The Second Deluge | Page 5

in the
atmosphere?"
Cosmo Versál looked at his questioner with an ironical smile.

"Do you know," he asked, "how long a dirigible can be kept afloat? Do
you know for how long a voyage the best aeroplane types can be
provisioned with power? There's not an air-ship of any kind that can go
more than two weeks at the very uttermost without touching solid earth,
and then it must be mighty sparing of its power. If we can save
mankind now, and give it another chance, perhaps the time will come
when power can be drawn out of the ether of space, and men can float
in the air as long as they choose.
"But as things are now, we must go back to Noah's plan, and trust to the
buoyant power of water. I fully expect that when the deluge begins
people will flock to the high-lands and the mountains in air-ships--but
alas! that won't save them. Remember what I have told you--this flood
is going to be six miles deep!"
The second morning after the conversation between Cosmo Versál and
Joseph Smith, New York was startled by seeing, in huge red letters, on
every blank wall, on the bare flanks of towering sky-scrapers, on the
lofty stations of aeroplane lines, on bill-boards, fences,
advertising-boards along suburban roads, in the Subway stations, and
fluttering from strings of kites over the city, the following
announcement:
THE WORLD IS TO BE DROWNED!
Save Yourselves While It Is Yet Time! Drop Your Business: It Is of No
Consequence! Build Arks: It Is Your Only Salvation! The Earth Is
Going To Plunge into a Watery Nebula: There Is No Escape! Hundreds
of Millions Will Be Drowned: You Have Only a Few Months To Get
Ready! For Particulars Address: Cosmo Versál, 3000 Fifth Avenue.
CHAPTER II
MOCKING AT FATE
When New York recovered from its first astonishment over the
extraordinary posters, it indulged in a loud laugh. Everybody knew who
Cosmo Versál was. His eccentricities had filled many readable columns

in the newspapers. Yet there was a certain respect for him, too. This
was due to his extraordinary intellectual ability and unquestionable
scientific knowledge. But his imagination was as free as the winds, and
it often led him upon excursions in which nobody could follow him,
and which caused the more steady-going scientific brethren to shake
their heads. They called him able but flighty. The public considered
him brilliant and amusing.
His father, who had sprung from some unknown source in southeastern
Europe, and, beginning as a newsboy in New York, had made his way
to the front in the financial world, had left his entire fortune to Cosmo.
The latter had no taste for finance or business, but a devouring appetite
for science, to which, in his own way, he devoted all his powers, all his
time, and all his money. He never married, was never seen in society,
and had very few intimates--but he was known by sight, or reputation,
to everybody. There was not a scientific body or association of any
consequence in the world of which he was not a member. Those which
looked askance at his bizarre ideas were glad to accept pecuniary aid
from him.
The notion that the world was to be drowned had taken possession of
him about three years before the opening scene of this narrative. To
work out the idea, he built an observatory, set up a laboratory, invented
instruments, including his strange spectroscope, which was scoffed at
by the scientific world.
Finally, submitting the results of his observations to mathematical
treatment, he proved, to his own satisfaction, the absolute correctness
of his thesis that the well-known "proper motion of the solar system"
was about to result in an encounter between the earth and an invisible
watery nebula, which would have the effect of inundating the globe. As
this startling idea gradually took shape, he communicated it to
scientific men in all lands, but failed to find a single disciple, except his
friend Joseph Smith, who, without being able to follow all his
reasonings, accepted on trust the conclusions of Cosmo's more
powerful mind. Accordingly, at the end of his investigation, he enlisted
Smith as secretary, propagandist, and publicity agent.

New York laughed a whole day and night at the warning red letters.
They were the talk of the town. People joked about them in cafés, clubs,
at home, in the streets, in the offices, in the exchanges, in the street-cars,
on the Elevated, in the Subways. Crowds gathered on corners to watch
the flapping posters aloft on the kite lines. The afternoon newspapers
issued specials which were all about the coming flood, and everywhere
one heard the cry of the newsboys: "Extra-a-a! Drowning of a
Thousand Million people! Cosmo Versál predicts the End of the
World!"