CHAPTER XXII
THE TERRIBLE NUCLEUS ARRIVES
When the company in the Ark had recovered from the astonishment producedby the narratives of De Beauxchamps and Cosmo Versal, and particularlythe vivid description given by the latter of the strange idol concealedin the breast of the "Father of Horror," and the inferences which hedrew concerning its prophetic character, the question again arose as totheir future course.
Captain Arms was still for undertaking to follow the trough of the RedSea, but Cosmo declared that this course would be doubly dangerous nowthat the water had lowered and that they no longer had the _Jules Verne_to act as a submarine scout, warning them of hidden perils.
They must now go by their own soundings, and this would be especiallydangerous in the close neighborhood of half-submerged mountains, whosebuttresses and foothills might rise suddenly out of the depths withslopes so steep that the lead would afford no certain guidance.
It was first necessary to learn if possible the actual height of thewater, and whether it was still subsiding. It was partly for thispurpose that they had passed over Egypt instead of keeping directly ontoward the coast of lower Palestine.
But now Cosmo abandoned his purpose of taking his measurement by the aidof Mount Sinai or some of its neighboring peaks, on account of thedangerous character of that rugged region. If they had been furnishedwith deep-sea sounding apparatus they might have made a directmeasurement of the depth in Egypt, but that was one of the few thingswhich Cosmo Versal had overlooked in furnishing the Ark, and such anoperation could not be undertaken.
He discovered that there was a mountain north of the Gulf of Akabahaving an elevation of 3,450 feet, and since this was 220 feet higherthan Monte Lauro, in Sicily, on which the Ark had grounded, he countedon it as a gage which would serve his purpose.
So they passed almost directly over Suez, and about 120 miles farthereast they found the mountain they sought, rising to the west of the Wadiel Arabia, a continuation of the depression at whose deepest point laythe famous "Dead Sea," so often spoken of in the books of former times.
Here Cosmo was able to make a very accurate estimate from the height ofthe peak above the water, and he was gratified to find that therecession had not continued. The level of the water appeared to beexactly the same as when they made their unfortunate excursion in thedirection of smoking Etna.
"It's all right," he said to Captain Arms. "We can get over into theSyrian desert without much danger, although we must go slowly andcarefully until we are well past these ranges that come down from thedirection of the Dead Sea. After that I do not see that there isanything in our way until we reach the ancient plains of Babylon."
King Richard, who was full of the history of the Crusades, as well as ofBible narratives, wished to have the Ark turn northward, so that theymight sail over Jerusalem, and up the Valley of the Jordan within sightof Mount Hermon and the Lebanon range.
Cosmo had had enough of that kind of adventure, while Captain Armsdeclared that he would resign on the spot if there was to be any more"fool navigating on mountain tops." But there were many persons in theArk who would have been very glad if King Richard's suggestion had beencarried out.
The feelings of some were deeply stirred when they learned that theywere now crossing the lower end of Palestine, and that the scenes of somany incidents in the history of Abraham, Moses, and Joshua lay buriedbeneath the blue water, whose almost motionless surface was marked witha broad trail of foaming bubbles in the wake of the immense vessel.
Cosmo greatly regretted the absence of the submersible when they werepicking their way over this perilous region, but they encountered noreal difficulty, and at length found, by celestial observations, thatthey were beyond all dangers and safely arrived over the deeplysubmerged desert.
They kept on for several days toward the rising sun, and then CaptainArms announced that the observations showed that they were over the siteof Babylon.
This happened just at the time of the midday dinner, and over thedessert Cosmo seized the opportunity to make a little speech, whichcould be heard by all in the saloon.
"We are now arrived," he said, "over the very spot where the descendantsof Noah are said to have erected a tower, known as the Tower of Babel,and which they intended to build so high that it would afford a securerefuge in case there should be another deluge.
"How vain were such expectations, if they were ever entertained, issufficiently shown by the fact that, at this moment, the water rollsmore than three thousand feet deep over the place where they put theirtower, and before the present deluge is over it will be thirty thousandfeet deep.
"More than half a mile beneath our feet lie the broad plains of Chaldea,where tradition asserts that the study of astronomy began. It wasBerosus, a Chaldean, who predicted that there would come a seconddeluge.
"It occurs to me, since seeing the astounding spectacle disclosed by thefalling apart of the Sphinx, that these people may have had aninfinitely more profound knowledge of the secrets of the heavens thantradition has assigned to them.
