CHAPTER XIV
THE ESCAPE OF THE PRESIDENT
When Professor Abiel Pludder indited his savage response to CosmoVersal's invitation to become one of the regenerators of mankind byembarking in the Ark, he was expressing his professional prejudice ratherthan his intellectual conviction. As Cosmo had remarked, Pludder had agood brain and great scientific acuteness, and, although he did notbelieve in the nebular theory of a flood, and was obstinately opposed toeverything that was not altogether regular and according to recognizedauthority in science, yet he could not shut his eyes to the fact thatsomething was going wrong in the machinery of the heavens. But it annoyedhim to find that his own explanations were always falsified by the event,while Cosmo Versal seemed to have a superhuman foreglimpse of whateverhappened.
His pride would not allow him to recede from the position that he hadtaken, but he could not free himself from a certain anxiety about thefuture. After he had refused Cosmo Versal's invitation, the course ofevents strengthened this anxiety. He found that the officialmeteorologists were totally unable to account for the marvelous vagariesof the weather.
Finally, when the news came of tremendous floods in the north, and of theoverflowing of Hudson Bay, he secretly determined to make somepreparations of his own. He still rejected the idea of a watery nebula,but he began to think it possible that all the lowlands of the earth mightbe overflowed by the sea, and by the melting of mountain snows andglaciers, together with deluging rainfall. After what had passed, he couldnot think of making any public confession of his change of heart, but hissense of humanity compelled him to give confidential warning to his friendsthat it would be well to be prepared to get on high ground at a moment'snotice.
He was on the point of issuing, but without his signature, an officialstatement cautioning the public against unprecedented inundations, when thefirst tidal wave arrived on the Atlantic coast and rendered any utteranceof that kind unnecessary. People's eyes were opened, and now they wouldlook out for themselves.
Pludder's private preparations amounted to no more than the securing of alarge express aero, in which, if the necessity for suddenly leavingWashington should arise, he intended to take flight, together withPresident Samson, who was his personal friend, and a number of other closefriends, with their families. He did not think that it would be necessary,in any event, to go farther than the mountains of Virginia.
The rising of the sea, mounting higher at each return, at length convincedhim that the time had come to get away. Hundreds of air craft had alreadydeparted westward, not only from Washington, but from New York,Philadelphia, Baltimore, Boston, and other seaboard cities, beforeProfessor Pludder assembled his friends by telephone on the Capitolgrounds, where his aero was waiting.
The lower streets of the city were under water from the overflow of thePotomac, which was backed up by the influx of the Atlantic into ChesapeakeBay, and the most distressing scenes were enacted there, people fleeing inthe utmost disorder toward higher ground, carrying their children and someof their household goods, and uttering doleful cries. Many, thinking thatthe best way to escape, embarked in frail boats on the river, which wasrunning up-stream with frightful velocity, and rising perceptibly higherevery second. Most of these boats were immediately overturned or swamped.
If the start had been delayed but a little longer, the aero would have beenmobbed by the excited people, who uttered yells of disappointment and ragewhen they saw it rise from its tower and sail over the city. It was thelast airship that left Washington, and it carried the last persons whoescaped from the national capital before the downpour from the atmospherebegan which put an end to all possibility of getting away.
There were on board, in addition to a crew of three, twenty-two persons.These included President Samson, with his wife and three children, sevenother men with their families, making, together, sixteen persons, andProfessor Pludder, who had no family.
More because they wished to escape from the painful scenes beneath themthan because they deemed that there was any occasion for particular haste,they started off at high speed, and it was probably lucky for them thatthis speed was maintained after they had left Washington out of sight.They rapidly approached the Blue Ridge in the neighborhood of Luray, andPludder was about to order a landing there as night was approaching, whenwith great suddenness the sky filled with dense clouds and a tremendousdownpour began. This was the same phenomenon which has already beendescribed as following closely the attack at New York on Cosmo Versal'sArk.
The aero, luckily, was one of the best type, and well covered, so that theywere protected from the terrible force of the rain, but in the tumult therecould be no more thought of descending. It would have been impossible tomake a landing in the midst of the storm and the pouring water, whichrushed in torrents down the mountainside. Professor Pludder was a brave manand full of resources when driven into a corner. Being familiar with theconstruction and management of aeros, for he had been educated as anengineer, he now took charge of the airship.
Within twenty minutes after the sky had opened its batteries--for the rainhad almost the force of plunging shot--a mighty wind arose, and the aero,pitching, tossing, and dipping like a mad thing, was driven with frightfulspeed eastward. This wild rush continued for more than an hour. By thistime it was full night, and the pouring rain around them was asimpenetrable to the sight as a black wall.
