The Richmond Virginian., May 14, 1910, CITY EDITION, THE PROGRESS SECTION, Image 11

About The Richmond Virginian. (Richmond, Va.) 1910-1920

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(T tu on the first day of the new year
(hot Mm announeemtn t wee made, almost
simultaneously from three pbservatorles.
that the notloa of the planet Neptune,
the outermost of all the planets that
wheeled about the sun, had become er
ratic. Oglhry had already called atten
tion to a suspected retardation la Its
December. Such a piece of news was
scarcely calculated to interest a world the greater
portion of whoso Inhabitants wore unaware of the
eaistenco of the planet Neptune, nor ontslde the
netrenomlcal profession did the subsequent discovery
of n feint remote epoch of light In the region of the
perturbed planet cause any great excitement.
Scientific people, however, found the intelligence re
markable enough, even before It became known that
tbo now body was rapidly growing larger and brighter,
that Its motion wee quite different from the orderly
progress of the planets, snd that the deflection of
Neptune and Ita satellite was becoming new. of an
unprecedented kind.
Few people without a training in science can re
alise the huge isolation of tit* solar system. The bun
With Its specks of planets, its dust of planetoids, snd
Us impalpable comets swims In a vacant immensity
that almsat defeats the Imagination. Beyend the orbit
Of Neptune there is space, meant so fay as human_
observation has penetrated, without warmth or light
or sound, blank emptiness, for twenty million times a
million miles. That is the smallest estimate of the
distance to be traversed before the nearest of th'
stars Is attalnad. And. saving n few comets more
unsubstantial than the thinnest flame, no matter ha t
ever to human knowledge crossed this gulf of space,
until early In the twentieth century this strange wan
derer appeared.
A vast mast of matter it was, bulky, heavy, rush
~ Ing without warTiThg offt Of ttie htaek mystery of T1—!
shy Into the radiance of the sun. By the second day
it was clearly visible to any docent instrument, as a
•peck with a barely sensible diameter, tn the con
stellation Leo near Reguius. In a little while an opera
glass could attain It.
On the third day of the new year the newspaper
readers of two hemispheres were made aware for the
first time of the real Importance of this unusual ap
parition In the heavens. "A Planetary Collision." one
London paper headed the news, and proclaimed Du
chalne's opinion thrft this strange new planet would
mobably collide with Neptune. The leader wrltors
tnlarged upon the topic. So that in rooet of the esp
ials of the world, on Jan. 3. there was an expecta
tion. however vagus, of some imminent phenomenon
in the sky; and as the night followed the sunset
rcund the globe thousands of men turned tbelr eyes
skyward to see—the old famtllkr stars Just as they
had always been.
Until It was dawn In London and Pollux setting, and
tbs stars overhead grown pale. The winter's dawn It
was, a sickly altering accumulation of daylight, and
the light of gas and candles shone yellow In the
windows to show where people were astir. But the
yawning policeman saw the thing, the busy crowds
In the market stopped agape, workmen going to their
work betimes, milkmen, the drivers of news carta, dis
sipation going homo Jaded and pale, homeless wan*
dcrers. sentinels on their beats, and in the country
laborers trudging afield. poachers slinking home.
over the dusky quickening country i! coull l>o p.-<- ,
and out at tea by acumen watching to ■ !.<•
great white stor. come '.iilenly i„ • \ .
sky!
Ilitu 111# evening ; .hi .c*-' J< • ■ ' *
out white anti larse. no suers tn.uklins sput of light,
but a small round clear shining disk, an hour after
the day had come. And where science has not reached
men stared and feared, telling one another of the wars
and peatliences mat are foreshadowed by these hem
signs In the heaven*. Sturdy Boers, dusky Hotten
tots. Gold Coast negroes. Frenchmen. Spaniards, Por
tuguese. stood tn the warmth of the sunrise watch
ing the setting of this strange new star.
- And la a hundred observatories there had been sup
greased excitement, rising almost ts shouting pitch, a*
the two remote bodies liad rushed together, and a
hurrying to and fro to gather photographic apparatus
and spectroscope, and this appliance and that, to record
this novel astonishing sight, the destruction of a
world. For It was a world, a sister planet of our
earth, far greater than our earth tadeed, that ^ad so
suddenly flashed Into flaming death. .Neptune It was.
had been atruck, fairly and squarely, by the strange
glanet from outer space and the beat of the concus
sion had Incontinently turned two aolld globes Into one
vast mass of Incandescence. Round the world that day,
two hours before the dawn, went the pallid great
—While star, fading cniyxvrr sang westward and the
sun mounted above It. Everywhere men marveled at
it. but of all tbose who saw It none could have marveled
more than those sailors, habitual watchers of the stars,
who far away at sea had heard nothing of its advent
and saw It now rise like a pigmy moon and climb xenith
ward and hang overhead and sink westward with the
passing of tho night.
