Section 1
So the great Day came to me.
And even as I had awakened so in that same dawn the whole worldawoke.
For the whole world of living things had been overtaken by thesame tide of insensibility; in an hour, at the touch of this newgas in the comet, the shiver of catalytic change had passed aboutthe globe. They say it was the nitrogen of the air, the old AZOTE,that in the twinkling of an eye was changed out of itself, and in anhour or so became a respirable gas, differing indeed from oxygen,but helping and sustaining its action, a bath of strength andhealing for nerve and brain. I do not know the precise changesthat occurred, nor the names our chemists give them, my work hascarried me away from such things, only this I know--I and all menwere renewed.
I picture to myself this thing happening in space, a planetarymoment, the faint smudge, the slender whirl of meteor, drawingnearer to this planet,--this planet like a ball, like a shadedrounded ball, floating in the void, with its little, nearly impalpablecoat of cloud and air, with its dark pools of ocean, its gleamingridges of land. And as that midge from the void touches it, thetransparent gaseous outer shell clouds in an instant greenand then slowly clears again. . . .
Thereafter, for three hours or more,--we know the minimum time forthe Change was almost exactly three hours because all the clocksand watches kept going--everywhere, no man nor beast nor bird norany living thing that breathes the air stirred at all but lay still. . . .
Everywhere on earth that day, in the ears of every one who breathed,there had been the same humming in the air, the same rush of greenvapors, the crepitation, the streaming down of shooting stars.The Hindoo had stayed his morning's work in the fields to stareand marvel and fall, the blue-clothed Chinaman fell head foremostathwart his midday bowl of rice, the Japanese merchant came outfrom some chaffering in his office amazed and presently lay therebefore his door, the evening gazers by the Golden Gates were overtakenas they waited for the rising of the great star. This had happenedin every city of the world, in every lonely valley, in every homeand house and shelter and every open place. On the high seas, thecrowding steamship passengers, eager for any wonder, gaped andmarveled, and were suddenly terror-stricken, and struggled for thegangways and were overcome, the captain staggered on the bridgeand fell, the stoker fell headlong among his coals, the enginesthrobbed upon their way untended, the fishing craft drove bywithout a hail, with swaying rudder, heeling and dipping. . . .
The great voice of material Fate cried Halt! And in the midst ofthe play the actors staggered, dropped, and were still. The figureruns from my pen. In New York that very thing occurred. Most ofthe theatrical audiences dispersed, but in two crowded houses thecompany, fearing a panic, went on playing amidst the gloom, and thepeople, trained by many a previous disaster, stuck to their seats.There they sat, the back rows only moving a little, and there, indisciplined lines, they drooped and failed, nodded, and fell forwardor slid down upon the floor. I am told by Parload--though indeed Iknow nothing of the reasoning on which his confidence rests---thatwithin an hour of the great moment of impact the first greenmodification of nitrogen had dissolved and passed away, leaving theair as translucent as ever. The rest of that wonderful interludewas clear, had any had eyes to see its clearness. In London itwas night, but in New York, for example, people were in the fullbustle of the evening's enjoyment, in Chicago they were sittingdown to dinner, the whole world was abroad. The moonlight must haveilluminated streets and squares littered with crumpled figures,through which such electric cars as had no automatic brakes hadploughed on their way until they were stopped by the fallen bodies.People lay in their dress clothes, in dining-rooms, restaurants,on staircases, in halls, everywhere just as they had been overcome.Men gambling, men drinking, thieves lurking in hidden places, sinfulcouples, were caught, to arise with awakened mind and conscienceamidst the disorder of their sin. America the comet reached in thefull tide of evening life, but Britain lay asleep. But as I havetold, Britain did not slumber so deeply but that she was in thefull tide of what may have been battle and a great victory. Up anddown the North Sea her warships swept together like a net abouttheir foes. On land, too, that night was to have decided greatissues. The German camps were under arms from Redingen to Markirch,their infantry columns were lying in swathes like mown hay, inarrested night march on every track between Longuyon and Thiancourt,and between Avricourt and Donen. The hills beyond Spincourt weredusted thick with hidden French riflemen; the thin lash of the Frenchskirmishers sprawled out amidst spades and unfinished rifle-pitsin coils that wrapped about the heads of the German columns,thence along the Vosges watershed and out across the frontiernear Belfort nearly to the Rhine. . . .
The Hungarian, the Italian peasant, yawned and thought the morningdark, and turned over to fall into a dreamless sleep; the Mahometanworld spread its carpet and was taken in prayer. And in Sydney,in Melbourne, in New Zealand, the thing was a fog in the afternoon,that scattered the crowd on race-courses and cricket-fields,and stopped the unloading of shipping and brought men out fromtheir afternoon rest to stagger and litter the streets. . . .