"The earthquake's knocked out your transit," he suggested.
"And Paris—how about Paris?" asked Thornton. He wrote something down on a card mechanically and started for the door. "Get me the Eiffel Tower!" he ordered Williams.
The three men stood motionless, as the wireless man sent the Eiffel Tower call hurtling across the Atlantic:
"ETA—ETA—ETA."
"All right," whispered Williams, "I've got 'em."
"Tell Paris that our clocks are all out five minutes according to the meridian."
Williams worked the key rapidly, and then listened.
"The Eiffel Tower says that their chronometers also appear to be out by the same time, and that Greenwich and Moscow both report the same thing. Wait a minute! He says Moscow has wired that at eight o'clock last evening a tremendous aurora of bright yellow light was seen to the northwest, and that their spectroscopes showed the helium line only. He wants to know if we have any explanation to offer——"
"Explanation!" gasped Evarts. "Tell Paris that we had earthquake shocks here together with violent seismic movements, sudden rise in barometer, followed by fall, statics, and erratic variation in the magnetic needle."
"What does it all mean?" murmured Thornton, staring blankly at the younger man.