The Green Forest tribune., 1910-05-20

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 of water, 50 feet high, roaring hungrily, upon the long coasts of Asia, and swept inland across the plains of China. For space the star, hot ter now and larger and brighter than the sun in it's strength, showed with ptiless brllllance the wide and populous country; towns and VII lages with their pagodas and trees, roads, wide cultivated fields, millions of sleepless people staring in helpless terror at the incandescent sky; and then, low and growing, came the mur- mur of the flood. And thus it was with millions of men that nght-a breath fierce and scant and the flood like wall swift and white behind And then death.
 China was lit glowing white, but over Japan and Java and all the islands of eastern Asia the great star was ball of dull red fire because of the steam and smoke and ashes the volcanoes were spoutng forth to salute it's coming. Above were the lava, hot gases and ash, and belo" the seething floods and the whole earth swayed and rumbed with the earthquake shocks.
 Larger grew the star and larger, hotter and brighter with a terrible swiftness now The tropical ocean had lost it's phosphorescence and the whirling steam rose in ghostly wreaths from the black waves that plunged necessarily, speckled with storm tossed ships.
 And then came a wonder. It seemed to those who in Europe watched for the rising of the star that the world must have ceased it's rotation. In a thousand open spaces of down and upland the people who had fled thither from the floods and the falling houses and sliding slopes of hill watched for that rising in vain Hour followed hour through terrible suspense and the star rose not. Once again set their eyes upon the old cancellations they had count ed lost to them forever. In England it was hot and clear overhead. though the ground quiyered perpetually; but in the tropics Sirius and Ga bella and Aldebaran showed through veil o steam
 Acio tba star had bno1, to fa11 behind the movement of the sky and then sud denly, as it hung over India it's light had been yelled All the plain of India from the mouth of the Indus to the mouths of the Ganges was a shallow waste of shining water that night, out of which temples and palaces, mounds and hills, black with people, Every minaret was clustering mass of people, who fell by into the turbd waters as heat and terror overcame them The whole land seemed a-waiing and suddenly there swept shadow across that furnace of despair and a breath of cold wind and gathering of clouds out of the cooling air. Men looking up near blinded at the star, that black disk was creeping across the light. It was the moon coming be tween the star and the earth. And even as cried to God at this respite out of the east With a strange, ineXplicable swiftness sprang the sun. And then star, sun and moon rushed together across the heavens.
 So it was that presently, to the European watchers, star and sun rose close upon each other drove headong for a space and then slower and at last came to rest star and sun merged into one glare of flame at the zenith of the sky. The moon no longer eclpsed the star, but was lost to sight in the brillance of the sky. And though those who were still alive regarded it for the most part with that dull stu pidity that hunger fatigue heat and despair engender there were still men who could per ceive the meaning of these signs Star and ot fhnin
 about one another and the star had passed Already it was receding. swfter and swifter. in the last stage of it's headlong journey downward into the sum-
 And then the clouds gathered plotting out the vision or the sky; the thunder and lightning wove garment around the world: all over the earth was such downpour of rain as men had never seen before; and where the volcanoes fared red against the cloud canopy there de. scended torrents of mud. Everywhere the wa. ters were pouring off the land leaving mud sllted ruins and the earth filtered like a storm worn beach with all that had Aoated and the dead bodies of the men and brutes. it's children
 But the star had passed and men, hunger driven and gathering courage only slowly might creep back to their ruined cities buried gran. aries and sodden fields. Such few ships as had escaped the storms of that time came stunned and shattered and sounding their way can. tously through the new marks and shoals of once familiar ports And as the storms subsi. ded men perceived that everywhere the days were hotter than of yore and the sun larger and the moon, shrunk to third of its former size took fourscore days between it's new and new
 The Martian astronomers-for there are as tronomers on Mars, although they are different beings from men-were naturally profoundly in. terested by these things They saw them from their standpoint, of course "Considerino the mass and temperature of the missile that was flung through our solar system into the sum- one wrote, "it is astonishing what little damage the earth, which it missed so narrowly. has sustained. All the familiar continental markings and the masses of the seas remain intact and indeed the only difference seems to be shrinkage of the white discoloration fsun. posed to be frozen water) round either no1e :" Which only shows how small the vastest of bu man catastrophes may seem at distance of :. few million miles.
 Copyright. 1910, by w. G. Chapman)