And he ran his fingers through the very little hair that had been left him.
“The results of the shock may be much more complicated than they imagine! Why should not the volcanoes take the opportunity to favour us with a few disorderly eruptions, and, like a first voyager, displace some of the matter in their insides? Why should not the uplifted ocean take a header into some of the craters? There’s a chance for you! That would give an explosion that might send the whole tellurian box of tricks sky high, or rather sky higher! What do you say to that, you confounded Maston? you obstinate mute! What do you mean by juggling with our poor Earth as if it were a ball on a billiard-table?”
These alarming hypotheses of Sulphuric Alcide were taken up and discussed by the newspapers all over the world. The pyrotechnic display organized by Barbicane and Co. would end in waterspouts, tidal waves, deluges, would it? But such catastrophes would only be partial! Thousands of people would disappear, and the rest would hardly notice anything worth mentioning! As the fatal day approached, fear came over the bravest. It might have been the dreadful year 1000 from the way in which the people generally conducted themselves.
What happened in that year 1000 it may be interesting to recall. Owing to a passage in the Apocalypse, the people of Europe were persuaded that the Day of Judgment was nigh. They waited for the signs of wrath; the son of Perdition, Antichrist, was to be revealed.
“In the last year of the tenth century,” relates H. Martin, “everything was interrupted—pleasures, business, interest, even the work in the fields. ‘Why,’ said the people, ‘should we provide for a future that will never come? Let us think of eternity, which will begin to-morrow.’ They provided only for their immediate needs; they handed over their lands and castles to the monasteries to obtain their protection in the kingdom in the skies which was about to come to them. Many of the deeds of gift to the churches begin with the words, ‘The end of the world approaching, and its ruin being imminent.’ When the end of the fatal term arrived the people kept within the basilicas, the chapels, the edifices consecrated to God, and waited in agony for the seven trumpets of the seven angels of judgment to sound in the sky.”
As we know, New Year’s Day, 1000, was reached without any disturbance in the laws of Nature. But this time the expectation of the catastrophe was not based on a doubtful interpretation of a text. It was a change to be applied to the earth’s equilibrium based on indisputable calculations, which the progress of the ballistic and mechanical sciences rendered quite possible. This time it was not the sea that would give back the dead, but the sea that would engulph millions of the living.
Under these circumstances, the position of J. T. Maston became daily more critical. Mrs. Scorbitt trembled lest he should become the victim of the general mania. Sometimes she thought of advising him to speak the word which he so obstinately kept to himself. But she dared not, and she did well. It would have been to expose herself to a categorical refusal.
The city of Baltimore was a prey to terror, and it became difficult to restrain the populace, who were being excited even unto madness by the newspapers, by the telegrams which they published from the four angles of the earth, to use the apocalyptic language of St John the Evangelist in the days of Domitian. Assuredly, if J. T. Maston had lived under that persecuting emperor, his business would soon have been settled. He would have been thrown to the beasts. But he would have contented himself with replying,—
“I am there already!”
But no matter what happened, he refused to reveal the position of place x, knowing well that if he divulged it Barbicane and Nicholl would be prevented from continuing their work.