CHAPTER VII
THE WATERS BEGIN TO RISE
Cosmo Versal had begun the construction of his ark in the latter part ofJune. It was now the end of November. The terrors of the _thirdsign_ had occurred in September. Since then the sky had nearlyresumed its normal color, there had been no storms, but the heat ofsummer had not relaxed. People were puzzled by the absence of the usualindications of autumn, although vegetation had shriveled on account ofthe persistent high temperature and constant sunshine.
"An extraordinary year," admitted the meteorologists, "but there havebeen warm falls before, and it is simply a question of degree. Naturewill restore the balance and in good time, and probably we shall have asevere winter."
On the 31st of November, the brassy sky at New York showed no signs ofchange, when the following dispatch, which most of the newspaperstriple-leaded and capped with stunning headlines, quivered down fromChurchill, 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 greatlydisturbed 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 theMackenzie 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 thefrozen soil had dissolved into a bottomless slough, from whose depthsuprose prehistoric mammoths, their long hair matted with mud, and theircurved tusks of ivory gleaming like trumpets over the field of theirresurrection. The dispatch concluded with a heart-rending account of theloss of a large party of ivory hunters, who, having ventured too farfrom the more solid land, suddenly found the ground turning to blackooze beneath their feet, and, despite their struggles, were all engulfedwithin sight of their friends, who dared not try to approach them.
Cosmo Versal, when interviewed, calmly remarked that the flood wasbeginning in the north, because it was the northern part of the globethat was nearest the heart of the nebula. The motion of the earth beingnorthward, that end of its axis resembled the prow of a ship.
"But this," he added, "is not the true deluge. The Arctic ice-cap ismelting, and the frozen soil is turning into a sponge in consequence ofthe heat of friction developed in the air by the inrush of nebulousmatter. The aqueous vapor, however, has not yet touched the earth. Itwill begin to manifest its presence within a few days, and then theglobe will drink water at every pore. The vapor will finally condenseinto 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 ofcountenance:
"_Commit suicide_! They have practically done that already."
It was nearly two weeks later when the first signs of a change ofweather were manifested in middle latitudes. It came on with a rapidveiling of the sky, followed by a thin, misty, persistent rain. The heatgrew more oppressive, but the rain did not become heavier, and after afew 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 earliercaprices of the elements were not renewed. People were getting used tothese freaks.
In the middle of one of the clear spells a remarkable scene occurred atMineola.
It was like a panorama of the seventh chapter of Genesis.
It was the procession of the beasts.
Cosmo Versal had concluded that the time was come for housing hisanimals in the ark. He wished to accustom them to their quarters beforethe voyage began. The resulting spectacle filled the juvenile world withirrepressible joy, and immensely interested their elders.
No march of a menagerie had ever come within sight of equaling thisdisplay. Many of the beasts were such as no one there had ever seenbefore. Cosmo had consulted experts, but, in the end, he had been guidedin his choice by his own judgment. Nobody knew as well as he exactlywhat was wanted. He had developed in his mind a scheme for making thenew world that was to emerge from the waters better in every respectthan the old one.
Mingled with such familiar creatures as sheep, cows, dogs, and barn-yardfowls, were animals of the past, which the majority of the onlookers hadonly read about or seen pictures of, or perhaps, in a few cases, hearddescribed in childhood, by grandfathers long since sleeping in theirgraves.
Cosmo had rapidly collected them from all parts of the world, but asthey 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 hadbeen purchased at an enormous price from an English duke, who neverwould have parted with them--for they were almost the last livingrepresentatives of the equine race left on the earth--if financialstress had not compelled the sacrifice.
These splendid animals were dapple gray, with long white tails, andflowing manes borne proudly on their arching necks, and as they were ledat the head of the procession, snorting at the unwonted scene aboutthem, their eyes bright with excitement, prancing and curvetting, criesof admiration and rounds of applause broke from the constantly growingthrongs of spectators.
Those who had only known the horse from pictures and sculptures werefilled with astonishment by its living beauty. People could not helpsaying to themselves:
"What a pity that the honking auto, in its hundred forms of mechanicalugliness, should have driven these beautiful and powerful creatures outof the world! What could our forefathers have been thinking of?"
A few elephants, collected from African zoological gardens, and somegiraffes, also attracted a great deal of attention, but the horses werethe favorites with the crowd.
Cosmo might have had lions and tigers, and similar beasts, which hadbeen preserved, in larger numbers than the useful horse, but when JosephSmith suggested their inclusion he shook his head, declaring that it wasbetter that they should perish. As far as possible, he averred, he wouldeliminate all carnivores.
In some respects, even more interesting to the onlookers than theanimals of the past, were the animals of the future that marched in theprocession. Few of them had ever been seen outside the experimentalstations where they had been undergoing the process of artificialevolution.
