Away in the far northern wilderness the giant engines purred on remorselessly, continually drawing away more and more of the vital earth-spirit from Europe and Asia. In Great Britain and North America nothing had happened, except a succession of abnormally violent thunderstorms, and certain other minor electrical disturbances which were only detected by instruments at the observatories; but all cables had ceased to work, and the only sea communication possible was by means of wooden sailing ships, for every steamer, whether warship, liner, or tramp, broke down when she got about fifteen miles from the English or American coasts. What was happening in the Southern Hemisphere no one knew till long afterwards. Throughout Europe and Asia a most extraordinary condition of things was coming to pass. What had happened at Kiel happened also at all the great fortresses along the German frontier which were invested by the French and Russians. Guns of all calibres on both sides burst, killing those who used them, but doing no damage to the enemy. Quick-firing guns jammed or burst and became useless. If a man tried to fire a rifle, the breech-lock blew out and killed or maimed him, until French and Germans, Russians, Austrians, and Italians alike refused to fire a shot, and even on the rare occasions when bodies of men got near enough to each other for a cavalry or bayonet charge, lance-points, sabres, and bayonets cracked and splintered like so many icicles. By the tenth day every officer and man in Europe had recognised that if the war was to go on at all it would have to be fought out with fists and feet. All modern weapons of warfare had suddenly become useless. Moreover, communication had become so difficult, that the feeding of the vast armies in the field was rapidly approaching impossibility, and the helpless, hostile battalions were beginning to starve in sight of each other. Locomotives broke down or blew up, bridges collapsed under the weight of the trains, and now horses and men had become afflicted with a deadly languor which made severe exertion an impossibility. From the war lords of the nations to the raw conscripts and the camp-followers it was the same. Neither mind nor body would do its work. The soul of the world was leaving it--drawn out by those remorseless engines into the vast receivers of the Storage Works--and men were beginning to find that without it they could neither think nor work any more than they could fight. There was not a cable or a telegraph line in Europe or Asia that could be operated, not a stationary or locomotive engine that would work without breaking down or blowing up. Electric lighting and traction had for two or three days been things of the past. Throughout two continents industries and commerce, like war, were at a standstill; a sort of creeping paralysis had spread from the Straits of Dover to the Sea of Japan.