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It was on the fourth day of August, just three months after the passing of Clinton and his expedition, that the first news of the approaching terror was given to the world. That first news was in the form of a dispatch from the government oceanographic station at Portsmouth, in which it was stated that during the last three days the level of the sea had risen almost as many feet. Unnaturally high tides had been lashing the coasts of England and of the world during those days, the message stated, and a study of them had disclosed the astounding and unexplainable rise which had taken place. The dispatch added that the rise was a world-wide and not a local one, since corroborative reports of it had been received from associated oceanographic stations at New York, Yokohama, Sydney and Calcutta.
It is not wonderful that that brief first message aroused in the world of science, and even in the world of everyday, a very intense interest and curiosity. Published as it was in all the London journals on the evening of the fourth, and by them transmitted by wire and wireless to the world at large, it soon eclipsed even the latest atrocious murder as a theme of general discussion. For if there is one thing considered constant in this changing world of ours, it is the level of the sea. All our heights and depths are compared to and computed from it, so unchanging do we esteem it; since though great tides may come and go the level of the sea itself seems never to change, so delicately balanced are the combined processes of evaporation and condensation which deplete and replenish it. And for this hitherto unchanging level to rise suddenly for almost three feet, in as many days, was a phenomenon of intense interest and mystery.
Scientists, indeed, when confronted with accounts of what had taken place, could only shake their heads in somewhat helpless perplexity. No ordinary conditions, of course, could account for such a tremendous and unprecedented rise as this. They ventured the suggestion, though, that some great subterranean upheaval or earthquake might have forced up the bed of the ocean in some spot to such a distance as to heighten the level of the waters. If such an upheaval had taken place in some central spot, they pointed out, such as the Arctic or Antarctic regions, it might well have caused such a great rise as this in the level of all the sea. They were unable, however, to explain the fact that during the last few weeks no such upheaval or quake whatever had been recorded by the seismographs of the world.
Unchecked by any positive knowledge as to the thing’s cause, therefore, it could be argued and discussed during the next day or two with zest, and many and fantastic were the explanations that were advanced. The great space devoted to it by the newspapers had aroused the public’s fickle interest, and during the next two days the sea and the great tides which were rolling in from it against the coasts of all the world became the center of a world-wide interest. In Sussex and in Anglesey, in Maine and in California, in Korea as in Ceylon, there were everywhere large groups of interested spectators gathered along cliff and sea-wall and beach, to watch those great green tides shattering themselves against the shore, and to speculate idly on the subject of general interest. In England and the Continent, as well as in America, special excursion trains were run to many beaches, and the proprietors of resorts reaped a sudden and unexpected harvest.
It was true that here and there some damage had been done by the rising of the waters, and by the great, unnatural tides, but it was not of a magnitude large enough to arouse attention. A row of bathing-machines wrecked, a road or sea-wall washed away, a beached boat or two swept out to sea—such events as these could hardly seem important to the mass of people in comparison to the strange conditions which had caused them. It was also true that the lot of ships at sea had become suddenly very arduous, due to the great seas running, and that large numbers of the smaller boats had been forced to remain in port until the great tides abated, yet even this made no impression save on that small portion of the world’s population which follows the sea. The larger part of the public chose, during those two days, to regard this strange manifestation as a spectacle rather designed for its own entertainment and interest. On the evening of the second day, though, the 6th, there came that which suddenly swept away this attitude.
This was the second calm report from the Portsmouth station, given to the waiting newspapers late on the afternoon of the 6th. Within an hour it had flashed along the telegraph keys and wires, and had fallen into type and was leaping from the presses in London, and in New York, too, and in cities around the whole earth’s girdle. And with the publication of that message the whole matter suddenly lost its lighter aspects, and the world that had theorized and laughed and joked concerning it suddenly sobered, and looked up with startled eyes. For the Portsmouth station’s second report stated that the rise already noted had not stopped but was apparently still continuing at the same steady and extraordinary rate, having risen some two feet further during the ensuing two days.
