mutineer walk the plank, but, as he had told Captain Arms, they didn’t know him. They were about to see that in Cosmo Versal they had not only a prophet, a leader, and a judge, but an inexorable master also.
A plank was prepared and placed sloping from the rail.
“Walk!” said Cosmo firmly.
To everybody’s surprise Campo, with blinded eyes, started immediately up the plank, followed its full length with quick, unfaltering step, and plunging from the end, disappeared in the sea.
Many had turned away, unable to look, but many also saw the tragedy to the end. Then a profound sigh was heard from the whole company of the spectators. As they turned away, talking in awed voices, they felt, as never before, that the world had shrunk to the dimensions of the Ark, and that Cosmo Versal was its dictator.
That same afternoon Cosmo arranged one of his “conferences,” and nobody dared to be absent, although all minds were yet too much excited to follow the discussions which few could understand. But at length Costake Theriade concentrated their attention by a wild burst of eloquence about the wonders of the inter-atomic forces. Sir Athelstone, unable to endure the applause that greeted his rival, abruptly sprang to his feet, his round face red with anger, and shouted:
“I say, you know, this is twaddle!”
“Will the Englishman interrupt not?” cried Theriade, with his eyes ablaze. “Shall I project not the Sir Englishman to the feeshes?”
He looked as if he were about to try to execute his threat, and Sir Athelstone assumed a boxing attitude; but before hostilities could begin a loud shout from the deck, followed by cries and exclamations, caused everybody to rush out of the saloon.
Those who succeeded in getting a glimpse over the shoulders of the members of the crew, who were already lined up along the only portion of the bulwarks available for seeing the part of the ocean on which attention seemed to be fixed, stared open-mouthed at a round-backed mass of shining metal, with a circular aperture on the top, the cover of which was canted to one side, and there stood a man, waving a gold-laced red kepi, and bowing and smiling with great civility.
CHAPTER XVII
THE _JULES VERNE_
The swell of the sea caused the strange-looking craft to rise and sink a little, and sometimes the water ran bubbling all around the low rim of the aperture, in the center of which the red-capped man stood, resting on some invisible support, repeating his salutations and amicable smiles, and balancing his body to the rocking of the waves with the unconscious skill of a sailor.
The Ark was running slowly, but it would very soon have left the stranger in its wake if he had not also been in motion. It was evident that the object under his feet must be a submersible vessel of some kind, although it was of a type which Captain Arms, standing beside Cosmo on the bridge, declared that he had never set eyes on before. It lay so low in the water that nothing could be seen of its motive machinery, but it kept its place alongside the Ark with the ease of a dolphin, and gradually edged in closer and closer.
When it was so near that he could be heard speaking in a voice hardly raised above the ordinary pitch, the man, first again lifting his cap with an easy gesture, addressed Cosmo Versal by name, using the English language with a scarcely perceptible accent:
“M. Versal, I offer you my felicitations upon the magnificent appearance of your Ark, and I present my compliments to the ladies and gentlemen of your company.”
And then he bowed once more to the passengers, who were almost crowding each other over the side in their eagerness to both see and hear.
“Thank you,” responded Cosmo, “but who are you?”
“Capitaine Yves de Beauxchamps, of the French army.”
“Where’s the navy, then?” blurted out Captain Arms.
De Beauxchamps glanced at the speaker a little disdainfully, and then replied gravely:
“Alas! At the bottom of the sea–with all the other navies.”
“And how have you escaped?” demanded Cosmo Versal.
“As you see, in a submersible.”
“Can it be possible!” exclaimed Cosmo. “And you have been in the sea ever since the beginning of the flood?”
“Since the first rise of the ocean on the coast at Brest.”
“Have you no companions?”
“Six–in truth, seven.”
“Astonishing!” said Cosmo Versal. “But I heard nothing of the preparation of a submersible. In fact, the idea of such a thing never occurred to me. You must have made your preparations secretly.”
“We did. We did not share your certainty, M. Versal, concerning the arrival of a deluge. Even when we embarked we were not sure that it would be more than an affair of the coasts.”
“But you must be on the point of starvation by this time. The flood has only begun. This cessation is but for a time, while we are passing a gap in the nebula. You will come aboard the Ark. I had chosen my company, but your gallant escape, and the ability that you have shown, prove that you are worthy to aid in the re-establishment of the race, and I have no doubt that your companions are equally worthy.”
The Frenchman bowed politely, and with a slight smile replied:
“I believe, M. Versal, that the _Jules Verne_ is as safe and comfortable, and proportionately as well provisioned, as your Ark.”
“So you call it the _Jules Verne?_” returned Cosmo, smiling in his turn.
“We were proud to give it that name, and its conduct has proved that it is worthy of it.”
“But you will surely come aboard and shake hands, and let us offer you a little hospitality,” said Cosmo.
“I should be extremely happy to pay my compliments to the ladies,” responded De Beauxchamps, “but I must postpone that pleasure for the present. In the meantime, however, I should be glad if you would lower a landing stage, and permit me to send aboard the seventh member of our party, who, I venture to think, may find the Ark a more comfortable abode than our submersible.”
“And who may that person be?”
“_The King of England._”
Exclamations of surprise and wonder were heard on all sides.
“Yes,” resumed the Frenchman, “we picked up his majesty the first day after the deluge began to descend from the sky.”
“I will lower a ladder at once,” Cosmo called out, and immediately ran down to the lowest deck, commanding his men to make haste.
The _Jules Verne_ was skillfully brought close up to the side of the Ark, so that the visible part of her rounded back was nearly in contact with the bottom of the companion-ladder when it had been lowered. The sea was so calm that there was little difficulty in executing this maneuver. De Beauxchamps disappeared in the depths of the submersible, and after a few minutes re-emerged into sight, supporting on his arm a stout, rather short man, whose face, it was evident, had once been full and ruddy, but now it was pale and worn.
“It is he!” exclaimed an English member of Cosmo’s company to some of his fellow-countrymen who had forced their way to the front.
_”It is the king!”_
And then occurred a singular thing, inspired by the marvelous circumstances of this meeting of the sovereign of a drowned kingdom, upon the bosom of the waters that had destroyed it, with the mere handful which remained alive out of all the millions of his subjects.
These loyal Englishmen bared their heads (and there were three women among them) and sang, with a pathos that surely the old hymn had never expressed before, their national anthem: “God Save the King.”
The effect was immense. Every head aboard the Ark was immediately uncovered. De Beauxchamps removed his cap, and one or two bared heads could be seen peering out of the interior of the submersible below him. As the king was steadied across to the bottom of the companion-ladder, the voices of the singers rose louder, and many of the other passengers, moved by sympathy, or carried away by epidemic feeling, joined in the singing. Never had any monarch a greeting like that! Its recipient was moved to the depths of his soul, and but for the aid given him would have been unable to ascend the swaying steps.
As he was assisted upon the deck, the song ceased and a great cheer broke forth. There were tears in his eyes, and he trembled in every limb, when he returned the welcoming pressure of Cosmo Versal’s hand.
The moment he saw that the king was safely aboard the Ark, De Beauxchamps, with a farewell salutation, disappeared into the interior of the _Jules Verne_, and the submersible sank out of sight as gently as if it had been a huge fish that had come to the top of the sea to take a look about.
After the sensation caused by the arrival of the English monarch aboard the Ark had somewhat quieted down, and after his majesty had had an opportunity to recover himself, Cosmo Versal invited his new guest to tell the story of his escape. They were seated in Cosmo’s cabin, and there were present Joseph Smith, Professor Jeremiah Moses, Professor Abel Able, and Amos Blank, beside several other members of the ship’s company, including two of the loyal Englishmen who quite naturally had been the first to strike up the national anthem on seeing their rescued king.
Richard Edward, or Richard IV as he was officially entitled, was one of the best kings England ever had. He was popular not only because of his almost democratic manners and the simplicity of his life, but more because he was a great lover of peace. We have already seen how he was chosen, solely on that account, to be of the number of the rulers invited to go in the Ark. He had not even replied to Cosmo’s invitation, but that was simply because, like everybody about him in whom he placed confidence, he regarded Cosmo Versal as a mere mountebank, and thought that there was no more danger of a flood that would cover the earth than of the fall of the moon out of the sky.
Before responding to Cosmo’s request he made a gracious reference to the indifference with which he had formerly treated his present host.
“I am sorry, Mr. Versal,” he said, with a deprecatory smile, “that I did not sooner recognize the fact that your knowledge surpassed that of my scientific advisers.”
“Your majesty was not alone,” replied Cosmo gravely, turning with his finger a small globe that stood on his desk. “From all these deep-sunken continents” (waving his hand toward the globe), “if the voices once heard there could now speak, there would arise a mighty sound of lament for that great error.”
The king looked at him with an expression of surprise. He glanced from Cosmo’s diminutive figure to his great overhanging brow, marked with the lines of thought, and a look of instinctive deference came into his eyes.
“But,” continued Cosmo Versal, “it is bootless to speak of these things now. I beg that your majesty will condescend to enlighten us concerning the fate of that great kingdom, of ancient renown, over which you so worthily reigned.”
An expression of deepest pain passed across the face of Richard Edward. For some moments he remained buried in a mournful silence, and many sighs came from his breast. All looked at him with profound commiseration. At last he raised his head, and said, sorrowfully and brokenly:
“My kingdom is drowned–my subjects have perished, almost to the last soul –my family, my gracious consort, my children–all, all–gone!”
Here he broke down, and could speak no more. Not a word was heard, for a time in the room, and the two Englishmen present wept with their unfortunate king.
Cosmo Versal was no less deeply moved than the others. He sat, for a while, in complete silence. Then he arose and, going to the king, put his hand upon his shoulder, and talked to him long, in a low, consoling voice. At last the broken-spirited monarch was able to suppress his emotions sufficiently to recite, but with many interruptions while he remastered his feelings, the story of his woes and of his marvelous escape.
