"It doesn't shine like that," he said at last.

The little man snorted contemptuously.

"What have I told you about its invisibility?" he demanded.

"But how, then, do you know that it is of a watery nature?"

Cosmo Versal threw up his hands and waved them in an agony of
impatience. He climbed upon his stool to get nearer the level of the
other's eyes, and fixing him with his gaze, exclaimed:

"You know very well how I know it. I know it because I have demonstrated
with my new spectroscope, which analyzes extra-visual rays, that all
those dark nebulae that were photographed in the Milky Way years ago are
composed of watery vapor. They are far off, on the limits of the
universe. This one is one right at hand. It's a little one compared with
them--but it's enough, yes, it's enough! You know that more than two
years ago I began to correspond with astronomers all over the world
about this thing, and not one of them would listen to me. Well, they'll
listen when it's too late perhaps.

"They'll listen when the flood-gates are opened and the inundation
begins. It's not the first time that this thing has happened. I haven't
a doubt that the flood of Noah, that everybody pretends to laugh at now,
was caused by the earth passing through a watery nebula. But this will
be worse than that; there weren't two thousand million people to be
drowned then."