Suddenly, from the empty sky, there came a deep, musical humming. Instinctively people looked up. The humming grew louder and more distinct, while curious eyes swept the sky.
Then a black speck appeared below one of the fleecy white clouds and dropped toward the earth. A thousand feet, two thousand feet it fell, then checked and hung steadily in the air. Those who looked with the naked eye could only discern that it seemed like a wingless black splinter suspended above the earth, but those who had glasses saw the whir of dark disks above a black, stream-lined body. A small cabin was placed amidships, and a misshapen globe hung from chains below. It was still for several minutes. The passenger or passengers seemed to be inspecting the earth below, and particularly the ice cake, with deliberation and care. Then it began to rise with the same deliberation and certainty, swung around, and sped off with incredible speed toward the northeast. The humming sound grew fainter and died away, but the crowd standing on the Battery began to murmur with a nameless sense of fear.
CHAPTER II.
New York was frightened, and the newspapers as they appeared did not allay that fear. The conservative Tribunal ran a scare head: HAS THE GLACIAL AGE COME AGAIN? and printed underneath a résumé of the phenomena up to the time of going to press—which did not include the appearance of the black flyer—with an interview from a prominent scientist. An enterprising reporter had routed the worthy gentleman out of bed and rushed him to the scene of the expanding ice cake in a fast motor boat, taking down in shorthand his comments on the matter. The scientist had been much puzzled, but spoke at length nevertheless. He said in part:
Has the glacial age come again? I do not know. I can only say that we have no certain knowledge of the original cause of the glacial period and we cannot say definitely that it did not begin in precisely this fashion. We have volcanos which radiate incredible quantities of heat to the country surrounding them. No phenomenon like this has occurred before, but it may be that some unknown cause may bring to the surface a condition the antithesis of a volcano, which, instead of radiating heat, will bring on local glacierlike conditions. One might go farther and suggest that the earth may alternate between periods of volcanic activity, during which it is warm and conditions are favorable for habitation and growth, and periods of this new antivolcanic activity during which frigidity is normal, and mankind may be forced to take refuge in the tropic zones. Still, I cannot say definitely.
The eminent scientist went on for two full columns, during which he refused to say anything definite, but suggested so many alarming possibilities that every one who read the Tribunal was thrown into a state of mind not far from panic. He offered no explanation of the plume of steam.
When the appearance of the black flyer became known in the newspaper offices, city editors threw up their hands. The less conservative printed the wildest explanations. They put forth a virulent-organism theory, which, it must be admitted, was no farther from the truth than most of the others. The story began with an interview with the boatswain in charge of the boat crew from the destroyer:
We were ordered to take the men off the ice and to take especial care not to be nipped ourselves. We rowed carefully toward the edge of the ice cake, with the light of the searchlights to guide us. We would see where the floe began, when the waves dropped back from it. I've been in Northern seas, but I never saw anything like that. The edge of the ice wasn't smooth and worn away by the waves. It was rough with frost crystals that reached out like fingers grabbing at the things near by. When we came close to the edge some of the men in my boat were scared, and I don't blame them. I'd dipped my hand overboard and the water was warm—and twenty feet away there was that mass of ice! We backed up to the ice cake and took off the men. I was looking over the side of the life boat, and saw those long crystals forming and growing while I watched. They were huge, from two feet long for the largest to three or four inches for the smallest. They reached out and reached out terribly. The stern of the boat was touching the ice, and I saw them reaching for the hull like the tentacles of an octopus. They fastened on and began to grow thicker. We took oars and smashed them, feeling frightened as one is frightened in a nightmare. As fast as we broke them they formed again, and the men on the ice seemed to be rotten slow getting into the boat, though I don't doubt but they were hurrying all they knew how. When they were all aboard we had to work like mad to get clear.
The paper went on to expound its own idea of what had happened:
The sinister growth of the ice crystals is significant There has always been notice of and comment upon the striking similarity between the growth of crystals and the growth of plants. Until now all scientific text-books have said that crystals could only grow in a supersaturate solution of their own substance, and claimed that they were not organic growths—in the sense of growths caused by an intelligence within the crystal. Is it not possible that the scientists have been wrong? Is it not possible that crystals are growths in the same way that plants are growths? Granting that, what is to keep a scientist from isolating and cultivating the crystal embryo? We have done that with germs, and with the life germs in eggs and plants. We can even use a process of parthenogenesis and create monsters from the unfertilized eggs of frogs and sea urchins. Why could not this scientist experiment until the life germ of the ice crystal could be developed and enlarged? Why could not this development continue until the germ could not only create its crystals under the most favorable conditions of temperature, but at the normal temperature of water? At the Harvard laboratories water has been, kept liquid far below its normal freezing-point, and under tremendous pressure has been found to remain ice at a temperature of one hundred degrees Fahrenheit! Can we doubt that this appearance of ice at this extraordinary season is due to the malicious activities of a foreign government, envious of our magnificent merchant marine and commerce?
The explanation was ingenious, but though the scientific facts quoted were quite correct the inference was hardly justifiable. Water can and does reach a temperature several degrees below 32° Fahrenheit without solidifying—as may be proved by putting a glass of water in a cold room in winter—but the slightest jar causes the instantaneous formation of ice crystals, and in a little while the whole mass is solid. The fact of "hot" ice must also be admitted, but it requires a pressure of rather more than fifty tons to the square inch, and is rarely attempted.
This paper also was forced to admit as inexplicable the plume of steam which rose from a thousand to fifteen hundred feet into the air. In any event, the claim that a certain unfriendly foreign government was trying to ruin the commerce of the United States was effectively squashed by cablegrams from Gibraltar, Folkestone, and Yokohama. Three great icebergs had formed in the Straits of Gibraltar and extended until they joined, when a solid mass of ice made a bridge that once more rejoined the continents of Africa and Europe, from Ceuta to the Rock. The plumes of steam were visible here, too. Three mighty columns of white mist rose at equal distances across the gap.