They had their electric lamps inside, and their searchlights, but it wasimpossible to tell where they were. Pludder turned the searchlightdownward, but he could not make out the features of the ground beneaththem. It is likely that they were driven at least as far as Chesapeake Bay,and they may have passed directly over Washington.
At last, however, the wind slewed round, and began to blow withundiminished violence from the northeast. Plunging and swerving, andsometimes threatened with a complete somersault, the aero hurried away inits crazy flight, while its unfortunate inmates clung to one another, andheld on by any object within reach, in the endeavor to keep from beingdashed against the metallic walls.
The crew of the aero were picked men, but no experience could haveprepared them for the work which they now had to do. Without the readybrain of Professor Pludder to direct their efforts, and without hispersonal exertions, their aerial ship would have been wrecked within aquarter of an hour after the storm struck it. He seemed transformed intoanother person. Hatless and coatless, and streaming with water, he workedlike a demon. He was ready at each emergency with some device which, underhis direction, had the effect of magic.
A hundred times the aero plunged for the ground, but was saved and turnedupward again just as it seemed on the point of striking. Up and down,right and left, it ran and pitched and whirled, like a cork in a whirlpool.Sometimes it actually skimmed the ground, plowing its way through atorrent of rushing water, and yet it rose again and was saved fromdestruction.
This terrible contest lasted another hour after the turning of the wind,and then the latter died out. Relieved from its pressure, the aero ran onwith comparative ease. Professor Pludder, suspecting that they might nowbe getting into a mountainous district, made every effort to keep thecraft at a high elevation, and this, notwithstanding the depressing forceof the rain, they succeeded in doing. After the dying out of the wind theykept on, by the aid of their propellers, in the same direction in which ithad been driving them, because, in the circumstances, one way was as goodas another.
The terrible discomfort of the President and his companions in the cabinof the aero was greatly relieved by the cessation of the wind, but stillthey were in a most unfortunate state. The rain, driven by the fierceblasts, had penetrated through every crevice, and they were drenched tothe skin. No one tried to speak, for it would have been almost impossibleto make oneself heard amid the uproar. They simply looked at one anotherin dismay and prayed for safety.
Professor Pludder, not now compelled to spend every moment in themanagement of the craft, entered the cabin occasionally, pressed the handof the President,
smiled encouragingly on the women and children, and didall he could, in pantomime, to restore some degree of confidence. Inside,the lights were aglow, but outside it was as dark as pitch, except wherethe broad finger of the searchlight, plunging into the mass of tumblingwater, glittered and flashed.
The awful night seemed endless, but at last a pale illumination appearedin the air, and they knew that day had come. The spectacle of the skyeydeluge was now so terrible that it struck cold even to their alreadybenumbed hearts. The atmosphere seemed to have been turned into a mightycataract thundering down upon the whole face of the earth. Now that theycould see as well as hear, the miracle of the preservation of the aeroappeared incredible.
As the light slowly brightened, Professor Pludder, constantly on theoutlook, caught a glimpse of a dark, misty object ahead. It loomed up sosuddenly, and was already so close, that before he could sufficientlyalter the course of the aero, it struck with such violence as to crushthe forward end of the craft and break one of the aeroplanes. Everybodywas pitched headforemost, those inside falling on the flooring, whilePludder and the three men of the crew were thrown out upon a mass ofrocks. All were more or less seriously injured, but none was killed ortotally disabled.
Pludder sprang to his feet, and, slipping and plunging amid the downpour,managed to get back to the wreck and aid the President and the others toget upon their feet.
"We're lodged on a mountain!" he yelled. "Stay inside, under the shelterof the roof!"
The three men who, together with the professor, had been precipitated outamong the rocks, also scrambled in, and there they stood, or sat, the mostdisconsolate and despairing group of human beings that ever the eye of anoverseeing Providence looked down upon.
The President presented the most pitiable sight of all. Like the rest,his garments were sopping, his eyes were bloodshot, his face was ghastly,and his tall silk hat, which he had jammed down upon his brow, had beensoftened by the water and crushed by repeated blows into the form of aclosed accordion. Of the women and children it is needless to speak; nodescription could convey an idea of their condition.
In these circumstances, the real strength of Professor Abiel Pludder'smind was splendidly displayed. He did not lose his head, and hecomprehended the situation, and what it was necessary to do, in a flash.He got out some provisions and distributed them to the company, in somecases actually forcing them to eat. With his own hands he prepared coffee,with the apparatus always carried by express aeros, and made them drinkit.
When all had thus been refreshed he approached President Samson andshouted in his ear:
"We shall have to stay here until the downpour ceases. To guard against theeffects of a tempest, if one should arise, we must secure the aero in itsplace. For that I need the aid of every man in the party. We have,fortunately, struck in a spot on the mountain where we are out of the wayof the torrents of water that are pouring down through the ravines oneither side. We can make our lodgment secure, but we must go to workimmediately."
