We had neither of us any clothes except those we wore. We stripped off our dripping outer things and let them lie where they fell. There was nothing else to do with them until the rain stopped. We found that heavy woolen under-clothing was not much more comfortable than furs in that temperature. We settled down in the cabin and proceeded to make the best of things, quite content to be alive.
It was evident that the moon and the earth had met, and that the earth had come out of the encounter with less damage than anyone had anticipated. The rise in temperature had been expected. Undoubtedly it was much greater elsewhere than in the Arctic.
Two Survivors
Jim and I compared notes as to our actual experiences at the moment of the collision. We both remembered the terrible shock and then had known nothing further. We agreed that except for the shaking up we felt no bad effects from the spell of unconsciousness. Scientists have since assumed that in addition to the shock there was the result of the sudden displacement of the fluids in the inner ear which establish equilibrium. There is no reason to suppose that the experience was not universal among those who survived.
Sitting in our monoplane cabin on the top of a Labrador mountain, wiping the perspiration from our faces and waiting for the rain to cease, we had no knowledge of the fearful destruction which almost wiped out all human and animal life. Others have told of tidal waves of boiling water, of the mountains that melted and the great craters which opened in the earth, belching forth molten lava. We knew nothing of this.
The first thing beside the temperature, that told us we were in a different world, was that night did not come. We had let our watches run down, but as the hours passed and daylight remained with us, we began to wonder. Later in the year we would have expected short nights in this latitude, but now there should be six hours of darkness out of the twenty-four.
However, it did not grow dark, and it continued to rain. The idea of what had actually occurred dawned on me even before we got our first glimpse of the sun. That the revolution of a planet on its axis should correspond with the period of its revolution around the sun was quite easily understandable as a theoretical proposition. Its actual effect, the axial revolution of the earth becoming 365 days, could hardly have been predicted.
While the rain continued, Jim and I made no effort to leave our mountain top. I think it was several hours after we had returned to consciousness that we noticed the wind was no longer blowing. We had got so used to its sound that we rather took it for granted, I suppose, and paid no attention to it.
We were sitting in the cabin, listening to the beating rain, when Jim suddenly exclaimed, "Where's that wind?"