And when next it rose over Europe everywhere were
crowds of watchers on hilly slopes, on house roofs.
IIL-Qpen spaces, staring eastward for the rising of the
great now star. It ross with a whits glow In front
•f It, like the glsre of a white Are, and those who had
seen It come Into existence the night before cried out
at the sight of It. “It Is larger," they cried. “ ft is
brighter!" And. indeed, the moon a quarter full and
sinking In the west was in Its spparest also beyond
comparison, but scarcely In all Its breadth had It as
much brtghtnasa now as ths littis circle of the strange
new star.
•• it is brighter!" cried the people clustering in
the streets. But In ths dim obssrvatortes the watch
ers held their breath and peered at one another. "It
is nearer,” they said. “Nearer!"
And voice after voice repeated. “It ts nearer” and
the clicking telegraph took that up, aad It trembled
along telephone wires, aad la a thousand cities grimy
compositors Angered the typo. “It Is nearer." Men
writing la offlees, struck with a strange realisation,
flung down tboir peas, men talking in a thousand
places snddsnly cams upoa a grotssqns possibility In
thoss words, “It is nsaror." It hurried along awaken
ing streets, It was shouted down tho frost-stilled ways
of quiet villages, men who had road thSflS things from
tho throbbing tape stood in yallow-llt doorways shout
-PC the news to ths psssero-hy. “It Is nearer." Pretty
women, dashed and glittering, beard the aews told
Irstlngly between the dances, and feigned an Intelli
gent interest they did not feel “Nearer! Indeed.
- \tovt curious! How clover people must bo to Sad out
—things like that!*
Lonely tramps faring through ths wintry night mur
mured thdte words to comrort thsaimei—looking
- skyward. “It has need to bo nearer, for tho night’s
ts cold as charity. Don’t seam much warmth from it If
It lo nearer, all tho same"
"“What ts a new star to me?" orled the weeping
, woman knaaling beside her dead. - -
S Tho pohoolhoy. rising early for his exsmlnatloa work.
puaxled It out for hirarelf—with the great white star
.shining broad and bright through the frost-flowers of
hi« windnw-—“ Cantrifiig-.il, centripetal," he Mid. atilii.
hit chin on his fist. “Stop a planet In Its flight, rob
it of U* centrifugal force, what then? Centripetal has
It. and down It falls Into the sun! And this-!"
“Do we come In the way? I wonder-■”
The light of that day went the way of Its brethren,
and with the later watches of the frosty darkness rose
the strange star again. And It was now so bright that
th# waxing moon seemed but a pale yellow ghost of
itself, hanging huge in the sunset. In a South African
city a great man had married, and the streets were
alight to welcome his return with his brtde: “Bven
the skies have Illuminated." said the flatterer. Vnder
Capricorn, two negro lovers, daring the wild beasts and
evil spirits, tor love of one another, crouched together
In a cane brake where the fireflies hovered. “That is
our star,” they whispered, and felt strangely com
forted by the sweet brilliancy of Its light.
The master mathematician sat in his private room
and pushed the papers from him. His calculations
were already finished. In a small white phial there
atilt remained a little of the drug that had kept him
awake and active for four long nights. Each day, se
rene, explicit, patient as ever, he had given his lecture
to his students, and then had come back at once to
this momentous calculation. His face was grave, a
little drawn, and beetle from his drugged activity.
For aome time lie seemed lost in thought. Then he
went to the window, and the blind went up with a
click. Half way up the any, over the clustering roofs,
chimneys and steeples of th# city, hung the star.
He looked at It aa one might look Into .the eye of a
brave enemy. “You may kill me.” ahe said after a al
ienee. “But I can hold you—and all the universe for
that matter—In the grip of this little brain. I would
not change. Even now." • • . .'