“Sir Francis Brook,” he said, “prepared a barge, when the water invaded London, and in that barge we escaped–her royal majesty, our children, and a number of members of the royal household. The barge was the only vessel of levium that existed in England. Sir Francis had furnished and provisioned it well, and we did not think that it would be necessary to go farther than to some high point in the interior. Sir Francis was of the opinion that Wales would afford a secure refuge.
“It was a terrible thing to see the drowning of London, the sweeping of the awful bore that came up the Thames from the sea, the shipping wrecked by the tearing waves, the swirl of the fast-rising water round the immense basin in which the city lay, the downfall of the great buildings– Westminster Abbey was one of the first that succumbed–the overturned boats, and even great vessels floating on their sides, or bottom up, the awful spectacle of the bodies of the drowned tossing in the waves–all these sights were before our horrified eyes while the vast eddy swept us round and round until the water rose so high that we were driven off toward the southwest.
“That we should have escaped at all was a miracle of miracles. It was the wonderful buoyancy of the levium barge that saved us. But the terrors of that scene can never fade from my memory. And the fearful sufferings of the queen! And our children–but I _cannot_ go on with this!”
“Calm yourself, your majesty,” said Cosmo sympathetically. “The whole world has suffered with you. If we are spared and are yet alive, it is through the hand of Providence–to which all of us must bow.”
“We must have passed over Surrey and Hampshire,” the king resumed, “the invasion of the sea having buried the hills.”
“I am surprised at that,” said Cosmo. “I did not think that the sea had anywhere attained so great an elevation before the nebula condensed. At New York the complete drowning of the city did not occur until the downpour from the sky began.”
“Oh! that deluge from the heavens!” cried the king. “What we had suffered before seemed but little in comparison. It came upon us after night; and the absolute darkness, the awful roaring, the terrific force of the falling water, the sense of suffocation, the rapid filling of the barge until the water was about our necks–these things drove us wild with despair.
“I tried to sustain my poor queen in my arms, but she struggled to seize the children and hold them above the water, and in her efforts she escaped from my hands, and henceforth I could find her no more. I stumbled about, but it was impossible to see; it was impossible to hear. At last I fell unconscious face downward, as it afterward appeared, upon a kind of bench at the rear end of the barge, which was covered with a narrow metallic roofing, and raised above the level of the bulwarks. It was there that I had tried to shelter the queen and the children.
“In some way I must have become lodged there, under the awning, in such a position that the pitching of the barge failed to throw me off. I never regained consciousness until I heard a voice shouting in my ear, and felt some one pulling me, and when I had recovered my senses, I found myself in the submersible.”
“And all your companions were gone?” asked Cosmo, in a voice shaking with pity.
“Yes, oh, Lord! All! They had been swept overboard by the waves–and would that I had gone with them!”
The poor king broke down again and sobbed. After a long pause Cosmo asked gently:
“Did the Frenchman tell you how he came upon the barge?”
“He said that in rising to the surface to find out the state of things there the submersible came up directly under the barge, canting it in such a way that I was rolled out and he caught me as I was swept close to the opening.”
“But how was it that the downpour, entering the submersible, when the cover was removed, did not fill it with water?”
“He had the cover so arranged that it served as an almost complete protection from the rain. Some water did enter, but not much.”
“A wonderful man, that Frenchman,” said Cosmo. “He would be an acquisition for me. What did he say his name was? Oh, yes, De Beauxchamps–I’ll make a note of that. I shouldn’t wonder if we heard of him again.”
Cosmo Versal was destined to encounter Yves de Beauxchamps and his wonderful submersible _Jules Verne_ sooner, and under more dramatic circumstances than he probably anticipated.
CHAPTER XVIII
NAVIGATING OVER DROWNED EUROPE
After the English king had so strangely become a member of its company the Ark resumed its course in the direction of what had once been Europe. The spot where the meeting with the _Jules Verne_ had occurred was west of Cape Finisterre and, according to the calculations of Captain Arms, in longitude fifteen degrees four minutes west; latitude forty-four degrees nine minutes north.
Cosmo decided to run into the Bay of Biscay, skirting its southern coast in order to get a view of the Cantabrian Mountains, many of whose peaks, he thought, ought still to lie well above the level of the water.
“There are the Peaks of Europa,” said Captain Arms, “which lie less than twenty miles directly back from the coast. The highest point is eight thousand six hundred and seventy feet above sea level, or what used to be sea level. We could get near enough to it, without any danger, to see how high the water goes.”
“Do you know the locality?” demanded Cosmo.
“As well as I know a compass-card!” exclaimed the captain. “I’ve seen the Europa peaks a hundred times. I was wrecked once on that coast, and being of an inquiring disposition, I took the opportunity to go up into the range and see the old mines–and a curious sight it was, too. But the most curious sight of all was the shepherdesses of Tresvido, dressed just like the men, in homespun breeches that never wore out. You’d meet ’em anywhere on the slopes of the Pico del Ferro, cruising about with their flocks. And the cheese that they made! There never was any such cheese!”
“Well, if you know the place so well,” said Cosmo, “steer for it as fast as you can. I’m curious to find out just how high this flood has gone, up to the present moment.”
“Maybe we can rescue a shepherdess,” returned the captain, chuckling. “She’d be an ornament to your new Garden of Eden.”
They kept on until, as they approached longitude five degrees west, they began to get glimpses of the mountains of northern Spain. The coast was all under deep water, and also the foothills and lower ranges, but some of the peaks could be made out far inland. At length, by cautious navigation, Captain Arms got the vessel quite close to the old shore line of the Asturias, and then he recognized the Europa peaks.
“There they are,” he cried. “I’d know ’em if they’d emigrated to the middle of Africa. There’s the old Torre de Cerredo and the Pena Santa.”
“How high did you say the main peak is?” asked Cosmo.
“She’s eight thousand six hundred and seventy feet.”
“From your knowledge of the coast, do you think it safe to run in closer?”
“Yes, if you’re sure the water is not less than two thousand four hundred feet above the old level we can get near enough to see the water-line on the peaks, from the cro’nest, which is two hundred feet high.”
“Go ahead, then.”
They got closer than they had imagined possible, so close that, from the highest lookout on the Ark, they were able with their telescopes to see very clearly where the water washed the barren mountainsides at what seemed to be a stupendous elevation.
“I’m sorry about your shepherdesses,” said Cosmo, smiling. “I don’t think you’d find any there to rescue if you could get to them. They must all have been lost in the torrents that poured down those mountains.”
“More’s the pity,” said Captain Arms. “That was a fine lot of women. There’ll be no more cheese like what they made at Tresvido.”
Cosmo inquired if the captain’s acquaintance with the topography of the range enabled him to say how high that water was. The captain, after long inspection, declared that he felt sure that it was not less than four thousand feet above the old coast line.
“Then,” said Cosmo, “if you’re right about the elevation of what you call the Torre de Cerredo there must be four thousand six hundred and seventy feet of its upper part still out of water. We’ll see if that is so.”
Cosmo made the measurements with instruments, and announced that the result showed the substantial accuracy of Captain Arms’s guess.
“I suspected as much,” he muttered. “Those tremendous downpours, which may have been worse elsewhere than where we encountered them, have increased the rise nearly seventy per cent, above what my gages indicated. Now that I know this,” he continued, addressing the captain: “I’ll change the course of the Ark. I’m anxious to get into the Indian Ocean as soon as possible. It would be a great waste of time to go back in order to cross the Sahara, and with this increase of level it isn’t necessary. We’ll just set out across southern France, keeping along north of the Pyrenees, and so down into the region of the Mediterranean.”
Captain Arms was astonished by the boldness of this suggestion, and at first he strongly objected to their taking such a course.
“There’s some pretty high ground in southern France,” he said. “There’s the Cevennes Mountains, which approach a good long way toward the Pyrenees. Are you sure the depth of water is the same everywhere?”
“What a question for an old mariner to ask!” returned Cosmo. “Don’t you know that the level of the sea is the same everywhere? The flood doesn’t make any difference. It seeks its level like any other water.”
“But it may be risky steering between those mountains,” persisted the captain.
“Nonsense! As long as the sky is clear you can get good observations, and you ought to be navigator enough not to run on a mountain.”
Cosmo Versal, as usual, was unalterable in his resolution–he only changed when he had reasons of his own–and the course of the Ark was laid, accordingly, for the old French coast of the Landes, so low that it was now covered with nearly four thousand feet of water. The feelings of the passengers were deeply stirred when they learned that they were actually sailing over buried Europe, and they gazed in astonishment at the water beneath them, peering down into it as if they sought to discover the dreadful secrets that it hid, and talking excitedly in a dozen languages.
The Ark progressed slowly, making not more than five or six knots, and on the second day after they dropped the Penas de Europa they were passing along the northern flank of the Pyrenees and over the basin in which had lain the beautiful city of Pau. The view of the Pyrenees from this point had always been celebrated before the deluge as one of the most remarkable in the world.
Now it had lost its beauty, but gained in spectacular grandeur. All of France, as far as the eye extended, was a sea, with long oceanic swells slowly undulating its surface. This sea abruptly came to an end where it met the mountains, which formed for it a coast unlike any that the hundreds of eyes which wonderingly surveyed it from the Ark had ever beheld.
Beyond the drowned vales and submerged ranges, which they knew lay beneath the watery floor, before them, rose the heads of the Pic du Midi, the Pic de Ger, the Pic de Bigorre, the Massif du Gabizos, the Pic Monne, and dozens of other famous eminences, towering in broken ranks like the bearskins of a “forlorn hope,” resisting to the last, in pictures of old-time battles.
