Off on a Comet! a Journey through Planetary Space

CHAPTER IV

A CON­VUL­SION OF NA­TURE

Whence came it that at that very mo­ment the hori­zon un­der­went so strange and sud­den a mod­ifi­ca­tion, that the eye of the most prac­ticed mariner could not dis­tin­guish be­tween sea and sky?

Whence came it that the bil­lows raged and rose to a height hith­er­to un­reg­is­tered in the records of sci­ence?

Whence came it that the el­ements unit­ed in one deaf­en­ing crash; that the earth groaned as though the whole frame­work of the globe were rup­tured; that the wa­ters roared from their in­ner­most depths; that the air shrieked with all the fury of a cy­clone?

Whence came it that a ra­di­ance, in­tenser than the ef­ful­gence of the North­ern Lights, over­spread the fir­ma­ment, and mo­men­tar­ily dimmed the splen­dor of the bright­est stars?

Whence came it that the Mediter­ranean, one in­stant emp­tied of its wa­ters, was the next flood­ed with a foam­ing surge?

Whence came it that in the space of a few sec­onds the moon’s disc reached a mag­ni­tude as though it were but a tenth part of its or­di­nary dis­tance from the earth?

Whence came it that a new blaz­ing spheroid, hith­er­to un­known to as­tron­omy, now ap­peared sud­den­ly in the fir­ma­ment, though it were but to lose it­self im­me­di­ate­ly be­hind mass­es of ac­cu­mu­lat­ed cloud?

What phe­nomenon was this that had pro­duced a cat­aclysm so tremen­dous in ef­fect up­on earth, sky, and sea?

Was it pos­si­ble that a sin­gle hu­man be­ing could have sur­vived the con­vul­sion? and if so, could he ex­plain its mys­tery?