxchamps accepted Cosmo Versal's invitation to bring hiscompanions with him into the Ark. The submersible was safely mooredalongside, where she rode easily in company with the larger vessel, andall mounted the companion-ladder. The Frenchman's six companions weredressed, like himself, in the uniform of the army.
"Curious," muttered Captain Arms in Cosmo's ear, "that these _soldiers_should be the only ones to get off--and in a vessel, too. What were theseamen about?"
"What were _our_ seamen about?" returned Cosmo. "How many of _them_ gotoff? I warned them that ships would not do. But it was a bright idea ofthis De Beauxchamps and his friends to build a submersible. It didn'toccur to me, or I would have advised their construction everywhere forsmall parties. But it would never have done for us. A submersible wouldnot have been capacious enough for the party I wanted to take."
By this time the visitors were aboard, and Cosmo and the others whocould get near enough to grasp them by the hand greeted them effusively.King Richard received De Beauxchamps with emotion, and thanked him againand again for having saved his life; but, in the end, he covered hisface and said in a broken voice:
"M. De Beauxchamps, my gratitude to you is very deep--but, oh, thequeen--the queen--and the children! I should have done better to perishwith them."
Cosmo and De Beauxchamps soothed him as well as they could, and theformer led the way into the grand saloon, in order that as many aspossible might see and greet their visitors, who had come somysteriously up out of the sea.
All of the Frenchmen were as affable as their leader, and he presentedthem in turn. De Beauxchamps conversed almost gaily with such of theladies as had sufficient command of their feelings to join the throngthat pressed about him and his companions. He was deeply touched by thestory of the recent rescue of his countrymen from the Pyrenees, and hewent among them, trying to cheer them up, with the _elan_ that nomisfortune can eradicate from the Gallic nature.
At length Cosmo reminded him that he had said that he had someinteresting news to communicate.
"Yes," said De Beauxchamps, "I have just come from a visit to Paris."
Exclamations of amazement and incredulity were heard on all sides.
"It is true," resumed the Frenchman, though now his voice lost all itsgayety. "I had conceived the project of such a visit before I met theArk and transferred His Majesty, the King of England, to your care. Assoon as that was done I set out to make the attempt."
"But tell me first," interrupted Cosmo, "how you succeeded in findingthe Ark again."
"That was not very difficult," replied De Beauxchamps, smiling. "Ofcourse, it was to some extent accidental, for I didn't _know_ that youwould be here, navigating over France; but I had an idea that you_might_ come this way if you had an intention of seeing what hadhappened to Europe. It is my regular custom to rise frequently to thesurface to take a look around and make sure of my bearings, and you knowthat the Ark makes a pretty large point on the waters. I saw it longbefore you caught sight of me."
"Very well," said Cosmo. "Please go on with your story. It must, indeed,be an extraordinary one."
"I was particularly desirous of seeing Paris again, deep as I knew herto lie under the waves," resumed De Beauxchamps, "because it was myhome, and I had a house in the Champs Elysees. You cannot divorce theheart of a Frenchman from his home, though you should bury it undertwenty oceans."
"Your family were lost?"
"Thank God, I had no family. If I had had they would be with me. Mycompanions are all like myself in that respect. We have lost manyfriends, but no near relatives. As I was saying, I started for France,poor drowned France, as soon as I left you. With the powerfulsearchlight of the _Jules Verne_ I could feel confident of avoidingobstructions; and, besides, I knew very closely the height to which theflood had risen, and having the topography of my country at my fingers'ends, as does every officer of the army, I was able to calculate thedepth at which we should run in order to avoid the hilltops."
"But surely," said Cosmo, "it is impossible--at least, it seems so tome--that you can descend to any great depth--the pressure must betremendous a few hundred feet down, to say nothing of possiblethousands."
"All that," replied the Frenchman, "has been provided for. You probablydo not know to what extent we had carried experiments in France on thedeep submersion of submarines before their general abandonment when theywere prohibited by international agreement in war. I was myself perhapsthe leader in those investigations, and in the construction of the_Jules Verne_ I took pains to improve on all that had hitherto beendone.
"Without going into any description of my devices, I may simply remindyou nature has pointed out ways of avoiding the consequences of theinconceivable pressures which calculation indicates at depths of akilometer, or more, in her construction of the deep-sea fishes. It wasby a study of them that I arrived at the secret of both penetrating todepths that would theoretically have seemed entirely impossible and ofremaining at such depths."
"Marvelous!" exclaimed Cosmo; "marvelous beyond belief!"
"I may add," continued De Beauxchamps, smiling at the effect that hiswords had had upon the mind of the renowned Cosmo Versal, "that thepeculiar properties of levium, which you so wisely chose for your Ark,aided _me_ in quite a different way. But I must return to my story.
"We passed over the coast of France near the point where I knew lay themouth of the Loire. I could have found my way by means of the compasssufficiently well; but since the sky was clear I frequently came to thesurface in order, for greater certainty, to obtain sights of the sun andstars.