Here, owing to the configuration of the drowned land it was possible for the Ark to approach quite close to some of the wading mountains, and Cosmo seized the opportunity to make a new measure of the height of the flood, which he found to be surely not less than his former estimates had shown.
Surveying with telescopes the immense shoulders of the Monne, the Viscos, the d’Ardiden, and the nearer heights, when they were floating above the valley of Lourdes, Cosmo and the captain saw the terrible effects that had been produced by the torrents of rain, which had stripped off the vegetation whose green robe had been the glory of the high Pyrenees on the French side.
Presently their attention was arrested by some moving objects, and at a second glance they perceived that these were human beings.
“Good Heaven!” exclaimed Cosmo Versal. “There are survivors here. They have climbed the mountains, and found shelter among the rocks. I should not have thought it possible.”
“And there are women among them,” said Captain Arms, lowering his telescope. “You will not leave them there!”
“But what can I do?”
“Lower away the boats,” replied the captain. “We’ve got plenty of them.”
“There may be thousands there,” returned Cosmo, musing. “I can’t take them all.”
“Then take as many as you can. By gad, sir, _I’ll_ not leave ’em!”
By this time some of the passengers who had powerful glasses had discovered the refugees on the distant heights, and great excitement spread throughout the Ark. Cries arose from all parts of the vessel:
“Rescue them!” “Go to their aid!” “Don’t let them perish!”
Cosmo Versal was in a terrible quandary. He was by no means without humanity, and was capable of deep and sympathetic feeling, as we have seen, but he already had as many persons in the Ark as he thought ought to be taken, considering the provision that had been made, and, besides, he could not throw off, at once, his original conviction of the necessity of carefully choosing his companions. He remained for a long time buried in thought, while the captain fumed with impatience and at last declared that if Cosmo did not give the order to lower away the boats he would do it himself.
At length Cosmo, yielding rather to his own humane feelings than to the urging of others, consented to make the experiment. Half a dozen levium launches were quickly lowered and sent off, while the Ark, with slowed engines, remained describing a circle as near the mountains as it was safe to go. Cosmo himself embarked in the leading boat.
The powerful motors of the launches carried them rapidly to the high slopes where the unfortunates had sought refuge, and as they approached, and the poor fugitives saw that deliverance was at hand, they began to shout, and cheer, and cry, and many of them fell on their knees upon the rocks and stretched their hands toward the heavens.
The launches were compelled to move with great caution when they got near the ragged sides of the submerged mountains (it was the Peyre Dufau on which the people had taken refuge), but the men aboard them were determined to effect the rescue, and they regarded no peril too closely. At last Cosmo’s launch found a safe landing, and the others quickly followed it.
When Cosmo sprang out on a flat rock a crowd of men, women, and children, weeping, crying, sobbing, and uttering prayers and blessings, instantly surrounded him. Some wrung his hands in an ecstasy of joy, some embraced him, some dropped on their knees before him and sought to kiss his hands. Cosmo could not restrain his tears, and the crews of the launches were equally affected.
Many of these people could only speak the patois of the mountains, but some were refugees from the resorts in the valleys below, and among these were two English tourists who had been caught among the mountains by the sudden rising of the flood. They exhibited comparative _sang froid_, and served as spokesmen for the others.
“Bah Jove!” exclaimed one of them, “but you’re welcome, you know! This has been a demnition close call! But what kind of a craft have you got out there?”
“I’m Cosmo Versal.”
“Then that’s the Ark we’ve heard about! ‘Pon honor, I should have recognized you, for I’ve seen your picture often enough. You’ve come to take us off, I suppose?”
“Certainly,” replied Cosmo. “How many are there?”
“All that you see here; about a hundred, I should say. No doubt there are others on the mountains round. There must have been a thousand of us when we started, but most of them perished, overcome by the downpour, or swept away by the torrents. Lord Swansdown (indicating his companion, who bowed gravely and stiffly) and myself–I’m Edward Whistlington–set out to walk over the Pyrenees from end to end, after the excitement about the great darkness died out, and we got as far as the Marbore, and then running down to Gavarnie we heard news of the sea rising, but we didn’t give too much credit to that, and afterward, keeping up in the heights, we didn’t hear even a rumor from the world below.
“The sky opened on us like a broadside from an aerial squadron, and how we ever managed to get here I’m sure I can hardly tell. We were actually _carried_ down the mountainsides by the water, and how it failed to drown us will be an everlasting mystery. Somehow, we found ourselves among these people, who were trying to go _up_, assuring us that there was nothing but water below. And at last we discovered some sort of shelter here–and here we’ve been ever since.”
“You cannot have had much to eat,” said Cosmo.
“Not _too_ much, I assure you,” replied the Englishman, with a melancholy smile. “But these people shared with us what little they had, or could find–anything and everything that was eatable. They’re a devilish fine lot, I tell you!
“When the terrible rain suddenly ceased and the sky cleared,” he resumed, “we managed to get dry, after a day or two, and since then we’ve been chewing leather until there isn’t a shoe or a belt left. We thought at first of trying to build rafts–but then where could we go? It wasn’t any use to sail out over a drowned country, with nothing in sight but the mountains around us, which looked no better than the one we were barely existing on.”
“Then I must get you aboard the Ark before you starve,” said Cosmo.
“Many have died of starvation already,” returned Whistlington. “You can’t get us off a moment too quick.”
Cosmo Versal had by this time freed himself of every trace of the reluctance which he had at first felt to increasing the size of his ship’s company by adding recruits picked up at random. His sympathies were thoroughly aroused, and while he hastened the loading and departure of the launches, he asked the Englishmen who, with the impassive endurance of their race, stayed behind to the last, whether they thought that there were other refugees on the mountains whom they could reach.
“I dare say there are thousands of the poor devils on these peaks around us, wandering among the rocks,” replied Edward Whistlington, “but I fancy you couldn’t reach ’em.”
“If I see any I’ll try,” returned Cosmo, sweeping with his powerful telescope all the mountain flanks within view.
At last, on the slopes of the lofty Mont Aigu across the submerged valley toward the south, he caught sight of several human figures, one of which was plainly trying to make signals, probably to attract attention from the Ark. Immediately, with the Englishmen and the remainder of those who had been found on the Peyre Dufau, he hastened in his launch to the rescue.
They found four men and three women, who had escaped from the narrow valley containing the _bains de Gazost_, and who were in the last stages of starvation. These were taken aboard, and then, no more being in sight, Cosmo returned to the Ark, where the other launches had already arrived.
And these were the last that were rescued from the mighty range of the Pyrenees, in whose deep valleys had lain the famous resorts of Cauterets, the Eaux Bonnes, the Eaux Chaudes, the Bagnieres de Luchon, the Bagnieres de Bigorre, and a score of others. No doubt, as the Englishmen had said, thousands had managed to climb the mountains, but none could now be seen, and those who may have been there were left to perish.
There was great excitement in the Ark on the arrival of the refugees. The passengers overwhelmed them with kind attentions, and when they had sufficiently recovered, listened with wonder and the deepest sympathy to their exciting tales of suffering and terror.
Lord Swansdown and Edward Whistlington were amazed to find their king aboard the Ark, and the English members of the company soon formed a sort of family party, presided over by the unfortunate monarch. The rescued persons numbered, in all, one hundred and six.
The voyage of the Ark was now resumed, skirting the Pyrenees, but at an increasing distance. Finally Captain Arms announced that, according to his observations, they were passing over the site of the ancient and populous city of Toulouse. This recalled to Cosmo Versal’s memory the beautiful scenes of the fair and rich land that lay so deep under the Ark, and he began to talk with the captain about the glories of its history.
He spoke of the last great conqueror that the world had known, Napoleon, and was discussing his marvelous career, and referring to the fact that he had died on a rock in the midst of that very ocean which had now swallowed up all the scenes of his conquests, when the lookout telephoned down that there was something visible on the water ahead.
In a little while they saw it–a small moving object, which rapidly approached the Ark. As it drew nearer both exclaimed at once:
“The _Jules Verne!_”
There could be no mistaking it. It was riding with its back just above the level of the sea; the French flag was fluttering from a small mast, and already they could perceive the form of De Beauxchamps, standing in his old attitude, with his feet below the rim of the circular opening at the top. Cosmo ordered the Stars and Stripes to be displayed in salute, and, greatly pleased over the encounter, hurried below and had the companion-ladder made ready.
“He’s got to come aboard this time, anyhow!” he exclaimed. “I’ll take no refusal. I want to know that fellow better.”
But this time De Beauxchamps had no thought of refusing the hospitalities of the Ark. As soon as he was within hearing he called out:
“My salutations to M. Versal and his charming fellow-voyagers. May I be permitted to come aboard and present myself in person? I have something deeply interesting to tell.”
Everybody in the Ark who could find a standing-place was watching the _Jules Verne_ and trying to catch a glimpse of its gallant captain, and to hear what he said; and the moment his request was preferred a babel of voices arose, amid which could be distinguished such exclamations as:
“Let him come!” “A fine fellow!” “Welcome, De Beauxchamps!” “Hurrah for the _Jules Verne!_”
King Richard was in the fore rank of the spectators, waving his hand to his preserver.
“Certainly you can come aboard,” cried Cosmo heartily, at the same time hastening the preparations for lowering the ladder. “We are all glad to see you. And bring your companions along with you.”
CHAPTER XIX
TO PARIS UNDER THE SEA
De Beauxchamps accepted Cosmo Versal’s invitation to bring his companions with him into the Ark. The submersible was safely moored alongside, where she rode easily in company with the larger vessel, and all mounted the companion-ladder. The Frenchman’s six companions were dressed, like himself, in the uniform of the army.
“Curious,” muttered Captain Arms in Cosmo’s ear, “that these _soldiers_ should be the only ones to get off–and in a vessel, too. What were the seamen about?”