"On the breast of the statue in the Sphinx was the figure of a crownedman, encircled by a huge ring, and having behind him the form of a boatcontaining two other human figures. The boat was represented as floatingin a flood of waters.
"Now, this corresponds exactly with figures that have been found amongthe most ancient ruins in Chaldea. I regard that ring as symbolical of anebula enveloping the earth, and I think that the second deluge, whichwe have lived to see, was foretold here thousands of years ago."
"Who foretold it first, then, the people who placed the statue in theSphinx, or these astronomers of Chaldea?" asked Professor Abel Able.
"I believe," Cosmo replied, "that the knowledge originated here, beneathus, and that it was afterward conveyed to the Egyptians, who embodied itin their great symbolical god."
"Are we to understand," demanded Professor Jeremiah Moses, "that thisfigure was all that you saw on the breast of the statue, and that yousimply inferred that the ring represented a nebula?"
"Not at all," Cosmo replied. "The principal representation was that of aworld overwhelmed with a flood, and of a nebula descending upon it."
"How do you know that it was intended for a nebula?"
"Because it had the aspect of one, and it was clearly shown to bedescending from the high heavens."
"A cloud," suggested Professor Moses.
"No, not a cloud. Mark this, which is a marvel in itself: It had _theform of a spiral nebula_. It was unmistakable."
At this point the discussion was interrupted by a call to Cosmo Versalfrom Captain Arms on the bridge. He hastily left the table and ascendedto the captain's side.
He did not need to be told what to look for. Off in the north the skyhad become a solid black mass, veined with the fiercest lightning. Thepealing of the thunder came in a continuous roll, which soon grew soloud as to shake the Ark.
"Up with the side-plates!" shouted Cosmo, setting twenty bells ringingat once. "Close tight every opening! Screw down the port shutters!"
The crew of the Ark was, in a few seconds, running to and fro, executingthe orders that came in swift succession from the commander's bridge,and the passengers were thrown into wild commotion. But nobody had timeto attend to them.
"It is upon us!" yelled Cosmo in the captain's ear, for the uproar hadbecome deafening. "The nucleus is here!"
The open promenade decks had not yet all been turned into innercorridors when the downpour began upon the Ark. A great deal of waterfound its way aboard, but the men worked with a will, as fearful fortheir own safety as for that of others, and in a little while everythinghad been made snug and tight.
In a short time a tremendous tempest was blowing, the wind coming fromthe north, and the Ark, notwithstanding her immense breadth of beam, wascanted over to leeward at an alarming angle. On the larboard side thewaves washed to the top of the great elliptical dome and broke over it,and their thundering blows shook the vessel to her center, c
ausing manyto believe that she was about to founder.
The disorder was frightful. Men and women were flung about like tops,and no one could keep his feet. Crash after crash, that could be heardamid the howling of the storm, the battering of the waves, and the awfulroar of the deluge descending on the roof, told the fate of thetableware and dishes that had been hastily left in the big diningsaloon.
Chairs recently occupied by the passengers on what had been thepromenade decks, and from which they had so serenely, if oftensorrowfully, looked over the broad, peaceful surface of the waters, werenow darting, rolling, tumbling, and banging about, intermingled withrugs, hats, coats, and other abandoned articles of clothing.
The pitching and rolling of the Ark were so much worse than they hadbeen during the first days of the cataclysm, that Cosmo became verysolicitous about his collection of animals.
He hurried down to the animal deck, and found, indeed, that things werein a lamentable shape. The trained keepers were themselves so much atthe mercy of the storm that they had had all they could do to savethemselves from being trampled to death by the frightened beasts.
The animals had been furnished with separate pens, but during the longcontinued calm the keepers, for the sake of giving their charges greaterfreedom and better air, had allowed many of them to go at large in thebroad central space around which the pens were placed, and the tempesthad come so unexpectedly that there had been no time to separate themand get them back into their lodgings.
When Cosmo descended the scene that met his eyes caused him to cry outin dismay, but he could not have been heard if he had spoken through atrumpet. The noise and uproar were stunning, and the spectacle wasindescribable. The keepers had taken refuge on a kind of gallery runninground the central space, and were hanging on there for their lives.
Around them, on the railings, clinging with their claws, wildly flappingtheir wings, and swinging with every roll of the vessel, were all thefowls and every winged creature in the Ark except the giant turkeys,whose power of wing was insufficient to lift them out of the melee.