"I dropped down at Tours and at Blois, and we plainly saw the walls ofthe old chateaux in the gleam of the searchlight below us. There weremonsters of the deep, such as the eye of man never beheld, swimmingslowly about them, many of them throwing a strange luminosity into thewater from their phosphorescent organs, as if they were inspecting thesenovelties of the sea-bottom.
"Arrived over Orleans, we turned in the direction of Paris. As weapproached the site of the city I sank the submersible until we almosttouched the higher hills. My searchlight is so arranged that it can bedirected almost every way--up, down, to this side, and to that--and weswept it round us in every direction.
"The light readily penetrated the water and revealed sights which I haveno power to describe, and some--reminders of the immense population ofhuman beings which had there met its end--which I would not describe ifI could. To see a drowned face suddenly appear outside the window,almost within touch--ah, that was too horrible!
"We passed over Versailles, with the old palace still almost intact;over Sevres, with its porcelain manufactory yet in part standing--thetidal waves that had come up the river from the sea evidently causedmuch destruction just before the downpour began--and finally we'entered' Paris.
"We could see the embankments of the Seine beneath us as we passed upits course from the Point du Jour. From the site of the Champ de Mars Iturned northward in search of the older part of the Champs Elysees,where my house was, and we came upon the great Arc de Triomphe, which,you remember, dates from the time of Napoleon.
"It was apparently uninjured, even the huge bronze groups remaining intheir places, and the searchlight, traversing its face, fell upon theheroic group on the east facade of the Marseillaise. You must have seenthat, M. Versal?"
"Yes, many a time," Cosmo replied. "The fury in the face of the femalefigure representing the spirit of war, chanting the 'Marseillaise,' and,sword in hand, sweeping over the heads of the soldiers, is the mostterrible thing of human making that I ever looked upon."
"It was not so terrible as another thing that our startled eyes beheldthere," said De Beauxchamps. "Coiled round the upper part of the arch,with its head resting directly upon that of the figure of which youspeak, was a monstrous, ribbon-shaped creature, whose flat, reddishbody, at least a meter in width and apparently thirty meters long, andbordered with a sort of floating frill
of a pinkish color, undulatedwith a motion that turned us sick at heart.
"But the head was the most awful object that the fancy of a madman couldconceive. There were two great round, projecting eyes, encircled withwhat I suppose must have been phosphorescent organs, which spread aroundin the water a green light that was absolutely horrifying.
"I turned away the searchlight, and the eyes of that creature staredstraight at us with a dreadful, stony look; and then the effect of thephosphorescence, heightened by the absence of the greater light, becamemore terrible than before. We were unmanned, and I hardly had nerveenough to turn the submersible away and hurry from the neighborhood."
"I had not supposed," said Cosmo, "that creatures of such a size couldlive in the deeper parts of the sea."
"I know," returned De Beauxchamps, "that many have thought that theabysmal creatures were generally of small size, but they knew nothingabout it. What could one have expected to learn of the secrets of lifein the ocean depths from the small creatures which alone the trawlsbrought to the surface? The great monsters could not be captured in thatway. But we have _seen_ them--seen them taking possession of beautiful,drowned Paris--and we know what they are."
The fascinated hearers who had crowded about to listen to the narrativeof De Beauxchamps shuddered at this part of it, and some of the womenturned away with exclamations of horror.
"I see that I am drawing my picture in too fearful colors," he said,"and I shall refrain from telling of the other inhabitants of the abyssthat we found in possession of what I, as a Frenchman, must call themost splendid capital that the world contained.
"Oh, to think that all that beauty, all those great palaces filled withthe master-works of art, all those proud architectural piles, all thatscene of the most joyous life that the earth contained, is now becomethe dwelling-place of the terrible _fauna_ of the deep, creatures thatnever saw the sun; that never felt the transforming force of theevolution which had made the face of the globe so glorious; that neverquitted their abysmal homes until this awful flood spread their empireover the whole earth!"
There was a period of profound silence while De Beauxchamps's faceworked spasmodically under the influence of emotions, the sight of whichwould alone have sufficed to convince his hearers of the truth of whathe had been telling. Finally Cosmo Versal, breaking the silence, asked:
"Did you find your home?"
"Yes. It was there. I found it out. I illuminated it with thesearchlight. I gazed into the broken windows, trying to peer through thewatery medium that filled and darkened the interior. The roof wasbroken, but the walls were intact. I thought of the happy, happy yearsthat I had passed there when I _had_ a family, and when Paris was anEden, the sunshine of the world. And then I wished to see no more, andwe rose out of the midst of that sunken city and sought the daylight farabove.
"I had thought to tell you," he continued, after a pause, "of thecondition in which we found the great monuments of the city--of thePantheon, yet standing on its hill with its roof crushed in; of NotreDame--a wreck, but the towers still standing proudly; of the old palaceof the Louvre, through whose broken roofs and walls we caught glimpsesof the treasures washed by the water within--but I find that I have notcourage to go on. I had imagined that it would be a relief to speak ofthese things, but I do not find it so."
