We had barely scrambled in and closed the door when simultaneously
with the first golden line of the moon over our eastern horizon there
appeared a white wall of turbulent water. It seemed higher because we
were looking up at it, but I believe now it was not more than six feet.
It poured down toward us while we wondered what it would do to us. As
it happened, it did nothing of consequence. It swept around the lower
part of the plane and came up over the cabin floor. Then it swept on,
following the rapidly moving moon toward the west.
"Next time it's going to get us," I remarked to Jim.
But there was no next time. We had seen the moon for the last time,
though of course we did not then know it.
It was about four hours later that the moon and the earth collided.
Fortunately for us, we were lying flat on the rocks in our sleeping
bags. It was our only way of keeping warm, and besides, we had thought
it better to get what rest we could before the moon appeared again
with its accompanying tidal wave. As I said, we had got so used to
earthquakes that we did not notice them.
Then it happened....
When I recovered consciousness, at first, I could not think where I
was. I looked around in bewilderment and at the same moment realized
that a warm rain was drenching me. My bones ached terribly. A few feet
away Jim lay as if he were dead.
I crawled out of my sleeping bag and went over and shook him. He opened
his eyes and looked at me blankly for a moment. Then he groaned and
tried to grin. "So we're not dead after all?"
"We'll be drowned if we stay here," I said wearily. "Let's try to get
inside the cabin. My, it's hot!"
"Hot?" questioned Jim, trying to rise. "So it is. I think all my bones
are broken."
After half rising and half crawling we made our way to the plane.
There was not a trace of ice or snow. The sky was covered with heavy
low-lying clouds from which the rain was pouring, but the burnished
copper glow had entirely disappeared. It was a perfectly normal sky, or
would have been in the tropics. It was daylight, but there was no sun
to be seen.
We had neither of us any clothes except those we wore. We stripped off
our dripping outer things and let them lie where they fell. There was
nothing else to do with them until the rain stopped. We found that
heavy woolen underclothing was not much more comfortable than furs in
that temperature. We settled down in the cabin and proceeded to make
the best of things, quite content to be alive.
It was evident that the moon and the earth had met, and that the
earth had come out of the encounter with less damage than anyone had
anticipated. The rise in temperature had been expected. Undoubtedly it
was much greater elsewhere than in the Arctic.
* * * * *
Two Survivors
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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