The Second Deluge | Page 6

On their editorial pages the papers were careful to discount the
scare lines, and terrific pictures, that covered the front sheets, with
humorous jibes at the author of the formidable prediction.
The Owl, which was the only paper that put the news in half a column
of ordinary type, took a judicial attitude, called upon the city authorities
to tear down the posters, and hinted that "this absurd person, Cosmo
Versál, who disgraces a once honored name with his childish attempt to
create a sensation that may cause untold harm among the ignorant
masses," had laid himself open to criminal prosecution.
In their latest editions, several of the papers printed an interview with
Cosmo Versál, in which he gave figures and calculations that, on their
face, seemed to offer mathematical proof of the correctness of his
forecast. In impassioned language, he implored the public to believe
that he would not mislead them, spoke of the instant necessity of
constructing arks of safety, and averred that the presence of the terrible
nebula that was so soon to drown the world was already manifest in the
heavens.
Some readers of these confident statements began to waver, especially
when confronted with mathematics which they could not understand.
But still, in general, the laugh went on. It broke into boisterousness in
one of the largest theaters where a bright-witted "artist," who always
made a point of hitting off the very latest sensation, got himself up in a
lifelike imitation of the well-known figure of Cosmo Versál, topped
with a bald head as big as a bushel, and sailed away into the flies with a
pretty member of the ballet, whom he had gallantly snatched from a
tumbling ocean of green baize, singing at the top of his voice until they

disappeared behind the proscenium arch:
"Oh, th' Nebula is coming To drown the wicked earth, With all his
spirals humming 'S he waltzes in his mirth.
Chorus "Don't hesitate a second, Get ready to embark, And skip away
to safety With Cosmo and his ark.
"Th' Nebula is a direful bird 'S he skims the ether blue! He's angry over
what he's heard, 'N's got his eye on you.
Chorus "Don't hesitate a second, etc.
"When Nebulas begin to pipe The bloomin' O.H.[subscript]2 Y'bet yer
life the time is ripe To think what you will do.
Chorus "Don't hesitate a second, etc.
"He'll tip th' Atlantic o'er its brim, And swamp the mountains tall; He'll
let the broad Pacific in, And leave no land at all.
Chorus "Don't hesitate a second, etc.
"He's got an option on the spheres; He's leased the Milky Way; He's
caught the planets in arrears, 'N's bound to make 'em pay.
Chorus "Don't hesitate a second, etc."
The roars of laughter and applause with which this effusion of
vaudeville genius was greeted, showed the cheerful spirit in which the
public took the affair. No harm seemed to have come to the "ignorant
masses" yet.
But the next morning there was a suspicious change in the popular
mind. People were surprised to see new posters in place of the old ones,
more lurid in letters and language than the original. The morning
papers had columns of description and comment, and some of them
seemed disposed to treat the prophet and his prediction with a certain
degree of seriousness.

The savants who had been interviewed overnight, did not talk very
convincingly, and made the mistake of flinging contempt on both
Cosmo and "the gullible public."
Naturally, the public wouldn't stand for that, and the pendulum of
opinion began to swing the other way. Cosmo helped his cause by
sending to every newspaper a carefully prepared statement of his
observations and calculations, in which he spoke with such force of
conviction that few could read his words without feeling a thrill of
apprehensive uncertainty. This was strengthened by published
dispatches which showed that he had forwarded his warnings to all the
well-known scientific bodies of the world, which, while decrying them,
made no effective response.
And then came a note of positive alarm in a double-leaded bulletin
from the new observatory at Mount McKinley, which affirmed that
during the preceding night a singular obscurity had been suspected in
the northern sky, seeming to veil many stars below the twelfth
magnitude. It was added that the phenomenon was unprecedented, but
that the observation was both difficult and uncertain.
Nowhere was the atmosphere of doubt and mystery, which now began
to hang over the public, so remarkable as in Wall Street. The sensitive
currents there responded like electric waves to the new influence, and,
to the dismay of hard-headed observers, the market dropped as if it had
been hit with a sledge-hammer. Stocks went down five, ten, in some
cases twenty points in as many minutes.