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If we'd kept on as we were going we'd have struck the Cape de Verdes, and if that had happened at night we'd probably have left our bones on a drowning volcano. We ought to have been ten or twelve degrees farther north to make a safe passage over the Sahara. What's the course now? Are you still for running down the Himalaya mountains?" "I'll decide later what to do," said Cosmo Versal.
Pludder was the only one who maintained a command over his nerves, although he now at last believed in the nebula. He recognized that there was no other possible explanation of the flood than that which Cosmo Versal had offered long before it began.
"Are you perfectly sure that the flood will cover them?" Cosmo Versal looked at his interlocutor, and slowly shook his head. "It is truly a disappointment to me," he said at length, "to find that, even now, remnants of doubt cling to your minds. I tell you that the nebula is condensing at its maximum rate. It is likely to continue to do so for at least four months.
"If you go fooling round any more peaks," shouted Captain Arms, in a fog-horn voice, "you'll have to do your own steering! I've had enough of that kind of navigation!" Nevertheless when Cosmo Versal gave the order the captain turned the prow of the Ark toward the presumable location of the great Himalayan range, although the rebellion of his spirit showed in the erect set of his whiskers.
The thing is beginning to be visible now, and I'll bet that if, from this time on, you study carefully the planetary motions, you will find evidence of the disturbance becoming stronger and stronger. Versal has pointed out that very thing, and calculated the perturbations. This thing has come like a thief in the night."
One broad-shouldered man forced his way to the front, took his stand close to the wall, and yelled in stentorian tones: "Cosmo Versal, listen to me! You are the curse of the world! You have brought this flood upon us with your damnable incantations. Your infernal nebula is the seal of Satan! Here, beast and devil, here at my feet, lies my only son, slain by your hellish device.
It was unmistakable." At this point the discussion was interrupted by a call to Cosmo Versal from Captain Arms on the bridge. He hastily left the table and ascended to the captain's side. He did not need to be told what to look for. Off in the north the sky had become a solid black mass, veined with the fiercest lightning.
"Tumble up quicker'n you ever did in your life!" he exclaimed, his big brown beard wagging almost in Cosmo's face. "The flood's over!" Cosmo sprang out of bed and pulled on his coat in a second. "What do you mean?" he demanded. "Look for yourself," said the captain, pointing overhead. Cosmo Versal glanced up and saw the sky ablaze with stars! The rain had entirely ceased.
After all, it was to be doubted if Cosmo Versal, with all his vigilance, had succeeded in collecting a company representing anything above the average quality of the race. But there was one thing that did great credit to his heart. When he found that he had room unoccupied, before adding to his lists he consented to take more than two children in a family.
There was a period of profound silence while De Beauxchamps's face worked spasmodically under the influence of emotions, the sight of which would alone have sufficed to convince his hearers of the truth of what he had been telling. Finally Cosmo Versal, breaking the silence, asked: "Did you find your home?" "Yes. It was there. I found it out. I illuminated it with the searchlight.
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