"Do you not think," asked Professor Alexander Jones, "that there will be a tremendous outburst of volcanic energy, if such upheavals occur, and may not that render the re-emerging lands uninhabitable?"
"No doubt," Cosmo replied, "every form of plutonic energy will be immensely re-enforced. You remember the recent outburst of all the volcanoes when the sea burst over the borders of the continents. But these forces will be mainly expended in an effort of uplifting.
Unquestionably there will be great volcanic spasms, but they will not prevent the occupation of the broadening areas of land which will not be thus affected."
"Upon these lands," exclaimed Sir Wilfrid Athelstone, in a loud voice, "I will develop life from the barren minerals of the crust. The age of chemical parthenogenesis will then have dawned upon the earth, and man will have become a creator."
"Will the Sir Englishman give me room for a word!" cried Costake Theriade, raising his tall form on his toes and agitating his arms in the air. "He will create not anything! It is _I_ that will unloose the energies of the atoms of matter and make of the new man a new G.o.d."
Cosmo Versal quieted the incipient outbreak of his jealous "speculative geniuses," and the discussion of his theory was continued for some time.
At length De Beauxchamps, shrugging his shoulders, exclaimed, with a return of his habitual gayety:
"_Tres bien! Vive_ the world of Cosmo Versal! I salute the new Eve that is to come!"
CHAPTER XX
THE ADVENTURES IN COLORADO
When Professor Pludder, the President, and their companions on the aero-raft, saw the three men on the bluff motioning and shouting to them, they immediately sought the means of bringing their craft to land.
This did not prove to be exceedingly difficult, for there was a convenient rock with deep water around it on which they could disembark.
The men ran down to meet them, and to help them ash.o.r.e, exhibiting the utmost astonishment at seeing them there.
"Whar in creation did _you_ come from?" exclaimed one, giving the professor a pull up the bank. "Mebbe you"re Cosmo Versal, and that"s yer Ark."
"I"m Professor Pludder, and this is the President of the United States."
"The President of the Un----See here, stranger, I"ll take considerable from you, considering the fix yer in, but you don"t want to go too far."
"It"s true," a.s.severated the professor. "This gentleman is the President, and we"ve escaped from Washington. Please help the ladies."
"I"ll help the ladies all right, but I"m blamed if I believe yer yarn.
How"d you git here? You couldn"t hev floated across the continent on that thing."
"We came on the raft that you see," interrupted Mr. Samson. "We left the Appalachian Mountains two weeks ago."
"Well, by--it must be true!" muttered the man. "They couldn"t hev come from anywhar else in that direction. I reckon the hull blamed continent is under water."
"So it is," said Professor Pludder, "and we made for Colorado, knowing that it was the only land left above the flood."
All finally got upon the bluff, rejoiced to feel solid ground once more beneath their feet. But it was a desolate prospect that they saw before them. The face of the land had been scoured and gullied by the pouring waters, the vegetation had been stripped off, except where in hollows it had been covered with new-formed lakes, some of which had drained off after the downpour ceased, the water finding its way into the enveloping sea.
They asked the three men what had become of the other inhabitants, and whether there was any shelter at hand.
"We"ve be"n wiped out," said the original spokesman. "Cosmo Versal has done a pretty clean job with his flood. There"s a kind of a cover that we three hev built, a ways back yonder, out o" timber o" one kind and another that was lodged about. But it wouldn"t amount to much if there was another cloudburst. It wouldn"t stand a minute. It"s good to sleep in."
"Are you the only survivors in this region?" asked the President.
"I reckon you see all thet"s left of us. The" ain"t one out o" a hundred that"s left alive in these parts."
"What became of them?"
"Swept off!" replied the man, with an expressive gesture--"and drownded right out under the sky."
"And how did you and your companions escape?"
"By gitting up amongst some rocks that was higher"n the average."
"How did you manage to live--what did you have to eat?"
"We didn"t eat much--we didn"t hev much time to think o" eatin". We had one hoss with us, and he served, when his time come. After the sky cleared we skirmished about and dug up something that we could manage to eat, lodged in gullies where the water had washed together what had been in houses and cellars. We"ve got a gun and a little ammunition, and once in a while we could kill an animal that had contrived to escape somehow."
"And you think that there are no other human beings left alive anywhere around here?"
"I _know_ th" ain"t. The"s probably some up in the foothills, and around the Pike. They had a better chance to git among rocks. We hed jest made up our minds to go hunting for "em when we ketched sight o" you, and then we concluded to stay and see who you was."
"I"m surprised that you didn"t go sooner."
"We couldn"t. There was a roarin" torrent coming down from the mountains that cut us off. It"s only last night that it stopped."
"Well, it"s evident that we cannot stay here," said Professor Pludder.
"We must go with these men toward the mountains. Let us take what"s left of the compressed provisions out of the raft, and then we"ll eat a good meal and be off."
The three men were invited to share the repast, and they ate with an appet.i.te that would have amused their hosts if they had not been so anxious to reserve as much as possible of their provisions for future necessities.
The meal finished, they started off, their new friends aiding to carry provisions, and what little extra clothing there was. The aspect of the country they traversed affrighted them. Here and there were partially demolished houses or farm structures, or cellars, choked with debris of what had once been houses.
Farm implements and machinery were scattered about and half buried in the torrent-furrowed land. In the wreck of one considerable village through which they pa.s.sed they found a stone church, and several stone houses of considerable pretensions, standing almost intact as to walls, but with roofs, doors, and windows smashed and torn off.
It was evident that this place, which lay in a depression of the land, had been buried by the rushing water as high as high as the top stories of the buildings. From some of the sights that they saw they shrank away, and afterward tried to forget them.
Owing to the presence of the women and children their progress was slower than it might overwise have been. They had great difficulty in crossing the course of the torrent which their companions had described as cutting them off from the foothills of the Pike"s Peak range.
The water had washed out a veritable canon, a hundred or more feet deep in places, and with ragged, precipitous walls and banks, which they had to descend on one side and ascend on the other. Here the skill and local knowledge of their three new-found friends stood them in good stead.
There was yet enough water in the bottom of the great gully to compel them to wade, carrying the women and children.
But, just before nightfall, they succeeded in reaching a range of rocky heights, where they determined to pa.s.s the night. They managed to make a fire with brush that had been swept down the mountain flanks and had remained wedged in the rocks, and thus they dried their soaked garments, and were able to do some cooking, and to have a blaze to give them a little heat during the night, for the air turned cold after the disappearance of the sun.
When the others had sunk into an uneasy slumber, the President and Professor Pludder sat long, replenishing the fire, and talking of what would be their future course.
"I think," said the professor, "that we shall find a considerable population alive among the mountains. There is nothing in Colorado below four thousand feet elevation, and not much below five thousand. The great inner "parks" were probably turned into lakes, but they will drain off, as the land around us here has done already.
"Those who managed to find places of comparative shelter will now descend into the level lands and try to hunt up the sites of their homes. If only some plants and grain have been preserved they can, after a fashion, begin to cultivate the soil."
"But there _is_ no soil," said the President, shuddering at the recollection of the devastation he had witnessed. "It has all been washed off."