Dr. Plantet was saying: “They’re coming out, Jeff, these people of our vague legends. I conceive possibly--and Jaeger and De Boer agreed with me--that this sudden subterranean outlet of our oceans is not necessarily from a natural disturbance. Perhaps these other humans--they must at least be human, our ancestors perhaps, and I think probably more advanced than ourselves--perhaps they have found the water a barrier and have planned to drain it away. “There is a clear connection in every fact we have observed, Jeff. They are under the Pacific Ocean undoubtedly. Coming up to steal our ships for the food they contain! They have done that. But what worse will they do? Come up when the water is drained, and attack us? I think so. I think even now they may be coming, with what strange devices to conquer the ocean depths--and to conquer us--we can only guess. Coming up to conquer for their own uses the bright ethereal realm of their legends! I believe that is what is going on down there now! And we must prepare for it. I’ve told our governments so, and they see that it is a fact. The world public will know it by day after to-morrow. The strangest danger that ever has threatened us. No use trying to avoid it. No sense in trying to explain away facts which nothing else can explain. You can’t say ‘This is too strange, it cannot happen.’ That’s childish, because it is happening. The greatest menace in our history is upon us!” CHAPTER III. TWO THOUSAND FATHOMS! I find it difficult to convey a picture of those following days. Upon so large a canvas as our great, diversified world surface, the few futile strokes I can give must leave most of all to the imagination. What fragments came within my limited knowledge I can tell as they recur to me. No one could grasp it as a whole, except those in authority, flanked with their busy scientific staffs, poring over endless reports, charts, summaries of world conditions and the myriad of diversified world happenings--abnormal, startling, fearful some of them; wide-flung events seemingly so unrelated, but each making up its tiny portion of the whole. We got them there in Dr. Plantet’s home at Sea End hourly from the newscasters. Ten fathoms of water gone from the oceans, harbors dry, rivers tumbling down new waterfalls where once had been the river’s mouth. A hundred local items of emptied water fronts, fishing vessels stranded in the harbor mud, canals being closed everywhere to traffic. A lurid, dramatic broadcasted advertisement by the Associated Bureau of World Air Commerce: “Schedules changed to meet new conditions. Air lines to the rescue! Stranded island and coast ports to be given air traffic. A thousand new local ships to be commissioned at once.” An ad by the great Dayton builders, requiring additional men for the night shifts.