He looked at the little phial. “There will be no
need of sleep again,” ho said. The next day at noon,
punctual to the minute, he entered hts lecture theater,
put hla hat on the end of the table as his habit was,
and carefiflly selected a large piece of chalk. It was
a Joke among hla students that he could not lecture
without that piece of chalk to fumblo In his fingers,
~anff~gncc~he had been stricken to impotence by ttirtr
hiding hie supply. He came and looked under his
gray eyebrows at the rising tiers of young fresh faces,
and spoke with his accustomed studied commonness
of phrasing. “Circumstances have arisen—circuifi
etancee beyond my control,” he said and paused,
“ which will debar me from comolettnu the «o»»
had designed. It would «Mm. gentlemen. if I may
put the thing clearly and briefly. that—man has lived
in vain."
The students glanced at on® another. Had they
heard aright? Mad? Raised eyebrows and grinning
lips there were, but one or two faces remained Intent
upon Ills calm gray-fringed face. “It will be Interest
ing," he was saying, “to devote this morning to an
exposition, so far as I can make It clear to you. of
the calculations that have led me to thts conclusion.
Let us assume.
He turned toward the blackboard, meditating a dia
gram In the way that was usual to him. "What was
that about ‘lived In vain’?" whispered one -student to
another. "Listen." said the other, nodding toward tho
lecturer.
And presently they began to understand.
That night the star rose later, tor its proper east
toward Virgo, and Its brightness was so great that the
^ky became a luminous blue as It rose, and every star
was hidden In Its turn, save only Jupiter near the
senlth. Oajwdia. Aldebsran. Sirius, and the pointers of
the Bear. It was white and beautiful. In many parts
or ihe world that night a pallid halo encircled it
about. It was perceptibly larger; In the clear refroct
Ive sky of the tropics It seemed as if it were marly a
quarter the siie of the moon. The frost was still on
the ground in Kngland. hut the world was as brightly
lit ns If tt were midsummer moonlight. One could sco
to read quite ordinary print by that cold clear l!gh\
and in the cities the lamps burnt yellow and wan
And everywhere the world was awake that nlg.,t,
and throughout Christendom a somber murmur hung
in the keen air over the countryside like the belling
of bees In the heather, and this murmurous tumult
grew to a clangor in the cities. It was the tolling of
the bell* in a million belfry towers and steeples, sum
moning the people to sleep no mot®, to sin no more,
but to gather In their churches and pray. And over
head, growing larger and brighter, as the earth rolled
on Its way and the night passed, rose tho dazzling
star.
And the streets and houses were alight In all the cities,
the shipyards glared, ami whatever roads led to high
country were lit and crowded all night long. And in
all the seas about the civilized lands ablps with throb
bing engines, and ships with bellying sails, crowded
with men and living creatures, w®r« standing out to
ocean and the north. For already the warning of the
master mathematician had been telegraphed all over
the world, and translated into a hundred tongues. The
new planet and Neptune, locked In a fiery embrace,
were .whirling- headlong, ever, faster and faater, toward
the sun. Already every second this biasing mass flew
a hundred .miles, and every second tta terrific velocity
Increased. As It flew now, indeed, It must pass a hun
dred million of miles wide of the earth and scarcely
affect it. *_ _
But near Its destined path, aa yet only slightly per
turbed, spun the mighty planet Jupiter and his moons
swFTptng sptenatd round themne Every moment now
the attraction between the flery star and the greatest
of the plants grew stronger. And the result Of that
attraction? Inevitably Jupiter would he deflected from
its orbit Into an elliptical path,, and the burning star,
swung by his attraction wide « »« sunward rush.
. .■> . ! ', our earl.: "Earih
an!.- • u;br,aka, cyclones. sea wtici. flood*.
-:eu<3y rise in temperature to I know not what
ii so prophesied the master mathematician.
And overhead, to carry out his words, lonely and
cold and livid, blazed tho star of the coming doom.
To many who stared at It that night until their eyes
arhr il. it seemed that It was visibly approaching. And
that nlcht, too, the weather changed, an! the frost
that had gripped all Central Europe and France and
England softened towards a thaw.
But you must not Imagine because I have spoken
of people praying through the night and people going
aboard ships and people fleeing towards mountainous
country that the whole world was already In a terror
i -esus* of the star. As a matter of fact, use and wont
r-1ill ruled the world, and pave for the talk of Idle mo
ments and the splendor of the night, nine human be
ings out of ten were still busy at their common occupa
tions. In all the cities the shops, save one here and
-here, opened and closed at their proper hours, the
doctor and the undertaker pl*«* tbelr trades, and
workers gathered in the factories, soldiers drilled,
scholars studied, lovers sought one another, thieves
iurked and fled, politicians planned their schemes. The
presses of the newspapers roared through the nights,
and many a priest of this church arid that would not
open his holy building to further what he considered a
foolish panic.