Stimulated by his example, the President and the others set to work, andwith great difficulty, for they had to guard their eyes and nostrils fromthe driving rain, which, sometimes, in spite of their precautions, nearlysmothered them, they succeeded in fastening the aero to the rocks by meansof metallic cables taken from its stores. When this work was finished theyreturned under the shelter of the cabin roof and lay down exhausted. Soworn out were they that all of them quickly fell into a troubled sleep.
It would be needless to relate in detail the sufferings, mental andphysical, that they underwent during the next ten days. While they werehanging there on the mountain the seaboard cities of the world weredrowned, and Cosmo Versal's Ark departed on the remarkable voyage that hasbeen described in a former chapter. They had plenty of provisions, for theaero had been well stored, but partly through precaution and partly becauseof lack of appetite they ate sparingly. The electric generators of the aerohad not been injured in the wreck of the craft, and they were able tosupply themselves with sufficient heat, and with light inside the cabin atnight.
Once they had a strange visitor--a half-drowned bear, which hadstruggled up the mountain from its den somewhere below--but that was theonly living creature beside themselves that they saw. After gazingwistfully at the aero from the top of a rock the poor bear, fighting thechoking rain with its soaked paws, stumbled into one of the torrents thatpoured furiously down on each side, and was swept from their sight.
Fortunately, the wind that they had anticipated did not come, butfrequently they saw or heard the roaring downpours of solid waterycolumns like those that had so much astonished Cosmo Versal and CaptainArms in the midst of the Atlantic, but none came very near them.
Professor Pludder ventured out from time to time, clambering a little wayup and down the projecting ridge of the mountain on which they were lodged,and at length was able to assure his companions that they were on thenorthwestern face of Mount Mitchell, the highest peak of the Appalachianrange. With the aid of his pocket aneroid, making allowance for theeffect of the lifting of the whole atmosphere by the flood, and summoninghis knowledge of the locality--for he had explored, in former years, allthe mountains in this region--he arrived at the conclusion that theirplace of refuge was elevated about four thousand feet above the formerlevel of the sea.
At first their range of vision did not allow them to see the condition ofthe valleys below them, but as the water crept higher it gradually cameinto view. It rose steadily up the slopes beneath, which had already beenstripped of their covering of trees and vegetation by the force of thedescending torrents, until on the tenth day it had arrived almost withinreach. Since, as has just been said, they were four thousand feet abovethe former level of the sea, it will be observed that the water musthave been rising much more rapidly than the measurements of Cosmo Versalindicated. Its average rate of rise had been three instead of two inchesper minute, and the world was buried deeper than Cosmo thought. The causeof his error will be explained later.
The consternation of the little party when they thus beheld the rapiddrowning of the world below them, and saw no possibility of escape forthemselves if the water continued to advance, as it evidently would do,cannot be depicted. Some of them were driven insane, and were withdifficulty prevented by those who retained their senses from throwingthemselves into the flood.
Pludder was the only one who maintained a command over his nerves,although he now at last _believed in the nebula_. He recognized that therewas no other possible explanation of the flood than that which Cosmo Versalhad offered long before it began. In his secret heart he had no expectationof ultimate escape, yet he was strong enough to continue to encourage hiscompanions with hopes which he could not himself entertain.
When, after nightfall on the tenth day, the water began to lap the lowerparts of the aero, he was on the point of persuading the party to clamberup the rocks in search of the shelter above, but as he stepped out of thedoor of the cabin to reconnoiter the way, with the aid of the searchlightwhich he had turned up along the ridge, he was astonished to find the rainrapidly diminishing in force; and a few minutes later it ceased entirely,and the stars shone out.
The sudden cessation of the roar upon the roof brought everybody to theirfeet, and before Professor Pludder could communicate the good news allwere out under the sky, rejoicing and offering thanks for theirdeliverance. The women were especially affected. They wept in oneanother's arms, or convulsively clasped their children to their breasts.
At length the President found his voice.
"What has happened?" he asked.
Professor Pludder, with the new light that had come to him, was as readywith an explanation as Cosmo Versal himself had been under similarcircumstances.
"We must have run out of the nebula."
"The nebula!" returned Mr. Samson in surprise. "Has there been a nebula,then?"
"Without question," was the professor's answer. "Nothing but an encounterwith a watery nebula could have had such a result."
/> "But you always said----" began the President.
"Yes," Pludder broke in, "but one may be in error sometimes."
"Then, Cosmo Versal----"
"Let us not discuss Cosmo Versal," exclaimed Professor Pludder, with areturn of his old dictatorial manner.