Page:Amazing Stories Volume 01 Number 07.djvu/52

Rh matter of calculation—a complicated calculation evidently, but not beyond the capacities of algebraists in particular and mathematicians in general.

At first the Government kept the despatch secret, their object being to be able to indicate when they published it what would be the results of the displacement of the axis with regard to the alteration in the level of the waters. The inhabitants of the world would then know the fate that was in store for them, according to the segment of the spheroid on which they resided.

On the 14th of September the telegram was sent to the Longitudes Office at Washington, with instructions to work out the final consequences, ballistic and geographical. The next day but one the information was ready. It was cabled at once to all the Governments of the new and old worlds, and having been printed in thousands of newspapers, it was cried in all the great cities by all the newsboys of the globe, as—

"What is going to happen?"

Which was the question being asked in every language just then.

ND this is the reply as given by the Longitudes Office.

The experiment to be attempted by Barbicane & Co. is as follows:

"To produce a recoil on the 22nd of September at midnight, local time, by means of a monster cannon throwing a projectile of one hundred and eighty thousand tons.

"If this discharge is effected just below the Equator, near the thirty-eighth meridian, at the base of the Kilimanjaro chain, and if it is directed toward the south, the mechanical effect on the terrestrial spheroid will be as follows:

"At once, owing to the shock being combined with the diurnal movement, a new axis will be formed, the old axis being 23° 28′, and the new one being perpendicular to the plane of the ecliptic. "In the north the extremity of the new axis will be situated between Greenland and Grinnell Land, on that part of Baffin Sea cut by the Arctic Circle. In the south it will be on the Antarctic Circle to the east of Adelaide Land.

"As an example of the new meridians, we may mention that passing through Dublin in Ireland, Paris in France, Palermo in Cicily, Obeid in Darfur, Kilimanjaro, Kerguelen Island, the new Antarctic Pole, the Society Islands in the Pacific, Vancouver Island, and Melville Peninsula.

"The new Equator will pass through the Kilimanjaro country, the Indian Ocean, Goa, a little below Calcutta, Mangala in Siam, Hong Kong, the Marshall and Walker Islands in the Pacific, Rio Janeiro, Saint Helena, and by St. Paul de Loanda across Africa to Kilimanjaro.

"The new Equator having been formed by the new axis, it is possible to calculate the results on the ocean levels.

"It is worthy of note that Barbicane & Co., or rather the directors of the North Polar Practical Association, have evidently been desirous of doing as little damage as possible. Had the discharge been effected toward the north, the consequences would have been disastrous for the most civilized portions of the globe; but by firing toward the south the consequences, so far as the submergence of the land is concerned, will only affect the less peopled and wilder countries.

"The globe will, for the purposes of this inquiry, be divided by two great circles, intersecting at right angles at Kilimanjaro and the antipodes of that mountain, thus giving four segments, two in the northern hemisphere, and two in the southern hemisphere, separated by lines in which no alteration of level will occur.

"1. The northern hemisphere:

"The first segment, to the west of Kilimanjaro will comprise Africa from the Congo to Egypt, Europe from Turkey to Greenland. America from British Columbia to Peru and Brazil north of San Salvador—in fact the whole of the North Atlantic and the greater part of the Equatorial Atlantic.

"The second segment, to the east of Kilimanjaro will comprise the greater part of Europe from the Black Sea to Sweden, the Russian Empire, Arabia almost all India, Persia, Beloochistan, Afghanistan, Turkestan, the Celestial Empire, Mongolia, Japan, Corea, the Northern Pacific and Alaska—and also the Polar regions, so regrettably placed in the possession of Barbicane & Co.

"2. The southern hemisphere:

"The third segment, to the east of Kilimanjaro, will comprise Madagascar, Kerguelen Island Mauritius, and the islands of the Indian Ocean, the Antarctic Ocean to the New Pole, the Malay Peninsula, Java, Sumatra, Borneo, the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, and all the southern Pacific up to the meridian of the Society Islands.

"The fourth segment, to the west of Kilimanjaro will include Africa south of the Congo and the Mozambique Channel, the Cape of Good Hope, the South Atlantic, South America below Pernambuco and Lima, Bolivia, Brazil, Uruguay, the Argentine Confederation, Tierra del Fuego, the Sandwich and South Shetland Islands, and a portion of the South Pacific.

"Such will be the four segments of the globe divided by lines of no alteration in level.

"In each of these four segments there will be a central point where the effect will attain its maximum, either of increase or decrease.

"This maximum will approach 25,000 feet at each point and at the point the consequences will be most serious.

"In two segments situated opposite each other in the northern and southern hemispheres, the sea will retire to flow into the two other segments.

"In the first segment the Atlantic Ocean will almost entirely empty itself, the point of maximum being about the Bermudas, where the bottom will become visible if the deptdepth [sic] of the sea in that locality be less than 25,000 feet. Consequently, between America and Europe, vast territories will be revealed, which the United States, Great Britain, France, Spain and Portugal can annex pro rata to their Atlantic coast-lines, or otherwise, as they may think fit. But it must be remembered that as the waters are lowered, so will the air be. The coast of Europe and America will be lifted to