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. 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.