The Washington times., 1912-03-04
CHAPTER VIII.
Storming the Ark.

T1BRE was to be no more respite
now. The time of warnings was
u past. The signs" had all been
shown to a skeptical and vacil-
lating world, and at last the fulflllment
was at hand.
There was no crying of extras" In
the streets, for men had something
more pressing to think OF than send
Ing and reading news about their dis
tress and those of their fellow-men.
Every newspaper ceased publication ;
every business place was abandoned;
there was no thought but of the means
OF escape.
But how should they escape? And
whittier should they hy?
The lower lying streets were under
water. The Atlantic still surged back
and forth as IL the ocean itself were
IN agony. And every time the waves
shores OF the bay, and the new coasts
Of Long Island and New Jersey re-
ceding inward hour by hour, were
streWn with the wrecks of hundreds
ofFVessels of all kinds which had been
caught by the surges and pitilessly
hurled to destruction.
Even II men did not yet fully believe
In Cosmo Versars theory of a whelm-
Ing nebula, they were terrified to the
bottom of their souls by the conviction,
which nobody could resist, that the
vast ice-felds of the North, the glaciers
OF Greenland, the icy mountains Of
Alaska, had melted away under the
terrible downpour of heat. and were
And then a greater fear dropped like
a blanket upon them. Some one thought
of the Antarctic ice.
The latest dispatches that had come,
before the cessation of all communica-
tion to the newspapers, had told of the
prevalence of sitting heat throughout
the Southern Hemisphere, and OF the
vast fleets of Antarctic icebergs that
1lled the South seas. The mighty de-
posits of ice, towering to mountain
heights that stretched a thousand miles
In every direction around the South
Pole, were melting as the Arctic ice
fari,n1 had melted: and. wheP the water thus
flowing seas, to what elevation might
not the flood attain?
The Antarctic ice was known to be
the principal mass of frozen water on
the globe. Tho frigid cap of the North
was nothing in comparison with it. II
had long been believed that the weight
of that tremendous accumulation un-
balanced the globe and was the chief
cause OF the unsteadiness of the
Every fresh exploration had only
served to magnify the conception OF
the incredible vastness of that de-
posit. The skirts of the Antarctic con-
erals wherever the rocks could find a
place to penetrate through the gigan-
tic burden of ice, and the principal
nations had Quarreled over the pos
session or control OF these protruding
bits of weaIth-crammed strata. But
behind the bordering cliffs of ice. ris-
ing in places a thousand feet above
the level of the sea, and towering
farther inland so high that this region
became, in mean elevation, the loftiest
on the planet, nothing but ice could
be seen.
And now that ice was dIssolving and
flowing into the swollen oceans, add.
ing billions Of tons OF water every
minute!
Men did not stop to calculate. as
Cosmo Versal had done, just how much
! the dissolution of all the ice and per
manent snow of the globe would ado
| to the volume of the seas. He knew
that it would be but drop in the
bucket-although sufficient to start the
| food-and that the great thing tC
| be feared was the condensation of thC
| aqueous nebula, already beginning t
enwrap the planet in its sitting folds.
The public could understand thu
melting ice, although 1t could no
fully understand the nebula; 1t coulC
understand the swelling sea, and the
raging rivers, and the lakes breaking
over their banks-and the terror and
despair became universal.
But what should they do?