And now that ice was dissolving and flowing into the swollen oceans, adding billions of tons of water every minute! Men did not stop to calculate, as Cosmo Versál had done, just how much the dissolution of all the ice and permanent snow of the globe would add to the volume of the seas. He knew that it would be but a drop in the bucket--although sufficient to start the flood--and that the great thing to be feared was the condensation of the aqueous nebula, already beginning to enwrap the planet in its stifling folds. The public could understand the melting ice, although it could not fully understand the nebula; it could understand the swelling sea, and the raging rivers, and the lakes breaking over their banks--and the terror and despair became universal. But what should they _do?_ Those who had thought of building arks hurried to see if the work might not yet be completed, but most of them had begun their foundations on low land, which was already submerged. Then a cry arose, terrible in its significance and in its consequences--one of those cries that the vanished but unconquerable god Pan occasionally sets ringing, nobody can tell how: "Cosmo's ark! Get aboard! Storm it!" And thereupon there was a mighty rush for Mineola. Nobody who caught the infection stopped to reason. Some of them had to wade through water, which in places was knee-deep. They came from various directions, and united in a yelling mob. They meant to carry the ark with a rush. They would not be denied. As the excited throngs neared the great vessel they saw its huge form rising like a mount of safety, with an American flag flapping over it, and they broke into a mighty cheer. On they sped, seized with the unreason of a crowd, shouting, falling over one another, struggling, fighting for places, men dragging their wives and children through the awful crush, many trampled helpless under the myriads of struggling feet--driving the last traces of sanity from one another's minds. The foremost ranks presently spied Cosmo Versál, watching them from an open gangway sixty feet above their heads. They were dismayed at finding the approaches gone. How should they get into the ark? How could they climb up its vertical sides? But they would find means. They would re-erect the approaches. They would _get in somehow_. Cosmo waved them off with frantic gesticulations; then, through a trumpet, he shouted in a voice audible above the din: "Keep back, for your lives!" But they paid no attention to him; they rushed upon the raised wall, surrounding the field where Cosmo had buried his mysterious lines of wire. Then the meaning of that enigmatical work was flashed upon them. As the first to arrive laid their hands upon the top of the low wall they fell as if shot through the brain, tumbling backward on those behind. Others pushed wildly on, but the instant they touched the wall they too collapsed. Wicked blue-green sparks occasionally flashed above the struggling mass.