“What were _our_ seamen about?” returned Cosmo. “How many of _them_ got off? I warned them that ships would not do. But it was a bright idea of this De Beauxchamps and his friends to build a submersible. It didn’t occur to me, or I would have advised their construction everywhere for small parties. But it would never have done for us. A submersible would not have been capacious enough for the party I wanted to take.”
By this time the visitors were aboard, and Cosmo and the others who could get near enough to grasp them by the hand greeted them effusively. King Richard received De Beauxchamps with emotion, and thanked him again and again for having saved his life; but, in the end, he covered his face and said in a broken voice:
“M. De Beauxchamps, my gratitude to you is very deep–but, oh, the queen–the queen–and the children! I should have done better to perish with them.”
Cosmo and De Beauxchamps soothed him as well as they could, and the former led the way into the grand saloon, in order that as many as possible might see and greet their visitors, who had come so mysteriously up out of the sea.
All of the Frenchmen were as affable as their leader, and he presented them in turn. De Beauxchamps conversed almost gaily with such of the ladies as had sufficient command of their feelings to join the throng that pressed about him and his companions. He was deeply touched by the story of the recent rescue of his countrymen from the Pyrenees, and he went among them, trying to cheer them up, with the _elan_ that no misfortune can eradicate from the Gallic nature.
At length Cosmo reminded him that he had said that he had some interesting news to communicate.
“Yes,” said De Beauxchamps, “I have just come from a visit to Paris.”
Exclamations of amazement and incredulity were heard on all sides.
“It is true,” resumed the Frenchman, though now his voice lost all its gayety. “I had conceived the project of such a visit before I met the Ark and transferred His Majesty, the King of England, to your care. As soon as that was done I set out to make the attempt.”
“But tell me first,” interrupted Cosmo, “how you succeeded in finding the Ark again.”
“That was not very difficult,” replied De Beauxchamps, smiling. “Of course, it was to some extent accidental, for I didn’t _know_ that you would be here, navigating over France; but I had an idea that you _might_ come this way if you had an intention of seeing what had happened to Europe. It is my regular custom to rise frequently to the surface to take a look around and make sure of my bearings, and you know that the Ark makes a pretty large point on the waters. I saw it long before you caught sight of me.”
“Very well,” said Cosmo. “Please go on with your story. It must, indeed, be an extraordinary one.”
“I was particularly desirous of seeing Paris again, deep as I knew her to lie under the waves,” resumed De Beauxchamps, “because it was my home, and I had a house in the Champs Elysees. You cannot divorce the heart of a Frenchman from his home, though you should bury it under twenty oceans.”
“Your family were lost?”
“Thank God, I had no family. If I had had they would be with me. My companions are all like myself in that respect. We have lost many friends, but no near relatives. As I was saying, I started for France, poor drowned France, as soon as I left you. With the powerful searchlight of the _Jules Verne_ I could feel confident of avoiding obstructions; and, besides, I knew very closely the height to which the flood had risen, and having the topography of my country at my fingers’ ends, as does every officer of the army, I was able to calculate the depth at which we should run in order to avoid the hilltops.”
“But surely,” said Cosmo, “it is impossible–at least, it seems so to me–that you can descend to any great depth–the pressure must be tremendous a few hundred feet down, to say nothing of possible thousands.”
“All that,” replied the Frenchman, “has been provided for. You probably do not know to what extent we had carried experiments in France on the deep submersion of submarines before their general abandonment when they were prohibited by international agreement in war. I was myself perhaps the leader in those investigations, and in the construction of the _Jules Verne_ I took pains to improve on all that had hitherto been done.
“Without going into any description of my devices, I may simply remind you nature has pointed out ways of avoiding the consequences of the inconceivable pressures which calculation indicates at depths of a kilometer, or more, in her construction of the deep-sea fishes. It was by a study of them that I arrived at the secret of both penetrating to depths that would theoretically have seemed entirely impossible and of remaining at such depths.”
“Marvelous!” exclaimed Cosmo; “marvelous beyond belief!”
“I may add,” continued De Beauxchamps, smiling at the effect that his words had had upon the mind of the renowned Cosmo Versal, “that the peculiar properties of levium, which you so wisely chose for your Ark, aided _me_ in quite a different way. But I must return to my story.
“We passed over the coast of France near the point where I knew lay the mouth of the Loire. I could have found my way by means of the compass sufficiently well; but since the sky was clear I frequently came to the surface in order, for greater certainty, to obtain sights of the sun and stars.
“I dropped down at Tours and at Blois, and we plainly saw the walls of the old chateaux in the gleam of the searchlight below us. There were monsters of the deep, such as the eye of man never beheld, swimming slowly about them, many of them throwing a strange luminosity into the water from their phosphorescent organs, as if they were inspecting these novelties of the sea-bottom.
“Arrived over Orleans, we turned in the direction of Paris. As we approached the site of the city I sank the submersible until we almost touched the higher hills. My searchlight is so arranged that it can be directed almost every way–up, down, to this side, and to that–and we swept it round us in every direction.
“The light readily penetrated the water and revealed sights which I have no power to describe, and some–reminders of the immense population of human beings which had there met its end–which I would not describe if I could. To see a drowned face suddenly appear outside the window, almost within touch–ah, that was too horrible!
“We passed over Versailles, with the old palace still almost intact; over Sevres, with its porcelain manufactory yet in part standing–the tidal waves that had come up the river from the sea evidently caused much destruction just before the downpour began–and finally we ‘entered’ Paris.
“We could see the embankments of the Seine beneath us as we passed up its course from the Point du Jour. From the site of the Champ de Mars I turned northward in search of the older part of the Champs Elysees, where my house was, and we came upon the great Arc de Triomphe, which, you remember, dates from the time of Napoleon.
“It was apparently uninjured, even the huge bronze groups remaining in their places, and the searchlight, traversing its face, fell upon the heroic group on the east facade of the Marseillaise. You must have seen that, M. Versal?”
“Yes, many a time,” Cosmo replied. “The fury in the face of the female figure representing the spirit of war, chanting the ‘Marseillaise,’ and, sword in hand, sweeping over the heads of the soldiers, is the most terrible thing of human making that I ever looked upon.”
“It was not so terrible as another thing that our startled eyes beheld there,” said De Beauxchamps. “Coiled round the upper part of the arch, with its head resting directly upon that of the figure of which you speak, was a monstrous, ribbon-shaped creature, whose flat, reddish body, at least a meter in width and apparently thirty meters long, and bordered with a sort of floating frill of a pinkish color, undulated with a motion that turned us sick at heart.
“But the head was the most awful object that the fancy of a madman could conceive. There were two great round, projecting eyes, encircled with what I suppose must have been phosphorescent organs, which spread around in the water a green light that was absolutely horrifying.
“I turned away the searchlight, and the eyes of that creature stared straight at us with a dreadful, stony look; and then the effect of the phosphorescence, heightened by the absence of the greater light, became more terrible than before. We were unmanned, and I hardly had nerve enough to turn the submersible away and hurry from the neighborhood.”
“I had not supposed,” said Cosmo, “that creatures of such a size could live in the deeper parts of the sea.”
“I know,” returned De Beauxchamps, “that many have thought that the abysmal creatures were generally of small size, but they knew nothing about it. What could one have expected to learn of the secrets of life in the ocean depths from the small creatures which alone the trawls brought to the surface? The great monsters could not be captured in that way. But we have _seen_ them–seen them taking possession of beautiful, drowned Paris–and we know what they are.”
The fascinated hearers who had crowded about to listen to the narrative of De Beauxchamps shuddered at this part of it, and some of the women turned away with exclamations of horror.
“I see that I am drawing my picture in too fearful colors,” he said, “and I shall refrain from telling of the other inhabitants of the abyss that we found in possession of what I, as a Frenchman, must call the most splendid capital that the world contained.
“Oh, to think that all that beauty, all those great palaces filled with the master-works of art, all those proud architectural piles, all that scene of the most joyous life that the earth contained, is now become the dwelling-place of the terrible _fauna_ of the deep, creatures that never saw the sun; that never felt the transforming force of the evolution which had made the face of the globe so glorious; that never quitted their abysmal homes until this awful flood spread their empire over the whole earth!”
There was a period of profound silence while De Beauxchamps’s face worked spasmodically under the influence of emotions, the sight of which would alone have sufficed to convince his hearers of the truth of what he had been telling. Finally Cosmo Versal, breaking the silence, asked:
“Did you find your home?”
“Yes. It was there. I found it out. I illuminated it with the searchlight. I gazed into the broken windows, trying to peer through the watery medium that filled and darkened the interior. The roof was broken, but the walls were intact. I thought of the happy, happy years that I had passed there when I _had_ a family, and when Paris was an Eden, the sunshine of the world. And then I wished to see no more, and we rose out of the midst of that sunken city and sought the daylight far above.
“I had thought to tell you,” he continued, after a pause, “of the condition in which we found the great monuments of the city–of the Pantheon, yet standing on its hill with its roof crushed in; of Notre Dame–a wreck, but the towers still standing proudly; of the old palace of the Louvre, through whose broken roofs and walls we caught glimpses of the treasures washed by the water within–but I find that I have not courage to go on. I had imagined that it would be a relief to speak of these things, but I do not find it so.”
“After leaving Paris, then you made no other explorations?” said Cosmo.
“None. I should have had no heart for more. I had seen enough. And yet I do not regret that I went there. I should never have been content not to have seen my beautiful city once more, even lying in her watery shroud. I loved her living; I have seen her dead. It is finished. What more is there, M. Versal?” With a sudden change of manner: “You have predicted all this, and perhaps you know more. Where do _we_ go to die?”
“We shall _not_ die,” replied Cosmo Versal forcefully. “The Ark and your _Jules Verne_ will save us.”