"After leaving Paris, then you made no other explorations?" said Cosmo.
"None. I should have had no heart for more. I had seen enough. And yet Ido not regret that I went there. I should never have been content not tohave seen my beautiful city once more, even lying in her watery shroud.I loved her living; I have seen her dead. It is finished. What more isthere, M. Versal?" With a sudden change of manner: "You have predictedall this, and perhaps you know more. Where do _we_ go to die?"
"We shall _not_ die," replied Cosmo Versal forcefully. "The Ark and your_Jules Verne_ will save us."
"To what purpose?" demanded the Frenchman, his animation all gone. "Canthere be any pleasure in floating upon or beneath the waves that cover alost world? Is a brief prolongation of such a life worth the effort ofgrasping for?"
"Yes," said Cosmo with still greater energy. "We may still _save therace_. I have chosen most of my companions in the Ark for that purpose.Not only may we save the race of man, but we may lead it up upon ahigher plane; we may apply the principles of eugenics as they have neveryet been applied. You, M. De Beauxchamps, have shown that you are of thestock that is required for the regeneration of the world."
"But where can the world be regenerated?" asked De Beauxchamps with abitter laugh. "There is nothing left but mountain-tops."
"Even they will be covered," said Cosmo.
"Do you mean that the deluge has not yet reached its height?"
"Certainly it has not. We are in an open space in the enveloping nebula.After a little we shall enter the nucleus, and then will come theworst."
"And yet you talk of saving the race!" exclaimed the Frenchman withanother bitter laugh.
"I do," replied Cosmo, "and it will be done."
"But how?"
"Through the re-emergence of land."
"That recalls our former conversation," put in Professor Abel Able. "Itappears to me impossible that, when the earth is once covered with auniversal ocean, it can ever disappear or materially lower its level.Geological ages would be required for the level of the water to belowered even a few feet by the escape of vapor into space."
"No," returned Cosmo Versal, "I have demonstrated that that idea iswrong. Under the immense pressure of an ocean rising six miles above theancient sea level the water will rapidly be forced into the intersticesof the crust, and thus a material reduction of level will be producedwithin a few years--five at the most. That will give us a foothold. Ihave no doubt that even now the water around us is slightly loweringthrough that cause.
"But in itself that will not be sufficient. I have gone all over thisground in my original calculations. The intrusion of the immense mass ofocean water into the interior of the crust of the earth will result in agrand geological upheaval. The lands will re-emerge above the new sealevel as they emerged above the former one through the internal stressesof the globe."
The scientific men present listened with breathless interest, but someof them with many incredulous shakings of the head.
"You must be aware," continued Cosmo, addressing them particularly,"that it has been demonstrated that the continents and the greatmountain ranges are buoyed up, and, as it were, are floating somewhatlike slags on the internal magma. The mean density of the crust is lessunder the land and the mountains than under the old sea-beds. This isespecially true of the Himalayan region.
"That uplift is probably the most recent of all, and it is there, whereat present the highest land of the globe exists, that I expect that thenew upheaval will be most strongly manifested. It is for that reason,and not merely because it is now the highest part of the earth, that Iam going with the Ark to Asia."
"But," said Professor Jeremiah Moses, "the upheaval of which you speakmay produce a complete revolution in the surface of the earth, and ifnew lands are upthrust they may appear at unexpected points."
"Not at all," returned Cosmo. "The tectonic features of the globe werefixed at the beginning. As Asia has hitherto been the highest and thegreatest mass of land, it will continue to be so in the future. It isthere, believe me, that we shall replant the seed of humanity."
"Do you not think," asked Professor Alexander Jones, "that there will bea tremendous outburst of volcanic energy, if such upheavals occur, andmay not that render the re-emerging lands uninhabitable?"
"No doubt," Cosmo replied, "every form of plutonic energy will beimmensely re-enforced. You remember the recent outburst of all thevolcanoes when the sea burst over the borders of the continents. Butthese forces will be mainly expended in an effort of uplifting.Unquestionably there will be great volcanic spasms, but they will notprevent the occupation of the broadening areas of land which will not bethus affected."
/> "Upon these lands," exclaimed Sir Wilfrid Athelstone, in a loud voice,"I will develop life from the barren minerals of the crust. The age ofchemical parthenogenesis will then have dawned upon the earth, and manwill have become a creator."
"Will the Sir Englishman give me room for a word!" cried CostakeTheriade, raising his tall form on his toes and agitating his arms inthe air. "He will create not anything! It is _I_ that will unloose theenergies of the atoms of matter and make of the new man a new god."
Cosmo Versal quieted the incipient outbreak of his jealous "speculativegeniuses," and the discussion of his theory was continued for some time.At length De Beauxchamps, shrugging his shoulders, exclaimed, with areturn of his habitual gayety:
"_Tres bien! Vive_ the world of Cosmo Versal! I salute the new Eve thatis to come!"