"What?" I began, and then paused. There was a dead silence outside.
"It's stopped, apparently," I said after a moment. "I suppose that means we can see what's happened without being blown to pieces. Come on."
I jumped out of the cabin and raced through the pelting rain up the slope of the depression in which we were sheltered. I am not certain what I expected to see when I looked eastward, but it was certainly not that which lay before me.
The ocean had swept over all the land east of the mountains. It had risen at least three thousand feet, and angry waves were tossing fifty feet below the surface of our mountain. They were beaten down by the rain, or the spray would have warned us of the ocean's nearness before we saw it.
The rain made it difficult to see for any distance, but it was evident that desolation lay before us. Still, we were prepared for that and not discouraged. The steaming water was an evidence that the water's temperature was higher than that of the air. We had no way of determining what the exact temperature was, but I am sure it did not become high enough in that region to destroy marine life. We stood for some time looking out over the ocean in silence.
"It's sure dreary looking," said Jim presently. "I suppose they were all drowned," sweeping his hand in the direction of the settlements we had left. "I'd got to know them well enough so I liked them all," he continued rather sadly.
"No use thinking about it," I answered. "They at least had a gorgeous funeral. It isn't at all certain yet that we're much better off."
"Why? We're alive."
I had been looking west, over valleys and hills steaming like the ocean. I pointed in that direction. "We don't know whether there is anything left except ocean and some land like that. I doubt whether we could subsist very long here."
"There must be animals of some sort we could hunt."