“To what purpose?” demanded the Frenchman, his animation all gone. “Can there be any pleasure in floating upon or beneath the waves that cover a lost world? Is a brief prolongation of such a life worth the effort of grasping for?”
“Yes,” said Cosmo with still greater energy. “We may still _save the race_. I have chosen most of my companions in the Ark for that purpose. Not only may we save the race of man, but we may lead it up upon a higher plane; we may apply the principles of eugenics as they have never yet been applied. You, M. De Beauxchamps, have shown that you are of the stock that is required for the regeneration of the world.”
“But where can the world be regenerated?” asked De Beauxchamps with a bitter laugh. “There is nothing left but mountain-tops.”
“Even they will be covered,” said Cosmo.
“Do you mean that the deluge has not yet reached its height?”
“Certainly it has not. We are in an open space in the enveloping nebula. After a little we shall enter the nucleus, and then will come the worst.”
“And yet you talk of saving the race!” exclaimed the Frenchman with another bitter laugh.
“I do,” replied Cosmo, “and it will be done.”
“But how?”
“Through the re-emergence of land.”
“That recalls our former conversation,” put in Professor Abel Able. “It appears to me impossible that, when the earth is once covered with a universal ocean, it can ever disappear or materially lower its level. Geological ages would be required for the level of the water to be lowered even a few feet by the escape of vapor into space.”
“No,” returned Cosmo Versal, “I have demonstrated that that idea is wrong. Under the immense pressure of an ocean rising six miles above the ancient sea level the water will rapidly be forced into the interstices of the crust, and thus a material reduction of level will be produced within a few years–five at the most. That will give us a foothold. I have no doubt that even now the water around us is slightly lowering through that cause.
“But in itself that will not be sufficient. I have gone all over this ground in my original calculations. The intrusion of the immense mass of ocean water into the interior of the crust of the earth will result in a grand geological upheaval. The lands will re-emerge above the new sea level as they emerged above the former one through the internal stresses of the globe.”
The scientific men present listened with breathless interest, but some of them with many incredulous shakings of the head.
“You must be aware,” continued Cosmo, addressing them particularly, “that it has been demonstrated that the continents and the great mountain ranges are buoyed up, and, as it were, are floating somewhat like slags on the internal magma. The mean density of the crust is less under the land and the mountains than under the old sea-beds. This is especially true of the Himalayan region.
“That uplift is probably the most recent of all, and it is there, where at present the highest land of the globe exists, that I expect that the new upheaval will be most strongly manifested. It is for that reason, and not merely because it is now the highest part of the earth, that I am going with the Ark to Asia.”
“But,” said Professor Jeremiah Moses, “the upheaval of which you speak may produce a complete revolution in the surface of the earth, and if new lands are upthrust they may appear at unexpected points.”
“Not at all,” returned Cosmo. “The tectonic features of the globe were fixed at the beginning. As Asia has hitherto been the highest and the greatest mass of land, it will continue to be so in the future. It is there, believe me, that we shall replant the seed of humanity.”
“Do you not think,” asked Professor Alexander Jones, “that there will be a tremendous outburst of volcanic energy, if such upheavals occur, and may not that render the re-emerging lands uninhabitable?”
“No doubt,” Cosmo replied, “every form of plutonic energy will be immensely re-enforced. You remember the recent outburst of all the volcanoes when the sea burst over the borders of the continents. But these forces will be mainly expended in an effort of uplifting. Unquestionably there will be great volcanic spasms, but they will not prevent the occupation of the broadening areas of land which will not be thus affected.”
“Upon these lands,” exclaimed Sir Wilfrid Athelstone, in a loud voice, “I will develop life from the barren minerals of the crust. The age of chemical parthenogenesis will then have dawned upon the earth, and man will have become a creator.”
“Will the Sir Englishman give me room for a word!” cried Costake Theriade, raising his tall form on his toes and agitating his arms in the air. “He will create not anything! It is _I_ that will unloose the energies of the atoms of matter and make of the new man a new god.”
Cosmo Versal quieted the incipient outbreak of his jealous “speculative geniuses,” and the discussion of his theory was continued for some time. At length De Beauxchamps, shrugging his shoulders, exclaimed, with a return of his habitual gayety:
“_Tres bien! Vive_ the world of Cosmo Versal! I salute the new Eve that is to come!”
CHAPTER XX
THE ADVENTURES IN COLORADO
When Professor Pludder, the President, and their companions on the aero-raft, saw the three men on the bluff motioning and shouting to them, they immediately sought the means of bringing their craft to land. This did not prove to be exceedingly difficult, for there was a convenient rock with deep water around it on which they could disembark.
The men ran down to meet them, and to help them ashore, exhibiting the utmost astonishment at seeing them there.
“Whar in creation did _you_ come from?” exclaimed one, giving the professor a pull up the bank. “Mebbe you’re Cosmo Versal, and that’s yer Ark.”
“I’m Professor Pludder, and this is the President of the United States.”
“The President of the Un—-See here, stranger, I’ll take considerable from you, considering the fix yer in, but you don’t want to go too far.”
“It’s true,” asseverated the professor. “This gentleman is the President, and we’ve escaped from Washington. Please help the ladies.”
“I’ll help the ladies all right, but I’m blamed if I believe yer yarn. How’d you git here? You couldn’t hev floated across the continent on that thing.”
“We came on the raft that you see,” interrupted Mr. Samson. “We left the Appalachian Mountains two weeks ago.”
“Well, by–it must be true!” muttered the man. “They couldn’t hev come from anywhar else in that direction. I reckon the hull blamed continent is under water.”
“So it is,” said Professor Pludder, “and we made for Colorado, knowing that it was the only land left above the flood.”
All finally got upon the bluff, rejoiced to feel solid ground once more beneath their feet. But it was a desolate prospect that they saw before them. The face of the land had been scoured and gullied by the pouring waters, the vegetation had been stripped off, except where in hollows it had been covered with new-formed lakes, some of which had drained off after the downpour ceased, the water finding its way into the enveloping sea.
They asked the three men what had become of the other inhabitants, and whether there was any shelter at hand.
“We’ve be’n wiped out,” said the original spokesman. “Cosmo Versal has done a pretty clean job with his flood. There’s a kind of a cover that we three hev built, a ways back yonder, out o’ timber o’ one kind and another that was lodged about. But it wouldn’t amount to much if there was another cloudburst. It wouldn’t stand a minute. It’s good to sleep in.”
“Are you the only survivors in this region?” asked the President.
“I reckon you see all thet’s left of us. The’ ain’t one out o’ a hundred that’s left alive in these parts.”
“What became of them?”
“Swept off!” replied the man, with an expressive gesture–“and drownded right out under the sky.”
“And how did you and your companions escape?”
“By gitting up amongst some rocks that was higher’n the average.”
“How did you manage to live–what did you have to eat?”
“We didn’t eat much–we didn’t hev much time to think o’ eatin’. We had one hoss with us, and he served, when his time come. After the sky cleared we skirmished about and dug up something that we could manage to eat, lodged in gullies where the water had washed together what had been in houses and cellars. We’ve got a gun and a little ammunition, and once in a while we could kill an animal that had contrived to escape somehow.”
“And you think that there are no other human beings left alive anywhere around here?”
“I _know_ th’ ain’t. The’s probably some up in the foothills, and around the Pike. They had a better chance to git among rocks. We hed jest made up our minds to go hunting for ’em when we ketched sight o’ you, and then we concluded to stay and see who you was.”
“I’m surprised that you didn’t go sooner.”
“We couldn’t. There was a roarin’ torrent coming down from the mountains that cut us off. It’s only last night that it stopped.”
“Well, it’s evident that we cannot stay here,” said Professor Pludder. “We must go with these men toward the mountains. Let us take what’s left of the compressed provisions out of the raft, and then we’ll eat a good meal and be off.”
The three men were invited to share the repast, and they ate with an appetite that would have amused their hosts if they had not been so anxious to reserve as much as possible of their provisions for future necessities.
The meal finished, they started off, their new friends aiding to carry provisions, and what little extra clothing there was. The aspect of the country they traversed affrighted them. Here and there were partially demolished houses or farm structures, or cellars, choked with debris of what had once been houses.
Farm implements and machinery were scattered about and half buried in the torrent-furrowed land. In the wreck of one considerable village through which they passed they found a stone church, and several stone houses of considerable pretensions, standing almost intact as to walls, but with roofs, doors, and windows smashed and torn off.
It was evident that this place, which lay in a depression of the land, had been buried by the rushing water as high as high as the top stories of the buildings. From some of the sights that they saw they shrank away, and afterward tried to forget them.
Owing to the presence of the women and children their progress was slower than it might overwise have been. They had great difficulty in crossing the course of the torrent which their companions had described as cutting them off from the foothills of the Pike’s Peak range.
The water had washed out a veritable canon, a hundred or more feet deep in places, and with ragged, precipitous walls and banks, which they had to descend on one side and ascend on the other. Here the skill and local knowledge of their three new-found friends stood them in good stead. There was yet enough water in the bottom of the great gully to compel them to wade, carrying the women and children.
But, just before nightfall, they succeeded in reaching a range of rocky heights, where they determined to pass the night. They managed to make a fire with brush that had been swept down the mountain flanks and had remained wedged in the rocks, and thus they dried their soaked garments, and were able to do some cooking, and to have a blaze to give them a little heat during the night, for the air turned cold after the disappearance of the sun.
When the others had sunk into an uneasy slumber, the President and Professor Pludder sat long, replenishing the fire, and talking of what would be their future course.
“I think,” said the professor, “that we shall find a considerable population alive among the mountains. There is nothing in Colorado below four thousand feet elevation, and not much below five thousand. The great inner ‘parks’ were probably turned into lakes, but they will drain off, as the land around us here has done already.