“While this extraordinary rise is purely a temporary one, of course,” said the report, “it seems advisable that preparations be made for the evacuation of whatever regions or sections lie at a height of less than ten feet above the former standard sea-level.” It was this calm advice that sent a sudden chill across the peoples of the earth, so that for the first time there rose the thought of peril in connection with the thing. All during the next day, while the day and night slid around the world in endless alternation, men spoke of the thing with knitted brows and troubled eyes, and in Edinburgh and Chicago and Honolulu and Bombay said to each other, as though with a strange new thought, “If this thing—this rise—keeps on, it’s going to be a bad thing, d’ye know?” It was as though that thought had stridden across the world like some giant specter of fear, to still with lifted ghostly hand the laughter which the matter had aroused at first.
But in one spot of earth men neither laughed nor spoke concerning it, but labored madly to stem the peril which they saw rising swift to whelm them and theirs. An observer hanging high over Holland on that fateful 6th would have made out, all along the coasts of that sunken little land, a desperate and unceasing activity, as of the efforts of some swarming insects to repair a breach in their tiny fortifications. For the last few days, indeed, the rising sea had been lashing with all the power of its tremendous tides against the dikes which alone protected the sunken little land from the fury of the ocean. Inch by inch that land had been won from the ocean’s power, and walled with the thick dikes which until now had resisted all the ocean’s blows; but thick as they were their height was not great, and toward their tops the rising waters had been steadily clawing during the last few days.
As sunset of that day gleamed blood-red in the west the anxious watchers saw that even the parapets of hastily filled sandbags which they had placed upon their dikes were giving beneath the thunderous tides, and shifting and dissolving. Valiantly they labored, as men will do for their life and land, but before midnight of that night through a score of great breaches the long-repressed seas were rushing in upon the little land in ravening, titanic fury, and church bells were ringing wildly across the countryside and beacon fires blazing red, while roads and canals were choked with hordes of panic-driven fugitives fleeing blindly through the darkness from the terror that leaped upon them from behind. And when at last sunrise gleamed golden over the body-choked waters and over the flooded meadows and spires of cities, word had been flashed to the world that more than half of Holland was under water, its cities buried and populations drowned by the vast, inrushing floods.
With that word the strained anxiety of the world dissolved suddenly into stark fear. It was only the most emphatic messages of reassurance on the part of the newspapers and agencies of public information that prevented a great panic on that morning. They admitted that the disaster had occurred, but pointed out that it had been caused by the breaking of the dikes, as similar disasters had been caused before. No such thing could occur elsewhere, they stated, and assured the public that the rise in the sea’s level was only temporary, caused by the subterranean upheaval which had been mentioned by the scientists. Not only would the rise not continue, they predicted, but it would be seen when the measurements were made public that evening that a positive lowering of the waters had taken place.
With such assertions the rising panic of the earth’s people was calmed a little on that morning, but the foreboding of dread to come increased as the extra editions poured from the presses that day hour-by-hour chronicles of further disaster. Parts of Lancaster and Norfolk were already flooded, they learned, their inhabitants fleeing by every road to higher ground. Louisiana and the lower valley of the Mississippi were under water, and the basin of the Amazon was a maze of flooded jungles. Fishing villages on the Chinese and Japanese coasts had been swept away with great loss of life by the vast tides of the Pacific, the plantations of lower Malaya had become salt swamps, and along the coastlines of India and Africa the waves were battering the shore with terrific fury. Scores of ships at sea were known to have foundered, sending out despairing calls for help until the last, while others making for the nearest harbor had been caught by the great tides and flung against cliffs and shoals to be pounded into unrecognizable wreckage.
Yet still, through the long hours of that tense day, the authorities and newspapers combined to allay the rising panic. These conditions were but temporary, they repeated, could be but temporary. The sea had risen almost a half-dozen feet during the last few days, due to certain extraordinary conditions, but it would rise no higher, could rise no higher. When the report from the oceanographic stations came, that would be seen. Until then they implored the public not to yield to the excitement of alarmists. So through all that day the peoples of England, and of America, and of all the world, remained tensely quiet, waiting, waiting for the word that would either explode their fears or spell their doom. And at last, late that evening, the word they awaited came.
