As midnight approached, vast crowds assembled about the newspaper offices, eager to learn what was going to happen.
At last the fateful hour came—and passed in silence. The world had failed to concede its surrender.
Five minutes more slipped into eternity.
Then there was a sudden stir as bulletins appeared. Their message was brief. At three minutes past 12 o’clock the wireless at the United States Naval Observatory had received this communication:
“To All Mankind:
“I have given the world an opportunity to continue in peace and prosperity. My offer has been rejected. The responsibility is upon your own heads. This is my final message to the human race.
“KWO.”
Within an hour the earthquakes resumed. And they were repeated, as before, exactly eleven minutes and six seconds apart.
With their reappearance vanished the last vestige of doubt that the terrestrial disturbances were due to human agency—to a being powerful enough to do what he chose with the planet.
By the end of three days it was noticed that the shocks were increasing in violence much swifter than previously, as if the earth’s crust had been so weakened that it could no longer resist the hammering.