“Those who managed to find places of comparative shelter will now descend into the level lands and try to hunt up the sites of their homes. If only some plants and grain have been preserved they can, after a fashion, begin to cultivate the soil.”
“But there _is_ no soil,” said the President, shuddering at the recollection of the devastation he had witnessed. “It has all been washed off.”
“No,” replied the professor, “there’s yet a good deal in the low places, where the water rested.”
“But it is now the middle of winter.”
“Reckoned by the almanac it is, but you see that the temperature is that of summer, and has been such for months. I think that this is due in some way to the influence of the nebula, although I cannot account for it. At any rate it will be possible to plant and sow.
“The whole body of the atmosphere having been raised four thousand feet, the atmospheric conditions here now are virtually the same as at the former sea-level. If we can find the people and reassure them, we must take the lead in restoring the land to fertility, and also in the reconstruction of homes.”
“Suppose the flood should recommence?”
“There is no likelihood of it.”
“Then,” said the President, putting his face between his hands and gazing sadly into the fire, “here is all that remains of the mightiest nation of the world, the richest, the most populous–and we are to build up out of this remnant a new fatherland.”
“This is not the only remnant,” said Professor Pludder. “One-quarter, at least, of the area of the United States is still above sea-level. Think of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, the larger part of California, Wyoming, a part of Montana, two-thirds of Idaho, a half of Oregon and Washington–all above the critical level of four thousand feet, and all except the steepest moutainsides can be reclaimed.
“There is hope for our country yet. Remember that the climate of this entire region will now be changed, since the barometric isobars have been lifted up, and the line of thirty inches pressure now meets the edge of the Colorado plateau. There may be a corresponding change in the rainfall and in all the conditions of culture and fertility.”
“Yes,” sighed the President, “but I cannot, I cannot withdraw my mind from the thought of the _millions, millions, millions_ who have perished!”
“I do not say that we should forget them,” replied Professor Pludder; “Heaven forbid! But I do say that we must give our attention to those that remain, and turn our faces steadily toward the future.”
“Abiel,” returned the President, pressing the professor’s hand, “you are right. My confidence in you was shaken, but now I follow you again.”
Thus they talked until midnight, and then got a little rest with the others. They were up and off at break of day, and as they mounted higher they began to encounter immense rocks that had come tumbling down from above.
“How can you talk of people escaping toward the mountains if they had to encounter these?” demanded the President.
“Some of these rocks have undoubtedly been brought down by the torrents,” Professor Pludder replied, “but I believe that the greater number fell earlier, during the earthquakes that accompanied the first invasions of the sea.”
“But those earthquakes may have continued all through.”
“I do not think so. We have felt no trembling of the earth. I believe that the convulsions lasted only for a brief period, while the rocks were yielding to the pressure along the old sea-coast. After a little the crust below adjusted itself to the new conditions. And even if the rocks fell while people were trying to escape from the flood below, they must, like the water, have followed the gorges and hollow places, while the fugitives would, of course, keep upon the ridges.”
Whatever perils they may have encountered, people had certainly escaped as the professor had averred. When the party, in the middle of the day, were seated at their lunch, on an elevated point from which they could see far over the strange ocean that they had left behind them, while the southern buttresses of Pike’s Peak rose steeply toward the north, they discovered the first evidence of the existence of refugees in the mountains. This was a smoke rising over an intervening ridge, which their new companions declared could be due to nothing less than a large camp-fire.
They hastened to finish their meal, and then climbed the ridge. As soon as they were upon it they found themselves looking down into a broad, shallow canon, where there were nearly twenty rudely constructed cabins, with a huge fire blazing in the midst of the place, and half a dozen red-shirted men busy about it, evidently occupied in the preparation of the dinner of a large party.
Their friends recognized an acquaintance in one of the men below and hailed him with delight. Instantly men, women, and children came running out of the huts to look at them, and as they descended into this improvised village they were received with a hospitality that was almost hilarious.
The refugees consisted of persons who had escaped from the lower lands in the immediate vicinity, and they were struck dumb when told that they were entertaining the President of the United States and his family.
The entire history of their adventures was related on both sides. The refugees told how, at the commencement of the great rain, when it became evident that the water would inundate their farms and buildings, they loaded themselves with as many provisions as they could carry, and, in spite of the suffocating downpour that filled the air, managed to fight their way to the ridge overhanging the deep cut in which they were now encamped.
Hardly a quarter of those who started arrived in safety. They sheltered themselves to the number of about thirty, in a huge cavern, which faced down the mountain, and had a slightly upward sloping floor, so that the water did not enter. Here, by careful economy, they were able to eke out their provisions until the sky cleared, after which the men, being used to outdoor labor and hunting, contrived to supply the wants of the forlorn little community.
They managed to kill a few animals, and found the bodies of others recently killed, or drowned. Later they descended into the lowlands, as the water ran off, and searching among the ruins of their houses found some remnants of supplies in the cellars and about the foundations of the barns. They were preparing to go down in a body and seek to re-establish themselves on the sites of their old homes, when the President’s party came upon them.
The meeting with these refugees was but the first of a series of similar encounters on the way along the eastern face of the Pike’s Peak range. In the aggregate they met several hundred survivors who had established themselves on the site of Colorado Springs, where a large number of houses, standing on the higher ground, had escaped.
They had been soaked with water, descending through the shattered roofs and broken windows, and pouring into the basements and cellars. The fugitives came from all directions, some from the caverns on the mountains, and some from the rocks toward the north and east. A considerable number asserted that they had found refuge in the Garden of the Gods.
As near as could be estimated, about a quarter of the population remained alive.
The strong points of Professor Pludder now, once more, came out conspicuously. He proved himself an admirable organizer. He explored all the country round, and enheartened everybody, setting them to work to repair the damage as much as possible.
Some horses and cattle were found which, following their instincts, had managed to escape the flood. In the houses and other buildings yet standing a great deal of food and other supplies were discovered, so that there was no danger of a famine. As he had anticipated, the soil had not all been washed away from the flat land, and he advised the inhabitants to plant quick-growing seeds at once.
He utilized the horses to send couriers in all directions, some going even as far as Denver. Everywhere virtually the same conditions were found–many had escaped and were alive, only needing the guidance of a quicker intelligence, and this was supplied by the advice which the professor instructed his envoys to spread among the people. He sought to cheer them still more by the information that the President was among them, and looking out for their welfare.
One thing which his couriers at last began to report to him was a cause of surprise. They said that the level of the water was rapidly falling. Some who had gone far toward the east declared that it had gone down hundreds of feet. But the professor reflected that this was impossible, because evaporation could not account for it, and he could not persuade himself that so much water could have found its way into the interior of the crust.
He concluded that his informants had allowed their hopes to affect their eyesight, and, strong as usual in his professional dogmas, he made no personal examination. Besides, Professor Pludder was beginning to be shaken in his first belief that all trouble from the nebula was at an end. Once having been forced to accept the hypothesis that a watery nebula had met the earth, he began to reflect that they might not be through with it.
In any event, he deemed it wise to prepare for it if it _should_ come back. Accordingly he advised that the population that remained should concentrate in the stronger houses, built of stone, and that every effort should be made to strengthen them further and to make the roofs as solid as possible. He also directed that no houses should be occupied that were not situated on high ground, surrounded with slopes that would give ready flow to the water in case the deluging rain should recommence.
He had no fixed conviction that it would recommence, but he was uneasy, owing to his reflections, and wished to be on the safe side. He sent similar instructions as far as his horsemen could reach.
The wisdom of his doubts became manifest about two weeks after the arrival of the President’s party. Without warning the sky, which had been perfectly blue and cloudless for a month, turned a sickly yellow. Then mists hid the head, and in a little while the entire outline of Pike’s Peak, and after that a heavy rain began.
Terror instantly seized the people, and at first nobody ventured out of doors. But as time went on and the rain did not assume the proportions of the former _debacle_, although it was very heavy and continuous, hope revived. Everybody was on the watch for a sudden clearing up.
Instead of clearing, however, the rain became very irregular, gushing at times in torrents which were even worse than the original downpour, but these tremendous gushes were of brief duration, so that the water had an opportunity to run off the higher ground before the next downpour occurred.
This went on for a week, and then the people were terrified at finding that water was pouring up through all the depressions of the land, cutting off the highlands from Pike’s Peak with an arm of the sea. It was evident that the flood had been rapidly rising, and if it should rise but little higher they would be caught in a trap. The inland sea, it was clear, had now invaded the whole of Colorado to the feet of the mountains, and was creeping up on them.
Just at this time a series of earthquakes began. They were not severe, but were continuous. The ground cracked open in places, and some houses were overturned, but there were no wall-shattering shocks–only a continual and dreadful trembling, accompanied by awful subterranean sounds.
This terrible state of affairs had lasted for a day before a remarkable discovery was made, which filled many hearts with joy, although it seemed to puzzle Professor Pludder as much as it rejoiced him.
The new advance of the sea was arrested! There could be no question of that, for too many had anxiously noted the points to which the water had attained.
We have said that Professor Pludder was puzzled. He was seeking, in his mind, a connection between the seismic tremors and the cessation of the advance of the sea. Inasmuch as the downpour continued, the flood ought still to rise.
He rejected as soon as it occurred to him the idea that the earth could be drinking up the waters as fast as they fell, and that the trembling was an accompaniment of this gigantic deglutition.
Sitting in a room with the President and other members of the party from Washington, he remained buried in his thoughts, answering inquiries only in monosyllables. Presently he opened his eyes very wide and a long-drawn “A-ah!” came from his mouth. Then he sprang to his feet and cried out, but only as if uttering a thought aloud to himself, the strange word:
_”Batholite!”_
CHAPTER XXI
“THE FATHER OF HORROR”
At the time when the President of the United States and his companions were beginning to discover the refugees around Pike’s Peak, Cosmo Versal’s Ark accompanied by the _Jules Verne_, whose commander had decided to remain in touch with his friends, was crossing the submerged hills and valleys of Languedoc under a sun as brilliant as that which had once made them a land of gold.
