Soon the immemorial snows
of Thibet and the Himalaya were melting and pouring down by ten
million deepening converging channels upon the plains of Burmah and
Hindostan. The tangled summits of the Indian jungles were aflame
in a thousand places, and below the hurrying waters around the
stems were dark objects that still struggled feebly and reflected
the blood-red tongues of fire. And in a rudderless confusion a
multitude of men and women fled down the broad river-ways to that
one last hope of men--the open sea.
Larger grew the star, and larger, hotter, and brighter with a
terrible swiftness now. The tropical ocean had lost its
phosphorescence, and the whirling steam rose in ghostly wreaths
from the black waves that plunged incessantly, speckled with
storm-tossed ships.
And then came a wonder. It seemed to those who in Europe
watched for the rising of the star that the world must have ceased
its rotation. In a thousand open spaces of down and upland the
people who had fled thither from the floods and the falling houses
and sliding slopes of hill watched for that rising in vain. Hour
followed hour through a terrible suspense, and the star rose not.
Once again men set their eyes upon the old constellations they had
counted lost to them forever. In England it was hot and clear
overhead, though the ground quivered perpetually, but in the
tropics, Sirius and Capella and Aldebaran showed through a veil of
steam.
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