Hundreds of such things. Newscasters by the hour recited dry statistics of harbor depths, local climate changes, routine weather reports, a learned, somewhat pessimistic summary of the world’s fresh water supplies. A company organized to drill, wholesale, for artesian wells. A panic in the hot spring area of New Zealand. A spouting geyser reported bursting into existence in the Soudan desert. Etna and Vesuvius quiet--the Pacific volcanoes all spouting steam. The newscaster’s voice came day and night from our receiving grid. The tape clicked beside it, an endless stream of recorded events. An exodus of people from the Gaspé fishing region; signs of a growing tendency to panic throughout all the South Seas; a Japanese mandate that none must travel from one island to another; an iceberg coming down far below the normal summer limit of drift in the North Pacific; ocean currents disturbed; a prognostication of what the new rainfall might be in various localities. “Rot!” snorted Dr. Plantet. “They do not know--there is no one who knows anything about it!” The British Isles were perturbed. There was much learned discussion concerning the Gulf Stream. Without it the cold of an almost Arctic winter would settle upon London. They had always been perturbed over the precious Gulf Stream, these Britishers. I recall reading that three-quarters of a century ago some of them had been bothered by the Yankee railroad from Florida to Key West. And when the additional road causeways were completed there was more British comment, claiming that the Gulf Stream was influenced adversely to effect the mild British winters. Nonsense, of course. But they had real cause now to be worried. With my company giving me definite leave, I was free these days to remain with the Plantets. Dr. Plantet seemed to want me. He hinted that he would need me for some rôle in this world drama that I might play to advantage. He no more than hinted at it; but I waited, eagerly to welcome it. We spent most of our time at the air speakers. Polly was excited, tense with it all. Arturo said almost nothing. I was too engrossed at the time to remark him closely. But I recall that queer aspect of brooding; an absorption in his own queer thoughts; a moodiness. He seemed, often, to want solitude. I would miss him from the instrument room, finding him perhaps sitting on the shore front, where, far out on a slimy, descending slope, the ocean lapped a full seventy feet from where it should have been. A graceful, slim figure of a boy with gentility stamped in every line of him; a romantic little figure, like Raleigh, the boy, Sir Walter, sitting at the ocean’s edge, brooding, dreaming his own dreams with the lure of the sea upon him.