De Beauxchamps remained aboard the Ark much of the time. Cosmo liked to have him, with himself and Captain Arms, on the bridge, because there they could talk freely about their plans and prospects, and the Frenchman was a most entertaining companion.
Meanwhile, the passengers in the saloons and on the promenade decks formed little knots and coteries for conversation, for reading, and for mutual diversion, or strolled about from side to side, watching the endless expanse of waters for the occasional appearance of some inhabitant of the deep that had wandered over the new ocean’s bottom.
These animals seemed to be coming to the surface to get bearings. Every such incident reminded the spectators of what lay beneath the waves, and led them to think and talk of the awful fate that had overwhelmed their fellow men, until the spirits of the most careless were subdued by the pervading melancholy.
King Richard, strangely enough, had taken a liking for Amos Blank, who was frequently asked to join the small and somewhat exclusive circle of compatriots that continually surrounded the fallen monarch. The billionaire and the king often leaned elbow to elbow over the rail, and put their heads companionably together while pointing out some object on the sea. Lord Swansdown felt painfully cut by this, but, of course, he could offer no objection.
Finally Cosmo invited the king to come upon the bridge, from which passengers were generally excluded, and the king insisted that Blank should go, too. Cosmo consented, for Blank seemed to him to have become quite a changed man, and he found him sometimes full of practical suggestions.
So it happened that when Captain Arms announced that the Ark was passing over the ancient city of Carcassonne, Cosmo, the king, De Beauxchamps, Amos Blank, and the captain were all together on the bridge. When Captain Arms mentioned their location, King Richard became very thoughtful. After a time he said musingly:
“Ah! how all these names, Toulouse, Carcassonne, Languedoc, bring back to me the memory of my namesake of olden times, Richard I. of England. This, over which we are floating, was the land of the Troubadours, and Richard was the very Prince of Troubadours. With all his faults England never had a king like him!”
“Knowing your devotion to peace, which was the reason why I wished you to be of the original company in the Ark, I am surprised to hear you say that,” said Cosmo.
“Ah!” returned the King, “But Coeur de Lion was a true Englishman, even in his love of fighting. What would he say if he knew where England lies to-day? What would he say if he knew the awful fate that has come upon this fair and pleasant land, from whose poets and singers he learned the art of minstrelsy?”
“He would say, ‘Do not despair,'” replied Cosmo. “‘ Show the courage of an Englishman, and fight for your race if you cannot for your country.'”
“But may not England, may not all these lands, emerge again from the floods?” asked the king.
“Not in our time, not in our children’s time,” said Cosmo Versal, thoughtfully shaking his head.
“In the remote future, yes–but I cannot tell how remote. Tibet was once an appanage of your crown, before China taught the West what war meant, and in Tibet you may help to found a new empire, but I must tell you that it will not resemble the empires of the past. Democracy will be its corner stone, and science its law.”
“Then I devote myself to democracy and science,” responded King Richard.
“Good! Admirable!” exclaimed Amos Blank and De Beauxchamps simultaneously, while Captain Arms would probably have patted the king on the back had not his attention, together with that of the others, been distracted by a huge whale blowing almost directly in the course of the Ark.
“Blessed if I ever expected to see a sight like that in these parts!” exclaimed the captain. “This lifting the ocean up into the sky is upsetting the order of nature. I’d as soon expect to sight a cachalot on top of the Rocky Mountains.”
“They’ll be there, too, before long,” said Cosmo.
“I wonder what he’s looking for,” continued Captain Arms. “He must have come down from the north. He couldn’t have got in through the Pyrenees or the Sierra Nevadas. He’s just navigated right over the whole country straight down from the English Channel.”
The whale sounded at the approach of the Ark, but in a little while he was blowing again off toward the south, and then the passengers caught sight of him, and there was great excitement.
He seemed to be of enormous size, and he sent his fountain to an extraordinary height in the air. On he went, appearing and disappearing, steering direct for Africa, until, with glasses, they could see his white plume blowing on the very edge of the horizon.
Not even the reflection that they themselves were sailing over Europe impressed some of the passengers with so vivid a sense of their situation as the sight of this monstrous inhabitant of the ocean taking a view of his new domain.
At night Cosmo continued the concerts and the presentation of the Shakespearian dramas, and for an hour each afternoon he had a “conference” in the saloon, at which Theriade and Sir Athelstone were almost the sole performers.
Their disputes, and Cosmo’s efforts to keep the peace, amused for a while, but at length the audiences diminished until Cosmo, with his constant companions, the Frenchman, the king, Amos Blank, the three professors from Washington, and a few other savants were the only listeners.
But the music and the plays always drew immensely.
Joseph Smith was kept busy most of the time in Cosmo’s cabin, copying plans for the regeneration of mankind.
When they knew that they had finally left the borders of France and were sailing above the Mediterranean Sea, it became necessary to lay their course with considerable care. Cosmo decided that the only safe plan would be to run south of Sardinia, and then keep along between Sicily and Tunis, and so on toward lower Egypt.
There he intended to seek a way over the mountains north of the Sinai peninsula into the Syrian desert, from which he could reach the ancient valley of the Euphrates and the Persian Gulf. He would then pass down the Arabian Sea, swing round India and Ceylon, and, by way of the Bay of Bengal and the plains of the Ganges and Brahmaputra, approach the Himalayas.
Captain Arms was rather inclined to follow the Gulf of Suez and the depression of the Red Sea, but Cosmo was afraid that they would have difficulty in getting the Ark safely through between the Mt. Sinai peaks and the Jebel Gharib range.
“Well, you’re the commodore,” said the captain at the end of the discussion, “but hang me if I’d not rather follow a sea, where I know the courses, than go navigating over mountains and deserts in the land of Shinar. We’ll land on top of Jerusalem yet, you’ll see!”
Feeling sure of plenty of water under keel, they now made better speed and De Beauxchamps retired into the _Jules Verne_, and detached it from the Ark, finding that he could distance the latter easily with the submersible running just beneath the surface of the water.
“Come up to blow, and take a look around from the bridge, once in a while,” the captain called out to him as he disappeared and the cover closed over him. The _Jules Verne_ immediately sank out of sight.
They passed round Sardinia, and between the old African coast and Sicily, and were approaching the Malta Channel when their attention was drawn to a vast smoke far off toward the north.
“It’s Etna in eruption,” said Cosmo to the captain.
“A magnificent sight!” exclaimed King Richard, who happened to be on the bridge.
“Yes, and I’d like to see it nearer,” remarked Cosmo, as a wonderful column of smoke, as black as ink, seemed to shoot up to the very zenith.
“You’d better keep away,” Captain Arms said warningly. “There’s no good comes of fooling round volcanoes in a ship.”
“Oh, it’s safe enough,” returned Cosmo. “We can run right over the southeastern corner of Sicily and get as near as we like. There is nothing higher than about three thousand feet in that part of the island, so we’ll have a thousand feet to spare.”
“But maybe the water has lowered.”
“Not more than a foot or two,” said Cosmo. “Go ahead.”
The captain plainly didn’t fancy the adventure, but he obeyed orders, and the Ark’s nose was turned northward, to the delight of many of the passengers who had become greatly interested when they learned that the tremendous smoke that they saw came from Mount Etna.
Some of them were nervous, but the more adventurous spirits heartily applauded Cosmo Versal’s design to give them a closer view of so extraordinary a spectacle. Even from their present distance the sight was one that might have filled them with terror if they had not already been through adventures which had hardened their nerves. The smoke was truly terrific in appearance.
It did not spread low over the sea, but rose in an almost vertical column, widening out at a height of several miles, until it seemed to canopy the whole sky toward the north.
It could be seen spinning in immense rolling masses, the outer parts of which were turned by the sunshine to a dingy brown color, while the main stem of the column, rising directly from the great crater, was of pitchy blackness.
An awful roaring was audible, sending a shiver through the Ark. At the bottom of the mass of smoke, through which gleams of fire were seen to shoot as they drew nearer, appeared the huge conical form of the mountain, whose dark bulk still rose nearly seven thousand feet above the sea that covered the great, beautiful, and historic island beneath it.
They had got within about twenty miles of the base of the mountain, when a shout was heard by those on the bridge, and Cosmo and the captain, looking for its source, saw the _Jules Verne_, risen to the surface a little to starboard, and De Beauxchamps excitedly signaling to them. They just made out the words, “Sheer off!” when the Ark, with a groaning sound, took ground, and they were almost precipitated over the rail of the bridge.
“Aground again, by —-!” exclaimed Captain Arms, instantly signaling all astern. “I told you not to go fooling round a volcano.”
“This beats me!” cried Cosmo Versal. “I wonder if the island has begun to rise.”
“More likely the sea has begun to fall,” growled Captain Arms.
“Do you know where we are?” asked Cosmo.
“We can’t be anywhere but on the top of Monte Lauro,” replied the captain.
“But that’s only three thousand feet high.”
“It’s exactly three thousand two hundred and thirty feet,” said the captain. “I haven’t navigated the old Mediterranean a hundred times for nothing.”
“But even then we should have near seven hundred and fifty feet to spare, allowing for the draft of the Ark, and a slight subsidence of the water.”
“Well, you haven’t allowed enough, that’s plain,” said the captain.
“But it’s impossible that the flood can have subsided more than seven hundred feet already.”
“I don’t care how impossible it is–here we are! We’re stuck on a mountain-top, and if we don’t leave our bones on it I’m a porpoise.”
By this time the _Jules Verne_ was alongside, and De Beauxchamps shouted up:
“I was running twenty feet under water, keeping along with the Ark, when my light suddenly revealed the mountain ahead. I hurried up and tried to warn you, but it was too late.”