There were the stately white Californian cattle, without horns, but ofgigantic stature, the cows, it was said, being capable of producingtwenty times more milk than their ancestral species, and of a vastlysuperior quality.
There were the Australian rabbits, as large as Newfoundland dogs, thoughshort-legged, and furnishing food of the most exquisite flavor; and theArgentine sheep, great balls of snowy wool, moving smartly along on legsthree feet in length.
The greatest astonishment was excited by the "grand astoria terrapin," adeveloped species of diamond-back tortoise, whose exquisitely sculpturedconvex back, lurching awkwardly as it crawled, rose almost three feetabove the ground; and the "new century turkey," which carried its beaconhead 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 educationaldevelopment Cosmo Versal had theories of his own) and a
large variety ofbirds, together with boxes of insect eggs and chrysalids.
The delight of the boys who had chased after the procession culminatedwhen the animals began to ascend the sloping ways into the ark.
The horses shied and danced, making the metallic flooring resound like arattle of thunder; the elephants trumpeted; the sheep baaed and crowdedthemselves into inextricable masses against the guard-rails; the hugenew cattle moved lumberingly up the slope, turning their big white headsinquiringly about; the tall turkeys stretched their red coral necks andgobbled with Brobdingnagian voices; and the great terrapins wereignominiously 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 turnedaway, laughing, joking, chattering, with never a thought that it wasanything more than the most amusing exhibition they had ever seen!
But when they got back in the city streets they met a flying squadron ofyelling newsboys, and seizing the papers from their hands read, in bigblack 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 manyturned pale as they read.
But the storm did not come in the way expected. The deluging rainsappeared to be confined to the Middle West and the Northwest, while atNew York the sky simply grew thicker and seemed to squeeze out moisturein the form of watery dust. This condition lasted for some time, andthen came what everybody, even the most skeptical, had been secretlydreading.
The ocean began to rise!
The first perception of this startling fact, according to a newspaperaccount, came in a very strange, roundabout way to a man living on theoutskirts of the vast area of made ground where the great city hadspread over what was formerly the Newark meadows and Newark Bay.
About three o'clock in the morning, this man, who it appears was apoliceman off duty, was awakened by scurrying sounds in the house. Hestruck a light, and seeing dark forms issuing from the cellar, went downto investigate. The ominous gleam of water, reflecting the light of hislamp, told him that the cellar was inundated almost to the top of thewalls.
"Come down here, Annie!" he shouted to his wife. "Sure 'tis Cosmo Versalis invadin' the cellar with his flood. The rats are lavin' us."
Seeing that the slight foundation walls were crumbling, he hurried hisfamily into the street, and not too soon, for within ten minutes thehouse was in ruins.
Neighbors, living in equally frail structures, were awakened, and soonother undermined houses fell. Terror spread through the quarter, andgradually half the city was aroused.
When day broke, residents along the water-front in Manhattan found theircellars flooded, and South and West Streets swimming with water, whichwas continually rising. It was noted that the hour was that offlood-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 andthere was no ebbing. On the contrary, the water continued to rise. Thegovernment observer at the Highlands telephoned that Sandy Hook wassubmerged. Soon it was known that Coney Island, Rockaway, and all theseaside places along the south shore of Long Island were under water.The mighty current poured in through the Narrows with the velocity of amill-race. The Hudson, set backward on its course, rushed northward witha raging bore at its head that swelled higher until it licked the feetof the rock chimneys of the Palisades.
But when the terror inspired by this sudden invasion from the sea was atits height there came unexpected relief. The water began to fall morerapidly than it had risen. It rushed out through the Narrows faster thanit had rushed in, and ships, dragged from their anchorage in the upperharbor, were carried out seaward, some being stranded on the sandbanksand shoals in the lower bay.
Now again houses standing on made ground, whose foundations had beenundermined, fell with a crash, and many were buried in the ruins.
Notwithstanding the immense damage and loss of life, the recession ofthe waters immediately had a reassuring effect, and the public, ingeneral, was disposed to be comforted by the explanation of the weatherofficials, who declared that what had occurred was nothing more than anunprecedentedly high tide, probably resulting from some unforeseendisturbance out at sea.
The phenomenon had been noted all along the Atlantic coast. The chiefforecaster ventured the assertion that a volcanic eruption had occurredsomewhere on the line from Halifax to Bermuda. He thought that theprobable location of the upheaval had been at Munn's Reef, about halfwaybetween those points, and the more he discussed his theory the readierhe became to stake his reputation on its correctness, for, he said, itwas impossible that any combination of the effects of high and lowpressures could have created such a surge of the ocean, while a volcanicwave, combining with the regular oscillation of the tide, could havedone it easily.
But Cosmo Versal smiled at this explanation, and said in reply:
"The whole Arctic ice-cap is dissolved, and the condensation of thenebula is at hand. But there is worse behind. When the wave comes backit will rise higher."