But all the four-footed beasts were rolling, tumbling, and struggling inthe open space below. With every lurch of the Ark they were swept acrossthe floor in an indistinguishable mass.
The elephants wisely did not attempt to get upon their feet, but allowedthemselves to slide from side to side, sometimes crushing the smalleranimals, and sometimes, in spite of all their efforts, rolling upontheir backs, with their titanic limbs swaying above them, and theirtrunks wildly grasping whatever came within their reach.
The huge Californian cattle were in no better case, and the poor sheeppresented a pitiable spectacle as they were tumbled in woolly heaps fromside to side.
Strangest sight of all was that of the great Astoria turtles. They hadbeen pitched upon their backs and were unable to turn themselves over,and their big carapaces served admirably for sliders.
They glided with the speed of logs in a chute, now this way, now that,shooting like immense projectiles through the throng of strugglingbeasts, cutting down those that happened to be upon their feet, and notending their course until they had crashed against the nearest wall.
As one of the turtles slid toward the bottom of the steps on which Cosmowas clinging it cut under the legs of one of the giant turkeys, and thelatter, making a superphasianidaean effort, half leaped, half flappedits way upon the steps to the side of Cosmo Versal, embracing him withone of its stumpy wings, while its red neck and head, with bloodshoteyes, swayed high above his bald dome.
The keepers gradually made their way round the gallery to Cosmo's side,and he indicated to them by signs that they must quit the place withhim, and wait for a lull of the tempest before trying to do anything fortheir charges.
A few hours later the wind died down, and then they collected all thatremained alive of the animals in their pens and secured them as bestthey could against the consequences of another period of rolling andpitching.
The experiences of the passengers had been hardly less severe, and panicreigned throughout the Ark. After the lull came, however, some degree oforder was restored, and Cosmo had all who were in a condition to leavetheir rooms assemble in the grand saloon, where he informed them of thesituation of affairs, and tried to restore their confidence. The roar onthe roof, in spite of the sound-absorbing cover which had beenre-erected, compelled him to use a trumpet.
"I do not conceal from you," he said in conclusion, "that the worst hasnow arrived. I do not look for any cessation of the flood from the skyuntil we shall have passed through the nucleus of the nebula. But theArk is a stout vessel, we are fully provisioned, and we shall getthrough.
"All your chambers have been specially padded, as you may have remarked,and I wish you to remain in them, only issuing when summoned forassembly here.
"I shall call you out whenever the condition of the sea renders it safefor you to leave your rooms. Food will be regularly served in yourquarters, and I beg you to have perfect confidence in me and myassistants."
But the confidence which Cosmo Versal recommended to the others washardly shared by himself and Captain Arms. The fury of the blast whichhad just left them had exceeded everything that Cosmo had anticipated,and he saw that, in the face of such hurricanes, the Ark would bepractically unmanageable.
One of his first cares was to ascertain the rate at which the downpourwas raising the level of the water. This, too, surprised him. His gagesshowed, time after time, that the rainfall was at the rate of about fourinches per minute. Sometimes it amounted to as much as six!
"The central part of the nebula," he said to the captain, through thespeaking-tube which they had arranged for their intercommunications onthe bridge, "is denser than I had supposed. The condensation isenormous, but it is irregular, and I think it very likely that it ismore rapid in the north, where the front of the globe is plunging mostdirectly into the nebulous mass.
"From this we should anticipate a tremendous flow southward, which maysweep us away in that direction. This will not be a bad thing for awhile, since it is southward that we must go in order to reach theregion of the Indian Ocean. But, in order not to be carried too rapidlythat way, I think it would be the best thing to point the Ark toward thenortheast."
"How am I to know anything about the points in this blackness?" growledthe captain.
"You must go the best you can by the compass," said Cosmo.
Cosmo Versal, as subsequently appeared, was right in supposing that thenucleus of the nebula was exceedingly irregular in density. Thecondensation was not only much heavier in the north, but it was veryerratic.
Some parts of the earth received a great deal more water from the openedflood-gates above than others, and this difference, for some reason thathas never been entirely explained, was especially marked between theeastern and western hemispheres.
We have already seen that when the downpour recommenced in Colorado itwas much less severe than during the first days of the flood. Thisdifference continued. It seems that all the denser parts of the nucleushappened to encounter the planet on its eastern side.
