Jim and I compared notes as to our actual experiences at the moment
of the collision. We both remembered the terrible shock and then had
known nothing further. We agreed that except for the shaking up we
felt no bad effects from the spell of unconsciousness. Scientists have
since assumed that in addition to the shock there was the result of
the sudden displacement of the fluids in the inner ear which establish
equilibrium. There is no reason to suppose that the experience was not
universal among those who survived.
Sitting in our monoplane cabin on the top of a Labrador mountain,
wiping the perspiration from our faces and waiting for the rain to
cease, we had no knowledge of the fearful destruction which almost
wiped out all human and animal life. Others have told of tidal waves of
boiling water, of the mountains that melted and the great craters which
opened in the earth, belching forth molten lava. We knew nothing of
this.
The first thing beside the temperature, that told us we were in a
different world, was that night did not come. We had let our watches
run down, but as the hours passed and daylight remained with us, we
began to wonder. Later in the year we would have expected short nights
in this latitude, but now there should be six hours of darkness out of
the twenty-four.
However, it did not grow dark, and it continued to rain. The idea of
what had actually occurred dawned on me even before we got our first
glimpse of the sun. That the revolution of a planet on its axis should
correspond with the period of its revolution around the sun was quite
easily understandable as a theoretical proposition. Its actual effect,
the axial revolution of the earth becoming 365 days, could hardly have
been predicted.
While the rain continued, Jim and I made no effort to leave our
mountain top. I think it was several hours after we had returned to
consciousness that we noticed the wind was no longer blowing. We had
got so used to its sound that we rather took it for granted, I suppose,
and paid no attention to it.
We were sitting in the cabin, listening to the beating rain, when Jim
suddenly exclaimed, "Where's that wind?"
"What?" I began, and then paused. There was a dead silence outside.
"It's stopped, apparently," I said after a moment. "I suppose that
means we can see what's happened without being blown to pieces. Come
on."
I jumped out of the cabin and raced through the pelting rain up the
slope of the depression in which we were sheltered. I am not certain
what I expected to see when I looked eastward, but it was certainly not
that which lay before me.
The ocean had swept over all the land east of the mountains. It had
risen at least three thousand feet, and angry waves were tossing fifty
feet below the surface of our mountain. They were beaten down by the
rain, or the spray would have warned us of the ocean's nearness before
we saw it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account