The Man Who Rocked the Earth | Page 2

fortification made approach by an attacking army
impossible and the position impregnable. These pellets, only the size of No. 4 bird shot
and harmless out of contact with air, became highly explosive two minutes after they had
been scattered broadcast upon the soil, and any friction would discharge them with
sufficient force to fracture or dislocate the bones of the human foot or to put out of
service the leg of a horse. The victim attempting to drag himself away inevitably
sustained further and more serious injuries, and no aid could be given to the injured, as it
was impossible to reach them. A field well planted with such pellets was an impassable
barrier to either infantry or cavalry, and thus any attack upon a fortified position was
doomed to failure. By surprise alone could a general expect to achieve a victory.
Offensive warfare had come almost to a standstill.
Germany had seized Holland, Denmark, and Switzerland. Italy had annexed Dalmatia
and the Trentino; and a new Slav republic had arisen out of what had been Hungary,
Croatia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Servia, Roumania, Montenegro, Albania, and Bulgaria.
Turkey had vanished from the map of Europe; while the United States of South America,
composed of the Spanish-speaking South American Republics, had been formed. The
mortality continued at an average of two thousand a day, of which 75 per cent. was due to
starvation and the plague. Maritime commerce had ceased entirely, and in consequence of
this the merchant ships of all nations rotted at the docks.
The Emperor of Germany, and the kings of England and of Italy, had all voluntarily
abdicated in favour of a republican form of government. Europe and Asia had run amuck,
hysterical with fear and blood. As well try to pacify a pack of mad and fighting dogs as
these frenzied myriads with their half-crazed generals. They lay, these armies, across the
fair bosom of the earth like dying monsters, crimson in their own blood, yet still able to
writhe upward and deal death to any other that might approach. They were at a deadlock,
yet each feared to make the first overtures for peace. There was, in actuality, no longer
even an English or a German nation. It was an orgy of homicide, in which the best of
mankind were wantonly destroyed, leaving only the puny, the feeble-minded, the

deformed, and the ineffectual to perpetuate the race.

I
It was three minutes past three postmeridian in the operating room of the new Wireless
Station recently installed at the United States Naval Observatory at Georgetown. Bill
Hood, the afternoon operator, was sitting in his shirt sleeves with his receivers at his ears,
smoking a corncob pipe and awaiting a call from the flagship Lincoln of the North
Atlantic Patrol with which, somewhere just off Hatteras, he had been in communication a
few moments before. The air was quiet.
Hood was a fat man, and so of course good-natured; but he was serious about his work
and hated all interfering amateurs. Of late these wireless pests had become particularly
obnoxious, as practically everything was sent out in code and they had nothing with
which to occupy themselves. But it was a hot day and none of them seemed to be at work.
On one side of his desk a tall thermometer indicated that the temperature of the room was
91 degrees Fahrenheit; on the other a big clock, connected with some extraneous
mechanism by a complicated system of brass rods and wires, ticked off the minutes and
seconds with a peculiar metallic self-consciousness, as if aware of its own importance in
being the official timepiece, as far as there was an official timepiece, for the entire United
States of America.
Hood from time to time tested his converters and detector, and then resumed his
non-official study of the adventures of a great detective who pursued the baffling
criminal by the aid of all the latest scientific discoveries. Hood thought it was good stuff,
although at the same time he knew, of course, that it was rot. He was a practical man of
little imagination, and, though the detective did not interest him particularly, he liked the
scientific part of the stories. He was thrifty, of Scotch-Irish descent, and at two minutes
past three had never had an adventure in his life. At three minutes past three he began his
career as one of the celebrities of the world.
As the minute hand of the official clock dropped into its slot somebody called the Naval
Observatory. The call was so faint as to be barely audible, in spite of the fact that Hood's
instrument was tuned for a three-thousand-metre wave. Supposing quite naturally that the
person calling had a shorter wave, he gradually cut out the inductance of his