“The extraordinary and unprecedented rise of the sea’s level,” said the general report issued from the Portsmouth and associated oceanographic stations, “has not subsided during the last twenty-four hours, but on the contrary has increased approximately a foot more, indicating that this rise, whatever may be its cause, is still continuing at the same rate as when first observed. It is impossible to predict when the rise will cease, knowing as we do nothing of its cause, and it will be also impossible to issue further reports from these stations, since the rise of the waters makes their abandonment necessary. Our only suggestion is that the world’s peoples make their way toward the highest grounds near them, since it is clearly evident that within a few more days this continuing rise will result in the flooding of the earth’s surface to an unpredictable depth and extent.”
That brief, calm message, the last to be sent out by the oceanographic stations, let loose upon the world such a hurricane of panic as it had never known before. We look back, now, upon the night that followed it as one of the most terrible in the history of humanity, a night in which death and fear stalked together across the world like gigantic twin destroyers. For in all the cities of the world, that night, were such scenes, such rushing crowds and shouting men and flaring lights, as no man had ever seen before.
In London the great Thames was already flooding over its embankments into the great basin in which the city lay. The power-plants that lit the great city were failing one by one as the rising waters reached them, section after section snapping into sudden darkness, while away to the west the soaring red flames of a great fire east a quivering crimson glow across the doomed and drowning metropolis. Beneath that ghastly light, through the swift-running streets, the panic-driven mobs fought and splashed their way toward the nearest hills, toward the open country, toward safety. Crowded automobiles whirled through those streets in blind disregard of those whom they ran down. Ships all along the flooded harbor stood out to sea, preferring rather to face the great waves and mountainous tides than to be smashed helplessly against their moorings. Airplanes high above buzzed unceasingly through the night, to north and south and east, to wherever was higher ground.
And in New York, too, the seas were lapping now against the great buildings that seemed to tower up in splendid disdain of the waters clawing at their bases. There, too, were flooded streets, and rushing, fear-mad mobs, and fierce men with burning eyes who bawled at street corners of the wrath of the Lord and of the returning deluge. Already immense crowds had collected on the heights of the island’s northern part, and from there, and from the other heights westward, they watched with awe the sweeping seas that rolled and broke now across the squares and parks and avenues of the proudest city in the world. And by then, too, the populations of Boston, and Philadelphia, and San Francisco and Seattle were fleeing inland by every road, and of New Orleans there remained visible only the roofs of flooded buildings.
Everywhere on earth, in those hours, men were turning away from the coasts, away from the vast, ravening seas that were hurling themselves over the land, and were pushing inland toward higher ground, toward the Alps and the Appalachians, toward the Pyrenees and the Andes, toward the Himalayas and the Rockies. And even as they fled, news was flashing along the last remaining lines of communication of great tidal waves that had wiped away life in the Hawaiian and Philippine Islands, of the waters of the China and Yellow Seas black with the bodies of drowned men, of the fear that had lit India red with the torch of terror, that had prostrated black and howling hordes along flooded African coasts, that had made of a hundred European cities infernos of roaring panic. For through all of earth’s five continents, that night, the roads leading inland were the scene of the stampede of humanity.
Through the darkness of that dread night they went, vast, unorganized mobs that fled blindly on, pushing and striking and trampling, and as they fled the last organizations of men were slipping and crushing, knocked down like children’s houses of blocks by the giant hand of fear. It was the flood, the ever-feared deluge of all the legends of men, the horror that was springing upon all the earth. Men prayed and fought and sobbed and killed themselves in their raving fear, that night, but ever the remorseless waters rose higher, and higher, and higher. Up and up they came, slowly, steadily, surely, up toward the annihilation of man and the age-old reign of man, up toward the whelming of a world.