The Second Deluge | Page 7

The speculative issues slid down like wheat into a bin when the chutes
are opened. Nobody could trace the exact origin of the movement, but
selling-orders came tumbling in until there was a veritable panic.
From London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, St. Petersburg, flashed dispatches
announcing that the same unreasonable slump had manifested itself
there, and all united in holding Cosmo Versál solely responsible for the
foolish break in prices. Leaders of finance rushed to the exchanges
trying by arguments and expostulations to arrest the downfall, but in
vain.

In the afternoon, however, reason partially resumed its sway; then a
quick recovery was felt, and many who had rushed to sell all they had,
found cause to regret their precipitancy. The next day all was on the
mend, as far as the stock market was concerned, but among the people
at large the poison of awakened credulity continued to spread,
nourished by fresh announcements from the fountain head.
Cosmo issued another statement to the effect that he had perfected
plans for an ark of safety, which he would begin at once to construct in
the neighborhood of New York, and he not only offered freely to give
his plans to any who wished to commence construction on their own
account, but he urged them, in the name of Heaven, to lose no time.
This produced a prodigious effect, and multitudes began to be infected
with a nameless fear.
Meanwhile an extraordinary scene occurred, behind closed doors, at the
headquarters of the Carnegie Institution in Washington. Joseph Smith,
acting under Cosmo Versál's direction, had forwarded an elaborate
précis of the latter's argument, accompanied with full mathematical
details, to the head of the institution. The character of this document
was such that it could not be ignored. Moreover, the savants composing
the council of the most important scientific association in the world
were aware of the state of the public mind, and felt that it was
incumbent upon them to do something to allay the alarm. Of late years
a sort of supervisory control over scientific news of all kinds had been
accorded to them, and they appreciated the fact that a duty now rested
upon their shoulders.
Accordingly, a special meeting was called to consider the
communication from Cosmo Versál. It was the general belief that a
little critical examination would result in complete proof of the fallacy
of all his work, proof which could be put in a form that the most
uninstructed would understand.
But the papers, diagrams, and mathematical formulae had no sooner
been spread upon the table under the knowing eyes of the learned
members of the council, than a chill of conscious impuissance ran
through them. They saw that Cosmo's mathematics were

unimpeachable. His formulae were accurately deduced, and his
operations absolutely correct.
They could do nothing but attack his fundamental data, based on the
alleged revelations of his new form of spectroscope, and on telescopic
observations which were described in so much detail that the only way
to combat them was by the general assertion that they were illusory.
This was felt to be a very unsatisfactory method of procedure, as far as
the public was concerned, because it amounted to no more than
attacking the credibility of a witness who pretended to describe only
what he himself had seen--and there is nothing so hard as to prove a
negative.
Then, Cosmo had on his side the whole force of that curious tendency
of the human mind which habitually gravitates toward whatever is
extraordinary, revolutionary, and mysterious.
But a yet greater difficulty arose. Mention has been made of the strange
bulletin from the Mount McKinley observatory. That had been
incautiously sent out to the public by a thoughtless observer, who was
more intent upon describing a singular phenomenon than upon
considering its possible effect on the popular imagination. He had
immediately received an expostulatory dispatch from headquarters
which henceforth shut his mouth--but he had told the simple truth, and
how embarrassing that was became evident when, on the very table
around which the savants were now assembled, three dispatches were
laid in quick succession from the great observatories of Mount Hekla,
Iceland, the North Cape, and Kamchatka, all corroborating the
statement of the Mount McKinley observer, that an inexplicable veiling
of faint stars had manifested itself in the boreal quarter of the sky.
When the president read these dispatches--which the senders had taken
the precaution to mark "confidential"--the members of the council
looked at one another with no little dismay. Here was the most
unprejudiced corroboration of Cosmo Versál's assertion that the great
nebula was already within the range of observation. How could they
dispute such testimony, and what were they to make of it?

Two or three of the members began to be shaken in their convictions.
"Upon