Part 26

It was easy to compute, since the Comet, being about fifty times as large as the Earth, was to be pierced, not in its centre, but at one-quarter of the distance from the centre, with a velocity of 173,000 kilometers an hour.

It was about forty minutes after the first atmospheric impact with the Comet, that the heat and horrible stench of burning sulphur became so suffocating that a few more moments of this torment would put an end to all life. Even the most intrepid of astronomers withdrew into the interior of their glass-domed observatories, which they could close hermetically as they descended into the deep subterranean vaults.

The longest to stay above was a young assistant astronomer, a girl student from California, whose nerves had been steeled during the ordeal of the San Francisco earthquake. She remained long enough to witness the apparition of a huge, white-hot meteorite, precipitating itself southward with the velocity of lightning.

But it was beyond human endurance to remain longer above. It was no longer possible to breathe. To the intense heat and atmospheric drouth, destroying all vital functions, was added the poisoning of our air by the oxide of carbon.

The ears rang as from the tolling of funeral bells, and all hearts were in a flutter of feverish palpitation. And always, everywhere, there was that suffocating stench of sulphur.

Now a shower of fire fell from the glowing sky. It was raining shooting-stars and white-hot meteorites, most of which burst like bombs. The fragments of these, like flying shrapnel, crashed through the roofs and set fire to the buildings.

To the conflagration of the sky were added the flames of fire everywhere on earth.

Claps of ear-splitting thunder followed each other incessantly, produced partly by the explosions of the meteors, and partly by a tremendous electric thunderstorm. Rifts of lightning zig-zagged hither and thither.

A continuous rumbling, like that of distant drums, filled the ears of the cowering people below, awaiting their fate. This low rumble was interspersed with the deafening detonations of exploding meteors and the high shriek of hurtling aerial fragments.

Then followed unearthly noises, like the seething of some immense boiling cauldron, the wild wailing of winds, and the quaking of the soil where the earth’s crust was giving way.

This unearthly tempest became so frightful, so fraught with agony and mad terror, that the multitudes grovelling below were overcome with paralysis, and lay prone. Laid low like dumb brutes, they met their doom.

The end of all had come.

COLOPHON

POST HOC, NON PROPTER HOC: Sic veteres de multis rebus opinabantur, Eodemque dicto eas jugiter absolvisse Recte sibi visi sunt, Vt puta quaecumque et qualiacumque Cometarum saeculares reditus sequuntur. CVR TV ITAQVE, forsitan quaeras, Haec auditu minime jucunda nobis narrasti, Terrae motus, fluminum inundationes, annonae defectus, Pestes mortiferas, incendia, bella, regumque magnorum excidia? Si tibi cordi est, LECTOR BENEVOLENTISSIME, rationem nostram didicisse, eia, veram accipe: MVNDVS VVLT DECIPI.

FINIS.