CHAPTER II
MOCKING AT FATE
When New York recovered from its first astonishment over theextraordinary posters, it indulged in a loud laugh. Everybody knew whoCosmo Versal was. His eccentricities had filled many readable columns inthe newspapers. Yet there was a certain respect for him, too. This wasdue to his extraordinary intellectual ability and unquestionablescientific knowledge. But his imagination was as free as the winds, andit often led him upon excursions in which nobody could follow him, andwhich caused the more steady-going scientific brethren to shake theirheads. They called him able but flighty. The public considered himbrilliant and amusing.
His father, who had sprung from some unknown source in southeasternEurope, and, beginning as a newsboy in New York, had made his way to thefront in the financial world, had left his entire fortune to Cosmo. Thelatter had no taste for finance or business, but a devouring appetitefor science, to which, in his own way, he devoted all his powers, allhis time, and all his money. He never married, was never seen insociety, and had very few intimates--but he was known by sight, orreputation, to everybody. There was not a scientific body or associationof any consequence in the world of which he was not a member. Thosewhich looked askance at his bizarre ideas were glad to accept pecuniaryaid from him.
The notion that the world was to be drowned had taken possession of himabout three years before the opening scene of this narrative. To workout the idea, he built an observatory, set up a laboratory, inventedinstruments, including his strange spectroscope, which was scoffed at bythe scientific world.
Finally, submitting the results of his observations to mathematicaltreatment, he proved, to his own satisfaction, the absolute correctnessof his thesis that the well-known "proper motion of the solar system"was about to result in an encounter between the earth and an invisiblewatery nebula, which would have the effect of inundating the globe. Asthis startling idea gradually took shape, he communicated it toscientific men in all lands, but failed to find a single disciple,except his friend Joseph Smith, who, without being able to follow allhis reasonings, accepted on trust the conclusions of Cosmo's morepowerful mind. Accordingly, at the end of his investigation, he enlistedSmith as secretary, propagandist, and publicity agent.
New York laughed a whole day and night at the warning red letters. Theywere the talk of the town. People joked about them in cafes, clubs, athome, in the streets, in the offices, in the exchanges, in thestreet-cars, on the Elevated, in the Subways. Crowds gathered on cornersto watch the flapping posters aloft on the kite lines. The afternoonnewspapers issued specials which were all about the coming flood, andeverywhere one heard the cry of the newsboys: _"Extra-a-a! Drowning ofa Thousand Million people! Cosmo Versal predicts the End of theWorld!"_ On their editorial pages the papers were careful to discountthe 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 acolumn of ordinary type, took a judicial attitude, called upon the cityauthorities to tear down the posters, and hinted that "this absurdperson, Cosmo Versal, who disgraces a once honored name with hischildish attempt to create a sensation that may cause untold harm amongthe ignorant masses," had laid himself open to criminal prosecution.
In their latest editions, several of the papers printed an interviewwith Cosmo Versal, in which he gave figures and calculations that, ontheir face, seemed to offer mathematical proof of the correctness of hisforecast. In impassioned language, he implored the public to believethat he would not mislead them, spoke of the instant necessity ofconstructing arks of safety, and averred that the presence of theterrible nebula that was so soon to drown the world was already manifestin the heavens.
Some readers of these confident statements began to waver, especiallywhen confronted with mathematics which they could not understand. Butstill, in general, the laugh went on. It broke into boisterousness inone of the largest theaters where a bright-witted "artist," who alwaysmade a point of hitting off the very latest sensation, got himself up ina lifelike imitation of the well-known figure of Cosmo Versal, toppedwith a bald head as big as a bushel, and sailed away into the flies witha pretty member of the ballet, whom he had gallantly snatched from atumbling ocean of green baize, singing at the top of his voice untilthey 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 ofvaudeville genius was greeted, showed the cheerful spirit in which thepublic took the affair. No harm seemed to have come to the "ignorantmasses" 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, morelurid in letters and language than the original. The morning papers hadcolumns of description and comment, and some of them seemed disposed totreat the prophet and his prediction with a certain degree ofseriousness.
The savants who had been interviewed overnight, did not talk veryconvincingly, and made the mistake of flinging contempt on both Cosmoand "the gullible public."