This may have been partly due to the fact that as the rotating earthmoved on in its eastward motion round the sun the comparatively densemasses of the nebula were always encountered at the times when theeastern hemisphere was in advance. The fact, which soon became apparentto Cosmo, that the downpour was always the most severe in the morninghours, bears out this hypothesis.
It accords with what has been observed with respect to meteors, viz.,that they are more abundant in the early morning. But then it must besupposed that the condensed masses in the nebula were relatively sosmall that they became successively exhausted, so to speak, before thewestern hemisphere had come fairly into the line of fire.
Of course the irregularity in the arrival of the water did not, in theend, affect the general level of the flood, which became the same allover the globe, but it caused immense currents, as Cosmo had foreseen.
But there was one consequence which
he had overlooked. The currents,instead of sweeping the Ark continually southward, as he hadanticipated, formed a gigantic whirl, set up unquestionably by the greatranges of the Himalayas, the Hindoo Koosh, and the Caucasus.
This tremendous maelstrom formed directly over Persia and Arabia, and,turning in the direction of the hands of a watch, its influence extendedwestward beyond the place where the Ark now was.
The consequence was that, in spite of all their efforts, Cosmo and thecaptain found their vessel swept resistlessly up the course of thevalley containing the Euphrates and the Tigris.
They were unable to form an opinion of their precise location, but theyknew the general direction of the movement, and by persistent logginggot some idea of the rate of progress.
Fortunately the wind seldom blew with its first violence, but theeffects of the whirling current could be but little counteracted by theutmost engine power of the Ark.
Day after day passed in this manner, although, owing to the density ofthe rain, the difference between day and night was only perceptible bythe periodical changes from absolute blackness to a very faintillumination when the sun was above the horizon.
The rise of the flood, which could not have been at a less rate than sixhundred feet every twenty-four hours, lifted the Ark above the level ofthe mountains of Kurdistan by the time that they arrived over the upperpart of the Mesopotamian plain, and the uncertain observations whichthey occasionally obtained of the location of the sun, combined withsuch dead reckoning as they were able to make, finally convinced themthat they must certainly be approaching the location of the Black Seaand the Caucasus range.
"I'll tell you what you're going to do," yelled Captain Arms. "You'regoing to make a smash on old Ararat, where your predecessor, Noah, madehis landfall."
"_Tres bien!_" shouted De Beauxchamps, who was frequently on the bridge,and whose Gallic spirits nothing could daunt. "That's a good omen! M.Versal should send out one of his turkeys to spy a landing place."
They were really nearer Ararat than they imagined, and Captain Arms'sprediction narrowly missed fulfillment. Within a couple of hours afterhe had spoken a dark mass suddenly loomed through the dense air directlyin their track.
Almost at the same time, and while the captain was making desperateefforts to sheer off, the sky lightened a little, and they saw animmense heap of rock within a hundred fathoms of the vessel.
"Ararat, by all that's good!" yelled the captain. "Sta'board! Sta'board,I tell you! Full power ahead!"
The Ark yielded slowly to her helm, and the screws whirled madly,driving her rapidly past the rocks, so close that they might have tosseda biscuit upon them. The set of the current also aided them, and theygot past the danger.
"Mountain navigation again!" yelled the captain. "Here we are in a nestof these sky-shoals! What are you going to do now?"
"It is impossible to tell," returned Cosmo, "whether this is Great orLittle Ararat. The former is over 17,000 feet high, and the latter atleast 13,000. It is now twelve days since the flooding recommenced.
"If we assume a rise of 600 feet in twenty-four hours, that makes atotal of 7,200 feet, which, added to the 3,300 that we had before, gives10,500 feet for the present elevation. This estimate may be considerablyout of the way.
"I feel sure that both the Ararats are yet well above the water line. Wemust get out of this region as quickly as possible. Luckily the swirl ofthe current is now setting us eastward. We are on its northern edge. Itwill carry the Ark down south of Mount Demavend, and the Elburz range,and over the Persian plateau, and if we can escape from it, as I hope,by getting away over Beluchistan, we can go directly over India andskirt the southern side of the Himalayas. Then we shall be near the goalwhich we have had in mind."
"Bless me!" said the captain, staring with mingled admiration and doubtat Cosmo Versal, "if you couldn't beat old Noah round the world, andgive him half the longitude. But I'd rather _you'd_ navigate thishooker. The ghost of Captain Sumner itself couldn't work a traverse overBeluchistan."
"You'll do it all right," returned Cosmo, "and the next time you dropyour anchor it will probably be on the head of Mount Everest."