At this juncture Dr. Gresham announced that he was ready to leave for the Pacific Coast. The government had one of its giant mail planes waiting at an aviation field on Long Island, and in its comfortable enclosed interior we were whisked across the continent.
In less than two days we alighted at the Mare Island Navy Yard, where the Albatross, the destroyer that was to serve for our expedition, lay at our disposal.
The Albatross was the newest, largest and fastest destroyer of the Pacific fleet—an oil-burning craft carrying a crew of 117 men.
Most of the boxes and crates of material that we had sent from New York being already on deck, the astronomer immediately went to work with a corps of the navy’s electricians to assemble his apparatus.
I was sent off to find six men tailors, all familiar with the making of theatrical costumes, who were willing to undertake a mysterious and dangerous sea voyage; also two actors skilled in make-up.
All during this time the earthquakes never varied from their interval of eleven minutes and six seconds, and the seriousness of affairs throughout the world continued to grow. In Europe and America deep fissures, sometimes hundreds of miles long, now appeared in the ground. Gradually it became apparent that these cracks in the earth’s crust were confined within a definite area, which roughly formed a circle touching the Mississippi River on the west and Serbia on the east.
Then, on the morning after our arrival in San Francisco, half a dozen noted scientists—none of whom, however, belonged to the little group that had been taken into Dr. Gresham’s confidence regarding the Seuen-H’sin—issued a warning to the public.
They prophesied that the world soon would be rent by an explosion, and that the portion within the circular area already outlined would be blown away into space or would be pulverized.
Nearly one-fifth of the entire surface of the earth was included in this doomed circle, embracing the most civilized countries of the globe—the eastern half of the United States and Canada; all of the British Isles, France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland and Denmark; and most of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Brazil. Here, too, were located the world’s greatest cities—New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Rome, Chicago, Boston, Washington and Philadelphia.
The scientists urged the people of the eastern United States and Canada to flee immediately beyond the Rocky Mountains, while the inhabitants of western Europe were advised to take refuge east of the Carpathians.