Naturally, the public wouldn't stand for that, and the pendulum ofopinion began to swing the other way. Cosmo helped his cause by sendingto every newspaper a carefully prepared statement of his observationsand calculations, in which he spoke with such force of conviction thatfew could read his words without feeling a thrill of apprehensiveuncertainty. This was strengthened by published dispatches which showedthat he had forwarded his warnings to all the well-known scientificbodies of the world, which, while decrying them, made no effectiveresponse.
And then came a note of positive alarm in a double-leaded bulletin fromthe new observatory at Mount McKinley, which affirmed that during thepreceding night _a singular obscurity_ had been suspected in thenorthern sky, seeming to veil many stars below the twelfth magnitude. Itwas added that the phenomenon was unprecedented, but that theobservation was both difficult and uncertain.
Nowhere was the atmosphere of doubt and mystery, which now began to hangover the public, so remarkable as in Wall Street. The sensitive currentsthere responded like electric waves to the new influence, and, to thedismay of hard-headed observers, the market dropped as if it had beenhit with a sledge-hammer. Stocks went down five, ten, in some casestwenty points in as many minutes.
The speculative issues slid down like wheat into a bin when the chutesare opened. Nobody could trace the exact origin of the movement, butselling-orders came tumbling in until there was a veritable panic.
From London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, St. Petersburg, flashed dispatchesannouncing that the same unreasonable slump had manifested itself there,and all united in holding Cosmo Versal solely responsible for thefoolish break in prices. Leaders of finance rushed to the exchangestrying by arguments and expostulations to arrest the downfall, but invain.
In the afternoon, however, reason partially resumed its sway; then aquick recovery was felt, and many who had rushed to sell all they had,found cause to regret their precipitancy. The next da
y all was on themend, as far as the stock market was concerned, but among the people atlarge the poison of awakened credulity continued to spread, nourished byfresh announcements from the fountain head.
Cosmo issued another statement to the effect that he had perfected plansfor an ark of safety, which he would begin at once to construct in theneighborhood of New York, and he not only offered freely to give hisplans 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 produceda prodigious effect, and multitudes began to be infected with a namelessfear.
Meanwhile an extraordinary scene occurred, behind closed doors, at theheadquarters of the Carnegie Institution in Washington. Joseph Smith,acting under Cosmo Versal's direction, had forwarded an elaborate_precis_ of the latter's argument, accompanied with fullmathematical details, to the head of the institution. The character ofthis document was such that it could not be ignored. Moreover, thesavants composing the council of the most important scientificassociation in the world were aware of the state of the public mind, andfelt 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 allkinds had been accorded to them, and they appreciated the fact that aduty now rested upon their shoulders.
Accordingly, a special meeting was called to consider the communicationfrom Cosmo Versal. It was the general belief that a little criticalexamination would result in complete proof of the fallacy of all hiswork, proof which could be put in a form that the most uninstructedwould understand.
But the papers, diagrams, and mathematical formulae had no sooner beenspread upon the table under the knowing eyes of the learned members ofthe council, than a chill of conscious impuissance ran through them.They saw that Cosmo's mathematics were unimpeachable. His formulae wereaccurately deduced, and his operations absolutely correct.
They could do nothing but attack his fundamental data, based on thealleged revelations of his new form of spectroscope, and on telescopicobservations which were described in so much detail that the only way tocombat them was by the general assertion that they were illusory. Thiswas felt to be a very unsatisfactory method of procedure, as far as thepublic was concerned, because it amounted to no more than attacking thecredibility of a witness who pretended to describe only what he himselfhad 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 ofthe human mind which habitually gravitates toward whatever isextraordinary, revolutionary, and mysterious.
But a yet greater difficulty arose. Mention has been made of the strangebulletin from the Mount McKinley observatory. That had been incautiouslysent out to the public by a thoughtless observer, who was more intentupon describing a singular phenomenon than upon considering its possibleeffect on the popular imagination. He had immediately received anexpostulatory dispatch from headquarters which henceforth shut hismouth--but he had told the simple truth, and how embarrassing that wasbecame evident when, on the very table around which the savants were nowassembled, three dispatches were laid in quick succession from the greatobservatories of Mount Hekla, Iceland, the North Cape, and Kamchatka,all corroborating the statement of the Mount McKinley observer, that aninexplicable veiling of faint stars had manifested itself in the borealquarter of the sky.
When the president read these dispatches--which the senders had takenthe precaution to mark "confidential"--the members of the council lookedat one another with no little dismay. Here was the most unprejudicedcorroboration of Cosmo Versal's assertion that the great nebula wasalready within the range of observation. How could they dispute suchtestimony, 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 verycurious! And suppose the fellow should be right, after all?"
