THE END OF THE WORLD
Camille Flammarion, the French astronomer, in his story, “The End of the World,” gives this graphic description of the results of a collision between a Comet and our Earth:
In Paris, London, Rome, Berlin, St. Petersburg, Constantinople, New York and Chicago—in all the great capitals of the world, in all the cities, in all the villages—the frightened people wandered out of doors, as one sees ants run about when their ant-hills are disturbed. All the affairs of every-day life were forgotten.
All human projects were at a standstill. People seemed to have lost interest in all their affairs. They were in a state of demoralization—a dejection more abject even than that which is produced by sea-sickness.
All places of worship had been crowded on that memorable day when it was seen that a collision with a Comet had become inevitable.
In Paris the crowds in the churches were so great that people could no longer get near Notre Dame, the Madeleine and the other churches. Within the churches, vast congregations of worshippers were on their knees praying to God on High. The churches rang with the sounds of supplication, but no other sound was heard. The great church organs and the bells in the steeples were hushed.
In the streets, on the avenues, in the public squares, there was the same dread silence. Nothing was bought or sold. No newspapers were hawked about.
The only vehicles seen on the streets were funeral hearses carrying to the cemeteries the bodies of the first victims of the Comet. Of these there were already many. They were people who had died from fright and from heart disease.
With what anxiety everyone waited for the night!
Never, perhaps, was there a more beautiful sunset. Never a clearer sky. The sun seemed to dip into a sea of red and gold.
The huge red ball of the sun sank majestically to the horizon. But the stars did not appear. Night did not come.
To the solar day succeeded a new day, the daylight of the Comet. Its intense light resembled that of an Aurora Borealis, but more vivid, coming from a great incandescent spot, which had not been visible during the day because it was below the horizon, but which would certainly have rivalled the splendour of the Sun.
This luminous spot rose in the East almost at the same time as the full Moon. The two luminous bodies rose together, side by side. As they rose, the light of the Moon seemed to pale, but the head of the Comet increased in splendour with the disappearance of the Sun below the western horizon.
Now, after nightfall, the Comet dominated the world—a scarlet-red ball with jets of yellow and green flame which seemed to flutter like fiery wings.
To the terrified people it seemed like a giant of fire taking possession of all Heaven and Earth.
Already the outermost jets of flame had reached the Moon. From one instant to the next the flaming rays would descend upon the Earth.
All eyes were distended with horror when it was seen that the horizon was lighting up with tiny violet flames as from a vast fire.
An instant afterward, the Comet diminished in brilliancy. This was apparently because the Comet, upon touching the atmosphere of our Earth, had come within the penumbra of our planet and had lost part of its reflected light coming from the Sun. But in reality this apparent extinction was the effect of contrast. When the less dazzled eyes of the awestruck, human spectators had grown used to this new light, it appeared almost as intense as at first, but paler, more sinister and sepulchral.
Never before had the Earth been lit up with so sickly a light.
The drouth of the air became intolerable. Heat, as from a huge burning oven, came from above. A horrible stench of burning sulphur—due, no doubt, to electrified ozone—poisoned the atmosphere.
All the people then saw that their time had come. Many-thousand-throated cries rent the air. “The World is burning. We are on fire!” they cried.
All the horizon, in fact, was now lit up with flame, forming a crown of blue light. It was, indeed, as had been foreseen by scientists, the oxide of carbon igniting in the air and producing anhydrid of carbon. Clearly, too, hydrogen from the Comet combined with it.
On a sudden, as the people were gazing terrified, motionless, mute, holding their breath, and scared out of their wits, the vault of Heaven seemed to be rent asunder from the zenith to the horizon. Through the gaping breach there seemed to appear the huge red mouth of a dragon, belching forth sheaves of sputtering green flames.
The glare of the atmosphere was so fierce that those who had not already hidden themselves in the cellars of their houses, now all rushed helter-skelter to the nearest underground openings, be they subway steps, cellar doors or sewer manholes. Thousands were crushed or maimed during this mad stampede, while many others, frantic from fright and stricken with the heat, fell dead from apoplexy.
All reasoning powers seemed to have ceased. Among those cowering in dark cellars and subterranean passages below, there was nothing but silence, begot by dull resignation and stupor.
Of all this panic-stricken multitude, only the astronomers had remained at their posts in the Observatories, making unceasing observations of this great astronomic phenomenon. They were the only eye-witnesses of the impending collision.
Their calculations had been that the terrestrial globe would penetrate into the core of the Comet, as a cannon ball might into a cloud. From the first contact of the extreme atmospheric zones of the Earth and of the Comet, they had figured, the transit would last four hours and a half.
It was easy to compute, since the Comet, being about fifty times as large as the Earth, was to be pierced, not in its centre, but at one-quarter of the distance from the centre, with a velocity of 173,000 kilometers an hour.
It was about forty minutes after the first atmospheric impact with the Comet, that the heat and horrible stench of burning sulphur became so suffocating that a few more moments of this torment would put an end to all life. Even the most intrepid of astronomers withdrew into the interior of their glass-domed observatories, which they could close hermetically as they descended into the deep subterranean vaults.
The longest to stay above was a young assistant astronomer, a girl student from California, whose nerves had been steeled during the ordeal of the San Francisco earthquake. She remained long enough to witness the apparition of a huge, white-hot meteorite, precipitating itself southward with the velocity of lightning.
But it was beyond human endurance to remain longer above. It was no longer possible to breathe. To the intense heat and atmospheric drouth, destroying all vital functions, was added the poisoning of our air by the oxide of carbon.
The ears rang as from the tolling of funeral bells, and all hearts were in a flutter of feverish palpitation. And always, everywhere, there was that suffocating stench of sulphur.
Now a shower of fire fell from the glowing sky. It was raining shooting-stars and white-hot meteorites, most of which burst like bombs. The fragments of these, like flying shrapnel, crashed through the roofs and set fire to the buildings.
To the conflagration of the sky were added the flames of fire everywhere on earth.
Claps of ear-splitting thunder followed each other incessantly, produced partly by the explosions of the meteors, and partly by a tremendous electric thunderstorm. Rifts of lightning zig-zagged hither and thither.
A continuous rumbling, like that of distant drums, filled the ears of the cowering people below, awaiting their fate. This low rumble was interspersed with the deafening detonations of exploding meteors and the high shriek of hurtling aerial fragments.
Then followed unearthly noises, like the seething of some immense boiling cauldron, the wild wailing of winds, and the quaking of the soil where the earth’s crust was giving way.
This unearthly tempest became so frightful, so fraught with agony and mad terror, that the multitudes grovelling below were overcome with paralysis, and lay prone. Laid low like dumb brutes, they met their doom.
The end of all had come.
COLOPHON
POST HOC, NON PROPTER HOC:
Sic veteres de multis rebus opinabantur,
Eodemque dicto eas jugiter absolvisse
Recte sibi visi sunt,
Vt puta quaecumque et qualiacumque
Cometarum saeculares reditus sequuntur.
CVR TV ITAQVE, forsitan quaeras,
Haec auditu minime jucunda nobis narrasti,
Terrae motus, fluminum inundationes, annonae defectus,
Pestes mortiferas, incendia, bella,
regumque magnorum excidia?
Si tibi cordi est,
LECTOR BENEVOLENTISSIME,
rationem nostram didicisse,
eia, veram accipe:
MVNDVS VVLT DECIPI.
FINIS.
Transcriber’s Notes:
Antiquated spellings or ancient words were not corrected.
The illustrations have been moved so that they do not break up paragraphs and so that they are next to the text they illustrate.
Typographical and punctuation errors have been silently corrected.