Drop Your Business: It Is of No Consequence!
Build Arks: It Is Your Only Salvation!
The Earth Is Going To Plunge into a Watery
Nebula: There Is No Escape!
Hundreds of Millions Will Be Drowned: You Have
Only a Few Months To Get Ready!
For Particulars Address: Cosmo Versal,
3000 Fifth Avenue.




CHAPTER II

MOCKING AT FATE


When New York recovered from its first astonishment over the
extraordinary posters, it indulged in a loud laugh. Everybody knew who
Cosmo Versal was. His eccentricities had filled many readable columns in
the newspapers. Yet there was a certain respect for him, too. This was
due to his extraordinary intellectual ability and unquestionable
scientific knowledge. But his imagination was as free as the winds, and
it often led him upon excursions in which nobody could follow him, and
which caused the more steady-going scientific brethren to shake their
heads. They called him able but flighty. The public considered him
brilliant and amusing.

His father, who had sprung from some unknown source in southeastern
Europe, and, beginning as a newsboy in New York, had made his way to the