“Can’t you go down and see where we’re fast?” asked Cosmo.
“Certainly; that’s just what I was about to propose,” replied the Frenchman, and immediately the submersible disappeared.
After a long time, during which Cosmo succeeded in allaying the fears of his passengers, the submersible reappeared, and De Beauxchamps made his report. He said that the Ark was fast near the bow on a bed of shelly limestone.
He thought that by using the utmost force of the _Jules Verne_, whose engines were very powerful, in pushing the Ark, combined with the backing of her own engines, she might be got off.
“Hurry up, then, and get to work,” cried Captain Arms. “This flood is on the ebb, and a few hours more will find us stuck here like a ray with his saw in a whale’s back.”
De Beauxchamps’s plan was immediately adopted. The _Jules Verne_ descended, and pushed with all her force, while the engines of the Ark were reversed, and within fifteen minutes they were once more afloat.
Without waiting for a suggestion from Cosmo Versal, the Frenchman carefully inspected with his searchlight the bottom of the Ark where she had struck, and when he came to the surface he was able to report that no serious damage had resulted.
“There’s no hole,” he said, “only a slight denting of one of the plates, which will not amount to anything.”
Cosmo, however, was not content until he had made a careful inspection by opening some of the manholes in the inner skin of the vessel. He found no cause for anxiety, and in an hour the Ark resumed its voyage eastward, passing over the site of ancient Syracuse.
By this time a change of the wind had sent the smoke from Etna in their direction, and now it lay thick upon the water, and rendered it, for a while, impossible to see twenty fathoms from the bridge.
“It’s old Etna’s dying salute,” said Cosmo. “He won’t have his head above water much longer.”
“But the flood is going down,” exclaimed Captain Arms.
“Yes, and that puzzles me. There must have been an enormous absorption of water into the interior, far greater than I ever imagined possible. But wait until the nucleus of the nebula strikes us! In the meantime, this lowering of the water renders it necessary for us to make haste, or we may not get over the mountains round Suez before the downpour recommences.”
As soon as they escaped from the smoke of Etna they ran full speed ahead again, and, keeping well south of Crete, at length, one morning they found themselves in the latitude and longitude of Alexandria.
The weather was still superb, and Cosmo was very desirous of getting a line on the present height of the water. He thought that he could make a fair estimate of this from the known elevation of the mountains about Sinai. Accordingly they steered in that direction, and on the way passed directly over the site of Cairo.
Then the thought of the pyramids came to them all, and De Beauxchamps, who had come aboard the Ark, and who was always moved by sentimental considerations, proposed that they should spend a few hours here, while he descended to inspect the condition in which the flood had left those mighty monuments.
Cosmo not only consented to this, but he even offered to be a member of the party. The Frenchman was only too glad to have his company. Cosmo Versal descended into the submersible after instructing Captain Arms to hover in the neighborhood.
The passengers and crew of the Ark, with expressions of anxiety that would have pleased their subject if he had heard them, watched the _Jules Verne_ disappear into the depths beneath.
The submersible was gone so long that the anxiety of those aboard the Ark deepened into alarm, and finally became almost panic. They had never before known how much they depended upon Cosmo Versal.
He was their only reliance, their only hope. He alone had known how to keep up their spirits, and when he had assured them, as he so often did, that the flooding would surely recommence, they had hardly been terrified because of their unexpressed confidence that, let come what would, his great brain would find a way out for them.
Now he was gone, down into the depths of this awful sea, where their imaginations pictured a thousand unheard-of perils, and perhaps they would never see him again! Without him they knew themselves to be helpless. Even Captain Arms almost lost his nerve.
The strong good sense of Amos Blank alone saved them from the utter despair that began to seize upon them as hour after hour passed without the reappearance of the _Jules Verne_.
His experience had taught him how to keep a level head in an emergency, and how to control panics. With King Richard always at his side, he went about among the passengers and fairly laughed them out of their fears.
Without discussing the matter at all, he convinced them, by the simple force of his own apparent confidence, that they were worrying themselves about nothing.
He was, in fact, as much alarmed as any of the others, but he never showed it. He started a rumor, after six hours had elapsed, that Cosmo himself had said that they would probably require ten or twelve hours for their exploration.
Cosmo had said nothing of the kind, but Blank’s prevarication had its intended effect, and fortunately, before the lapse of another six hours, there was news from under the sea.
And what was happening in the mysterious depths below the Ark? What had so long detained the submersible?
The point where the descent was made had been so well chosen that the _Jules Verne_ almost struck the apex of the Great Pyramid as it approached the bottom. The water was somewhat muddy from the sands of the desert, and the searchlight streamed through a yellowish medium, recalling the “golden atmosphere” for which Egypt had been celebrated. But, nevertheless, the light was so powerful that they could see distinctly at a distance of several rods.
The pyramid appeared to have been but little injured, although the tremendous tidal wave that had swept up the Nile during the invasion of the sea before the downpour began had scooped out the sand down to the bed-rock on all sides.
Finding nothing of particular interest in a circuit of the pyramid, they turned in the direction of the Great Sphinx.
This, too, had been excavated to its base, and it now stood up to its full height, and a terrible expression seemed to have come into its enigmatic features.
Cosmo wished to get a close look at it, and they ran the submersible into actual contact with the forepart of the gigantic statue, just under the mighty chin.
While they paused there, gazing out of the front window of the vessel, a bursting sound was heard, followed by a loud crash, and the _Jules Verne_ was shaken from stem to stern. Every man of them threw himself against the sides of the vessel, for the sound came from overhead, and they had an instinctive notion that the roof was being crushed down upon them.
A second resounding crash was heard, shaking them like an earthquake, and the little vessel rolled partly over upon its side.
“We are lost!” cried De Beauxchamps. “The Sphinx is falling upon us! We shall be buried alive here!”
A third crash came over their heads, and the submersible seemed to sink beneath them as if seeking to avoid the fearful blows that were rained upon its roof.
Still, the stout curved ceiling, strongly braced within, did not yield, although they saw, with affright, that it was bulged inward, and some of the braces were torn from their places. But no water came in.
Stunned by the suddenness of the accident, for a few moments they did nothing but cling to such supports as were within their reach, expecting that another blow would either force the vessel completely over or break the roof in.
But complete silence now reigned, and the missiles from above ceased to strike the submersible. The searchlight continued to beam out of the fore end of the vessel, and following its broad ray with their eyes, they uttered one cry of mingled amazement and fear, and then stared without a word at such a spectacle as the wildest imagination could not have pictured.
The front of the Sphinx had disappeared, and the light, penetrating beyond the place where it had stood, streamed upon the face and breast of an enormous black figure, seated on a kind of throne, and staring into their faces with flaming eyes which at once fascinated and terrified them.
To their startled imaginations the eyes seemed to roll in their sockets, and flashes of fire to dart from them. Their expression was menacing and terrifying beyond belief. At the same time the aspect of the face was so majestic that they cowered before it.
The cheekbones were high, massive, and polished until they shone in the light; the nose and chin were powerful in their contours; and the brow wore an intimidating frown. It seemed to the awed onlookers as if they had sacrilegiously burst into the sanctuary of an offended god.
But, after a minute or two of stupefaction, they thought again of the desperateness of their situation, and turned from staring at the strange idol to consider what they should do.
The fact that no water was finding its way into the submersible somewhat reassured them, but the question now arose whether it could be withdrawn from its position.
They had no doubt that the front of the Sphinx, saturated by the water after the thousands of years that it had stood there, exposed to the desiccating influences of the sun and the desert sands, had suddenly disintegrated, and fallen upon them, pinning their vessel fast under the fragments of the huge head.
De Beauxchamps tried the engines and found that they had no effect in moving the _Jules Verne_. He tried again and again by reversing to disengage the vessel, but it would not stir. Then they debated the only other means of escape.
“Although I have levium life-suits,” said the Frenchman, “and although the top of the _Jules Verne_ can probably be opened, for the door seems not to have been touched, yet the instant it is removed the water will rush in, and it will be impossible to pump out the vessel.”
“Are your life-suits so arranged that they will permit of moving the limbs?” demanded Cosmo.
“Certainly they are.”
“And can they be weighted so as to remain at the bottom?”
“They are arranged for that,” responded De Beauxchamps.
“And can the weights be detached by the inmates without permitting the entrance of water?”
“It can be done, although a very little water might enter during the operation.”
“Then,” said Cosmo, “let us put on the suits, open the door, take out the ballast so that, if released, the submersible will rise to the surface through its own buoyancy, and then see if we cannot loosen the vessel from outside.”
It was a suggestion whose boldness made even the owner and constructor of the _Jules Verne_ stare for a moment, but evidently it was the only possible way in which the vessel might be saved; and knowing that, in case of failure, they could themselves float to the surface after removing the weights from the bottom of the suits, they unanimously decided to try Cosmo Versal’s plan.
It was terribly hard work getting the ballast out of the submersible, working as they had to do under water, which rushed in as soon as the door was opened, and in their awkward suits, which were provided with apparatus for renewing the supply of oxygen; but at last they succeeded.
Then they clambered outside, and labored desperately to release the vessel from the huge fragments of stone that pinned it down. Finally, exhausted by their efforts, and unable to make any impression, they gave up.
De Beauxchamps approached Cosmo and motioned to him that it was time to ascend to the surface and leave the _Jules Verne_ to her fate. But Cosmo signaled back that he wished first to examine more closely the strange statue that was gazing upon them in the still unextinguished beam of the searchlight with what they might now have regarded as a look of mockery.
The others, accordingly, waited while Cosmo Versal, greatly impeded by his extraordinary garment, clambered up to the front of the figure. There he saw something which redoubled his amazement.