The newspapers Insisted on the lesson of the year
;000—for then, too, people bad anticipated the end. Tho
star was no star—mere gas—a comet; and were It a
tar It could not possibly strike the earth. There was
: o precedent for such a thing. Common sense was
-curdy everywhere, scornful, jesting, a little inclined to
persecute the obdurate fearful. That night at 7:15 by
• ireenwlch time the star would be at Its nearest to
Tupller. Then the world would sbe the turn things
would take. The master mathematician's grim warn
ings were treated by many as so much mere elaborate
self-advertisement. Common sense at last, a little heat
ed by argument, signified Its unalterable convictions by
going to bed. So, too. barbarism and savagery, already
tired of the novelty, went about their nightly business,
and save for a howling dog here and there the beast
world left the star unheeded.
And yet, when at last the watchers In the European
states saw the star rise, on hour later, it U true, but
no larger than It had been the night before, there were
still plenty awake to laugh at the master mathemati
cian—to take the danger as if it had passed.
But hereafter the laughter ceased. The star grew—
it grew with a terrible steadiness hour after hour, a
little larger each hour, a little nearer the midnight
zenith, and brighter and brighter, until it had turned
night into a second day. Had it come straight to the
earth instead of in a curved path, had It lost no veloc
ity to Jupiter, Is must have leapt the intervening gulf
in a day; but as It was it took five days altogether
to come by our planet. The next night it had become
a third the size of the moon before it set to English
eyes, and the thaw was assured.
It rose over America near the size of the moon, but
blinding white to look at, and hot: and a breath of hot
wind biew now with Its rising and gathering strength,
and in Virginia and Brazil and down the St. Lawrence
valley it shone Intermittently through a driving reek
of thunder clouds, flickering violet lightning, and halt
unprecedented. In Manitoba ware a thaw and devas
tating floods. And upon all the mountains of the earth
the snow and ice began to melt that night, and all tho
rivers coming out of high country flowed thick and
turbid, and soon—In thetr upper reaches—with swirl
ing trees and the bodies of beaste and men. They
rose steadily, steadily In the ghostly brilliance, and
come trickling over their banks at last, behind the
flying population of their valley a
And along the coast of Argentina and up the South
Atlantic the tides were higher titan they had ever been
In the memory of man, and the storms drove the waters
In many cases scores of miles Inland, drowning whole
dies. And so great grew the heat during the night
that the rising of the sun was like the coming of a
shadow. The earthquakes began and grew until all
down America from the arctic circle to Cape Horn
hillsides were sliding, fissures were opening, and
houses and wails crumbling to destruction. The whole
side of Cotopaxi slipped out In one vast convulsion,
and a tumult of lava poured out so high and broad
.and swift and liquid that in one day It reached the sea.
So the star, with the wan moon In Its wake, marched
across the Pacific, traded the thunder storms like the
hem of a robe, and the growing tldll wave that tolled
behind It, frothing and eager, poured over Island and
island and swept them clear of man. Until that wave
came at last—in a blinding light and with the breath
of a furnaee, swift and terrible It came—a wall of
water, fifty feet high, roaring hungrily, upon the long
coasts of Asia, and awept Inland across the pialna of
China. For a space the star, hotter now and larger
and brighter than the sun In Its strength, showed
with pitiless brilliance the wide and populous country;
towns and villages with their pagodas and trees, roads,
wtde cultivate* -field*, mllHona vf sleepless people
staring in helpless terror at the lncandeacent sky; and
then, low and growing, came the murmur of the flood.
And thus It was with millions of men that night—a
flight nowhither, with limbs heavy with heat and
breath fierce and scant and the flood like a wall swift
and white behind. And then death.
China was lit glowing white, but oyer Japan and
Java and all the Islands of eastern Asia the great star
was a ball of dull red Are because of the steam and
smoke and aehes the volcanoes were spouting forth to
salute Its coming, Above were the lava, hot gases,
and ash, and below the seething floods, and the whole
earth swayed and rumbled with the earthquake shocks.
f
... . p-.clUng an3 pouring down by tea mllHM
deepening converging channel# upon the plains of Bur
ma and Hindustan. The Singled summit* of th# «*
dlan jungles were aflame In a thousand places, **#
helow the hurrying waters around the steins WM*
dark objects that still struggled feebly and reflected
the blood red tongues of fire. And In * rudderless
confusion a multitude of men and women fled d*W*_:
the broad riverways to that one last hope of men—th*
open sen.
