“There is,” slowly spoke Rawolle.
“And a mighty big one, too,” put in Lyman.
Cobb was highly educated and of a sanguine temperament; he neither doubted what seemed impossible, nor did he believe until the facts were clearly before his mind. He was perfectly cognizant of the physical geography of the United States, and did not understand under what conditions a great inland sea could have been formed, or maintained.
Settling himself back in his seat and breaking the circuit of the electric light to lessen the glare in their faces, Rawolle continued:
“I will give you some facts concerning this sea, for, now that you are one of a new generation, you have much to learn, and we cannot pass the hours between now and bed-time to better advantage. On the last day of August, 1916,” he began, “at about 14 dial, or as they then said, 2 P. M., that which was taken, at the time, as the shock of a great earthquake, was felt by thousands of persons throughout the central portion of the United States. In less than two hours later, the nation was informed of the true nature of the shocks which followed each other in rapid succession. It was the explosion of natural gases deep down in the strata of the earth’s crust, and the scene of the disturbances covered a vast area of territory. During the following week the shaking and trembling of the earth caused great destruction in many cities and towns not otherwise affected. Houses fell, the water supply failed, and other serious results were experienced. But throughout portions of the area now covered by the Central Sea, the scene was terrible, awe-inspiring, horrible. The earth heaved and sank; huge cracks opened, and flames hundreds of feet high shot into the air; thunder and lightning added to the horrors of the situation. The bursting of the earth’s crust was attended by an appalling roar and crash, as if a million peals of thunder had combined in one grand effort to terrify mankind; then came a pall of dense, black smoke that wrapped the land in darkness. Consternation seized upon the people, and well it might, for when the full import of the disturbances was known, it was only then ascertained that a great cataclysm had befallen the nation. Without going too much into details, for you can later on gain a full knowledge of this great physical disturbance from the books published soon after its occurrence, I will explain but a few of the facts causing it. You are aware, Mr. Cobb, to what extent natural gas was used in the United States in 1887; that there were thousands of wells pouring out millions of cubic feet daily; that many of them showed pressure of from ten to twenty atmospheres. From the time you left the world, as it were, until August, 1916, gas wells were being sunk all over the country drained by the Ohio and its tributaries. Their number was way up in the thousands. Billions of cubic feet of natural gas were being consumed or flowing to waste daily. Pittsburgh alone used 300,000,000 cubic feet a day in its vast manufactories. The earth in the Ohio basin was honey-combed with the gas pockets and strata, and gas veins were struck in which the gas was under such pressure that the flow could not be checked by human hands. It was 14 dial, as I have said, on the last day of August, 1916, and the workmen in the large foundry of Dillenback & Co., at Lakeside, on the Ohio, some fifty miles below Pittsburgh, were tapping a huge melting of aluminum bronze for the purpose of casting the outer shell of one of the latest model guns of that period. But let me first describe the interior arrangements of the foundry, that you may fully grasp the situation as it then stood, and the cause of the results which followed. Natural gas was, and had been for a long time, the fuel used in these works. Up to 1914 the gas boring of Lakeside had furnished all the gas required. This well was of ten-inch bore, and reached a depth of 4,737 feet, but in the year mentioned the well had failed to furnish gas at any pressure. The standard pipe had been moved and an iron plate set over the mouth of the tube, on a level with the floor. Five hundred feet from this well a boring to 4,016 feet had struck a new stratum, giving vast quantities of gas at a pressure of five atmospheres. To revert back: Just as the tapping of the furnaces was made, the steam boiler of the crane engine, through some unaccountable cause, burst. The concussion shook the buildings, tore up the ground, displaced the iron plate over the disused gas well, and broke the aluminum furnaces, letting over one hundred tons of molten metal flow rapidly across the foundry floor. Recovering from the first shock and fright of the explosion, all efforts were at once made to arrest the flow of the liquid stream, or to divert its course away from the old well. That well, as all knew, still contained gas intermingled with common air, the mixture being of a very explosive nature. All perceived at a glance what would be the consequences if such a mass of molten metal should precipitate itself into the old well and fall over 4,500 feet into the interior of the earth’s crust; the shock at bottom, the continuance of heat, the explosive medium through which it would pass, all were dangers to be dreaded. The gas strata were overlaid and underlaid by water and air strata; the breaking of one into another would cause a commingling of their constituent parts, and form explosive compounds of the most dangerous types. Human efforts failed to stem the fiery stream in its onward course across the foundry floor. With a bounding, hissing, and, as it were, victorious cry, the river of melted aluminum approached, reached and went plunging down into the old supply-pipe. Who could describe the terrible effect! Of all those hundreds of human beings employed in Dillenback’s works, but two lived to tell the story of the catastrophe. These two men knew only one thing: that the earth seemed to shake to its very center, and they were hurled down among the debris of the fallen buildings, while sheets of fire almost scorched their very souls. Peal upon peal of thunder reverberated about them, and then darkness buried everything from their vision. Burned, bleeding, and nearly dead, these two men found themselves pinned down by the timbers of the works. Fire was upon every side; the timbers were burning, the heat was oppressive, and from a horrible death no man could save them. There was a higher Power, though, who had ordained that these two men should be witnesses of the full effects of this mighty effort of nature to overcome the grasping endeavors of man to accumulate wealth at the expense of reason. A sudden rush of waters from beneath them cooled their parching bodies, extinguished the fires about them, raised the mass of timbers which pinned them down, and gave them their liberty. You can read of this escape, as it is fully chronicled. This was the cause; now the effects. Are you tired?” seeing Cobb so quiet; “or would you like a drink of something to warm the inner man?”
Cobb had sat with scarcely a movement, save the heaving of his chest, as he listened to this terrible narrative. The last words of Rawolle seemed to awaken him.
“No, and yes,” he slowly replied. “Let us take a glass of wine and retire. I wish to think this over before you finish. My head aches, and I need rest.”
A few minutes later, all was quiet in the first sleeper of the Central Pneumatic No. 3, east.
It was 2:25 dial, or 25 minutes past 2, the next morning, when the Central Pneumatic arrived at Cairo.