"Right!" cried the president, Professor Pludder, disdainfully. "Who everheard of a watery nebula? The thing's absurd!"
"I don't see that it's absurd," replied Professor Jones. "There's plentyof proof of the existence of hydrogen in some of the nebulae."
"So there is," chimed in Professor Abel Able, "and if there's hydrogenthere may be oxygen, and there you have all that's necessary. It's notthe idea that a nebula may consist of watery vapor that's absurd, but itis that a watery nebula, large enough to drown the earth by condensationupon it could have approached so near as this one must now be withoutsooner betraying its presence."
"How so?" demanded a voice.
"By its attraction. Cosmo Versal says it is already less than threehundred million miles away. If it is massive enough to drown the earth,it ought long ago to have been discovered by its disturbance of theplanetary orbits."
"Not at all," exclaimed Professor Jeremiah Moses. "If you stick to thatargument you'll be drowned sure. Just look at these facts. The earthweighs six and a half sextillions of tons, and the ocean one and a halfquintillions. The average depth of the oceans is two and one-fifthmiles. Now--if the level of the oceans were raised only about 1,600feet, practically all the inhabited parts of the world would be flooded.To cause that increase in the level of the oceans only about one-eighthpart would have to be added to their total mass, or, say, one-seventhpart, allowing for the greater surface to be covered. That would be onethirty-thousandth of the weight of the globe, and if you suppose thatonly one-hundredth of the entire nebula were condensed on the earth, thewhole mass of the nebula would not need to exceed one three-hundredth ofthe weight of the earth, or a quarter that of the moon--and nobody herewill be bold enough to say that the approach of a mass no greater thanthat would be likely to be discovered through its attraction when it wasthree hundred million miles away."
Several of the astronomers present shook their heads at this, andProfessor Pludder irritably declared that it was absurd.
"The attraction would be noticeable when it was a thousand millions ofmiles away," he continued.
"Yes, 'noticeable' I admit," replied Professor Moses, "but all the sameyou wouldn't notice it, because you wouldn't be looking for it unlessthe nebula were visible first, and even then it would require months ofobservation to detect the effects. And how are you going to get aroundthose bulletins? The thing is beginning to be visible now, and I'll betthat if, from this time on, you study carefully the planetary motions,you will find evidence of the disturbance becoming stronger andstronger. Versal has pointed out that very thing, and calculated theperturbations. This thing has come like a thief in the night."
"You'd better hurry up and secure a place in the ark," said ProfessorPludder 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 scientificstanding should stultify himself by taking seriously such balderdash asthis. I tell you the thing is absurd."
"And I tell you, _you_ are absurd to say so!" retorted ProfessorMoses, losing his temper. "You've got four of the biggest telescopes inthe world under your control; why don't you order your observers to lookfor 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 beeninfluenced by the popular excitement. There has possibly been a littleobscurity in the atmosphere--cirrus clouds, or something--and theobservers have imagined the rest. I'm not going to insult science byencouraging the proceedings of a mountebank like Cosmo Versal. Whatwe've got to do is to prepare a dispatch for the press reassuring thepopulace and throwing the weight of this institution on the side ofcommon sense and public tranquillity. Let the secretary indite such adispatch, and then we'll edit it and send it out."
Professor Pludder, naturally dictatorial, was sometimes a littleoverbearing, but being a
man of great ability, and universally respectedfor his high rank in the scientific world, his colleagues usually bowedto his decisions. On this occasion his force of character sufficed tosilence the doubters, and when the statement intended for the press hadreceived its final touches it contained no hint of the seeds of discordthat Cosmo Versal had sown among America's foremost savants. The nextmorning 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 verymorning when it appeared in print, thirty thousand people were crowdedaround the old aviation field at Mineola, excitedly watching CosmoVersal, with five hundred workmen, laying the foundations of a hugeplatform, while about the field were stretched sheets of canvasdisplaying 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 costmillions, and the spectacle of this immense expenditure, the evidencethat Cosmo was backing his words with his money, furnished a silentargument which was irresistible. In the midst of all, flying about amonghis men, was Cosmo, impressing every beholder with the feeling thatintellect was in charge.
Like the gray coat of Napoleon on a battlefield, the sight of thatmighty brow bred confidence.