Part 25

When it is all over, the Earth swims through space, a blackened planetary cinder,—desolate and dead.

THE END OF THE WORLD

Camille Flammarion, the French astronomer, in his story, “The End of the World,” gives this graphic description of the results of a collision between a Comet and our Earth:

In Paris, London, Rome, Berlin, St. Petersburg, Constantinople, New York and Chicago—in all the great capitals of the world, in all the cities, in all the villages—the frightened people wandered out of doors, as one sees ants run about when their ant-hills are disturbed. All the affairs of every-day life were forgotten.

All human projects were at a standstill. People seemed to have lost interest in all their affairs. They were in a state of demoralization—a dejection more abject even than that which is produced by sea-sickness.

All places of worship had been crowded on that memorable day when it was seen that a collision with a Comet had become inevitable.

In Paris the crowds in the churches were so great that people could no longer get near Notre Dame, the Madeleine and the other churches. Within the churches, vast congregations of worshippers were on their knees praying to God on High. The churches rang with the sounds of supplication, but no other sound was heard. The great church organs and the bells in the steeples were hushed.

In the streets, on the avenues, in the public squares, there was the same dread silence. Nothing was bought or sold. No newspapers were hawked about.

The only vehicles seen on the streets were funeral hearses carrying to the cemeteries the bodies of the first victims of the Comet. Of these there were already many. They were people who had died from fright and from heart disease.

With what anxiety everyone waited for the night!

Never, perhaps, was there a more beautiful sunset. Never a clearer sky. The sun seemed to dip into a sea of red and gold.

The huge red ball of the sun sank majestically to the horizon. But the stars did not appear. Night did not come.

To the solar day succeeded a new day, the daylight of the Comet. Its intense light resembled that of an Aurora Borealis, but more vivid, coming from a great incandescent spot, which had not been visible during the day because it was below the horizon, but which would certainly have rivalled the splendour of the Sun.

This luminous spot rose in the East almost at the same time as the full Moon. The two luminous bodies rose together, side by side. As they rose, the light of the Moon seemed to pale, but the head of the Comet increased in splendour with the disappearance of the Sun below the western horizon.

Now, after nightfall, the Comet dominated the world—a scarlet-red ball with jets of yellow and green flame which seemed to flutter like fiery wings.

To the terrified people it seemed like a giant of fire taking possession of all Heaven and Earth.

Already the outermost jets of flame had reached the Moon. From one instant to the next the flaming rays would descend upon the Earth.

All eyes were distended with horror when it was seen that the horizon was lighting up with tiny violet flames as from a vast fire.

An instant afterward, the Comet diminished in brilliancy. This was apparently because the Comet, upon touching the atmosphere of our Earth, had come within the penumbra of our planet and had lost part of its reflected light coming from the Sun. But in reality this apparent extinction was the effect of contrast. When the less dazzled eyes of the awestruck, human spectators had grown used to this new light, it appeared almost as intense as at first, but paler, more sinister and sepulchral.

Never before had the Earth been lit up with so sickly a light.

The drouth of the air became intolerable. Heat, as from a huge burning oven, came from above. A horrible stench of burning sulphur—due, no doubt, to electrified ozone—poisoned the atmosphere.

All the people then saw that their time had come. Many-thousand-throated cries rent the air. “The World is burning. We are on fire!” they cried.

All the horizon, in fact, was now lit up with flame, forming a crown of blue light. It was, indeed, as had been foreseen by scientists, the oxide of carbon igniting in the air and producing anhydrid of carbon. Clearly, too, hydrogen from the Comet combined with it.

On a sudden, as the people were gazing terrified, motionless, mute, holding their breath, and scared out of their wits, the vault of Heaven seemed to be rent asunder from the zenith to the horizon. Through the gaping breach there seemed to appear the huge red mouth of a dragon, belching forth sheaves of sputtering green flames.

The glare of the atmosphere was so fierce that those who had not already hidden themselves in the cellars of their houses, now all rushed helter-skelter to the nearest underground openings, be they subway steps, cellar doors or sewer manholes. Thousands were crushed or maimed during this mad stampede, while many others, frantic from fright and stricken with the heat, fell dead from apoplexy.

All reasoning powers seemed to have ceased. Among those cowering in dark cellars and subterranean passages below, there was nothing but silence, begot by dull resignation and stupor.

Of all this panic-stricken multitude, only the astronomers had remained at their posts in the Observatories, making unceasing observations of this great astronomic phenomenon. They were the only eye-witnesses of the impending collision.

Their calculations had been that the terrestrial globe would penetrate into the core of the Comet, as a cannon ball might into a cloud. From the first contact of the extreme atmospheric zones of the Earth and of the Comet, they had figured, the transit would last four hours and a half.