The Second Deluge

by Garrett Putman Serviss

It must not be supposed that the thousand-odd persons who composed this remarkable ship's company were so hard-hearted, so selfish, so forgetful, so morally obtuse, that they never thought of the real horror of their situation, and of the awful calamity that had overwhelmed so many millions of their fellow-creatures. They thought of all that only too seriously and in spite of themselves. The women especially were overwhelmed by it. But they did not wish to dwell upon it, and Cosmo Versál did not wish that they should.

At night he had musicians play in the grand saloon; he distributed books among the passengers from a large library which he had selected; and at last he had the stage set, and invited his friends, the players, to entertain the company.

But he would have no plays but those of Shakespeare.

There were, probably, not half a dozen persons in the Ark who had ever seen representations of these great dramas, and very few who had read them, so that they had the advantage of complete novelty.

The play selected for the first representation was the tragedy of "King Lear," a strange choice, it would, at first sight, seem, but Cosmo Versál had a deep knowledge of human nature. He knew that only tragedy would be endured there, and that it must be tragedy so profound and overmastering that it would dominate the feelings of those who heard and beheld it. It was the principle of immunizing therapeutics, where poison paralyzes poison.

It came out as he anticipated. The audience, unused to such depth of dramatic passion, for the plays to which they had been accustomed had been far from the Shakespearian standard, was wholly absorbed in the development of the tragedy. It was a complete revelation to them, and they were carried out of themselves, and found in the sympathy awakened by this heart-crushing spectacle of the acme of human woe an unconscious solace for their own moral anguish.

Afterward Cosmo put upon the stage "Hamlet," and "Othello," and "Macbeth," and "Coriolanus," and "Julius Caesar," but he avoided, for the present, the less tragic dramas. And all of them, being new to the hearers, produced an enormous effect.

On alternate nights he substituted music for the drama, and, as this was confined to the most majestic productions of the great masters of the past, many of whose works, like those of Shakespeare, had long been neglected if not forgotten, their power over the spirits of the company was, perhaps, even more pronounced.

Cosmo Versál was already beginning the education of his chosen band of race regenerators, while he mused upon the wonders that the science of eugenics would achieve after the world should have reemerged from the waters.

One of the most singular effects of the music was that produced upon the insane billionaire, Amos Blank. He had been confined in the room that Cosmo had assigned to him, and was soothed, whenever Cosmo could find time to visit him, with pretended acquiescence in his crazed notion that the trip of the Ark was part of a scheme to "corner" the resources of the world.