As the time for the next flood-tide grew near, anxious eyes were on thewatch to see how high the water would go. There was something in themere manner of its approach that made the nerves tingle.
It speeded toward the beaches, combing into rollers at an unwonteddistance from shore; plunged with savage violence upon the sands of theshallows, as if it would annihilate them; and then, spreading swiftly,ran with terrific speed up the strand, seeming to devour everything ittouched. After each recoil it sprang higher and roared louder and grewblacker with the mud that it had ground up from the bottom. Miles inlandthe ground trembled with the fast-repeated shocks.
Again the Hudson was hurled backward until a huge bore of water burstover the wharves at Albany. Every foot of ground in New York less thantwenty feet above the mean high tide level was inundated. Thedestruction was enormous, incalculable. Ocean liners moored along thewharves were, in some cases, lifted above the level of the neighboringstreets, and sent crashing into the buildings along the water-front.
Etherograms told, in broken sentences, of similar experiences on thewestern coasts of Europe, and from the Pacific came the news of theflooding of San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland, Tacoma, Seattle, and,in fact, every coast-lying town. On the western coast of South Americathe incoming waves broke among the foothills of the Andes.
It was as if the mighty basins of the world's two greatest oceans werebeing 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 globeseemed to burst simultaneously into activity, probably through theeffects of the invasion of sea water into the subterranean fire, whilethe strain of the unwonted weight thrown upon the coasts broke open thetectonic lines of weakness in the earth's crust, causing the mostterrible earthquakes, which destroyed much that the water could notreach.
From Alaska to Patagonia, from Kamchatka through Japan to the EastIndies, from Mount Hecla to Vesuvius, Etna, and Teneriffe, the ragingoceans were bordered with pouring clouds of volcanic smoke, hurledupward in swift succeeding puffs, as if every crater had become thestack of a stupendous steam-engine driven at its maddest speed; whileimmense rivers of lava flamed down the mountain flanks and plunged intothe invading waters with reverberated roarings, hissings, and explosionsthat seemed to shake the framework of the globe.
During the second awful shoreward heave of the Atlantic a scene occurredoff New York Bay that made the stoutest nerves quiver. A great crowd hadcollected on the Highlands of the Navesink to watch the ingress of thetidal wave.
Suddenly, afar off, the smoke of an approaching ocean liner was seen. Itneeded but a glance to show that she was struggling with tremendoussurges. 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 mightiestof the ocean monarchs, of a hundred thousand tons register, coming fromEurope, and bearing, without question, many thousands of souls.
She was flying signals of distress, and filling the ether with herinarticulate calls for help, which quavered into every radiographstation within a radius of hundreds of miles.
But, at the same time, she was battling nobly for herself and for thelives of her passengers and crew. From her main peak the Stars andStripes streamed in the tearing wind. There were many in the watchingthrongs who personally knew her commander, Captain Basil Brown, and whofelt that if any human being could bring the laboring ship throughsafely, 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 withthe speed of an express train, the captain was recognized on his bridge,balancing himself amid the lurches of the vessel; and even at thatdistance, and in those terrible circumstances, there was something inhis bearing perceptible to those who breathlessly watched him, throughpowerful glasses, which spoke of perfect self-command, entire absence offear, and iron determination to save his ship or die with her under hisfeet.
It could be seen that he was issuing orders and watching theirexecution, but precisely what their nature was, of course, could only beguessed. His sole hope must be to keep the vessel from being castashore. There was no danger from the shoals, for they were by this timedeeply covered by the swelling of the sea.
Slowly, slowly, with a terrific straining of mechanic energies, whichpressed the jaws of the watchers together with spasmodic sympathy, as iftheir own nervous power were cooperating in the struggle, the gallantship 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 crammedthe furnaces beneath. It was man against nature, human nerve andmechanical science against blind force.
It began to look as if the _Atlantis_ would win the battle. She wasnow fearfully close to the shore, but her bow had been turned into thevery eye of the sea, and one could almost feel the tension of her steelmuscles as she seemed to spring to the encounter. The billows that splitthemselves in quick succession on her sharp stem burst into shootinggeysers three hundred feet high.
The hearts of the spectators almost ceased to beat. Their souls werewrapped up with the fate of the brave ship. They forgot the terrors oftheir own situation, the peril of the coming flood, and saw nothing butthe agonized struggle before their eyes. With all their inward strengththey 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 deckrushed upon her. She was lifted like a cockleshell upon its crest, herhuge hull spun around, and the next minute, with a crash that resoundedabove the roar of the maddened sea, she was dashed in pieces.
At the very last moment before the vessel disappeared in the whirlingbreakers, to be strewed in broken and twisted bits of battered metalupon the pounding sands, Captain Basil Brown was seen on the commander'sbridge.
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 _dosomething_--something, but what?--to save themselves and their dearones.
For now, at last, they _believed!_