Larger grew the star, and larger, hotter, and bright
er with a terrible swiftness now. Th* tropical ocean
had lost its phosphorescence, and the whirling *i**5L
rose in ghostly wreaths from the black ware* that
plunged Incessantly, speckled with storm tossed ships,
And then came a wonder. It seemed to t#*M tgfcd
In Europe watched for the rising of the star that taa
world must have ceased Its rotation. In a thousand
open space# of down antfcupland the people wh* nan
fled thither from the floods and the falling houses tin
sliding slope* of hill watched-dor that rising In raw.
Hour followed hour through a terrible suspense, Ut
the #tar ruse not. Once again men set their eye*
upon the old constellations they had counted loot If
them forever. In England It sit hot and clear gg*Mj
head, though the ground nutvered perpetually;
the tropics Sirius and Capella and Aldebaran _
through a veil of steam. And when at last th* greats
star rose, near ten hours late, th* sun rose oloee open
it. and In the center of Its white heart was a disk *f
black.
Over Asia It was the star had begun to fall behind
thermo cement of the *ky. and then “
hung over India, its light had been veiled. AJl «j»*
plain of India from the mouth of the Indus to the
mouths of the Ganges was a shallow waste Of eblnltlS
water that night, out of which rose temples and pal
aces. mounds and hill*, black with people. Every min
aret was a clustering mas* of people, who fell one py
one Into the turbid waters as heat and terror 0*»r
came them. The whole land seemed a-walting,
suddenly there swept a shadow across that furnace Of
despair, and a breath of cold wind, and m gathering
of clouds out of the cooling air. Men looking up, none
blinded, at the star, saw that a black disk waa Maop
ing across the light. It was the moon, coining be
tween the star and the earth. And even aa men cried
to God at this respite, out ’of the east with a strang*.
inexplicable swiftness sprang the sun. And than atar.
sun. and moon rushed together across th* heavens. ,
So It was that presently, to the European watcher*,
star and sun rose close upon each other, drov*
long for a space, and then slower, and at last
to rest, star and sun merged Into one glar* of
at the xenith of the sky. The moon no longer «cUp*#4
the star, but was lost to sight In the brilliance ot ills
sky. And though those who were still alive regard**
It for the most part with that dull stupidity that
per. fatigue, heat, and despair engender, there ^
still men who could perceive the meaning of the**|
signs. Star and earth had been at their nearest,
swung about one another, and the star bad pat
Already It was receding, swifter and swifter, tn
last stage of Its headlong journey downward tat*
sun.
And then the clouds gathered, blotting oat th*
of the sky; the thunder and lightning wov* n “
around the world; all over the earth was such » __
pour of rain as men had never seen before; gad w!
descended torrents of mud. 'Everywhere th#
were pouring oJJ the land, leaving mud silted
and the earth Uttered like a storm worn beach
all that had floated, and the dead bodies of th*
and brutes, Its children.
For days the water streamed off th* land, sweeping 1
away soli and trees and houses In the way and plUnpJ
huge dikes and scooping out titanic gullies over th*
countryside. Those were the days of darkness
followed the star and the heat. All through then* i
tor many week* and months, the earthquakes
tinued.
But the star had passed, and men, hunger driven i
gathering courage only slowly, might creep bach
their ruined cities, burled grtnartes, and soddan l
Such few ships as had escaped the storms of that.:
came stunned and shattered and sounding their
cautiously through the new marks and shoal* of i
familiar porta. And as the atorras subsided
ceived that everywhere the days were hotter than*
yore, and the sun larger, and the moon,'
third of its former size, took now fourscore day*
tween its new and new.
But of the new brotherhood that grew
among men. of the saving of taws and books
chines, of the strange change that had come os
land and Greenland and the shores of Baffin**
that the sailors coming there presently found
green and gracious, and could scarce believe
eyes, this story does not toll. Nor of tha mov
mankind, now that the earth was hotter,
and southward towards th* poles of th*
concern# Itself only with the coming nnd th*
of the star. _
The Martian astronomer*—for there or* i
on Mars, although they are different betnga
—were naturally profoundly Interested
things. They saw them from their own
course. “ Considering the mass and ts
missile that waa flung through our solar syatSM I
sun," ons wrote. " It Is astonishing what a Uttl* i
th* .earth, whtch n missed a
All th* familiar continental markings i
the seas remain latact, and indeed th*
seems to be * shrinkage of th* white <
(supposed to be fresen watei*) round
Which only shows how small the
catastrophes may seem at a distance of a i