er pocket of his frock-coat a long
narrow wallet, with a lock to it and so much worn and so often
repaired that its appearance harmonized perfectly with his green
over-coat and his rusty hat:

"You want to know the truth?" he exclaimed. "It's here. All my
observations and all my hypotheses are contained in this wallet."

And he was inserting the key in the lock when loud voices were raised
on the platform. The tables in the refreshment-room were at once
deserted. Without paying further heed to Old Sandstone, Simon followed
the crowd which was rushing into the waiting-room.

Two telegrams had come from France. One, after reporting the wreck of
a coasting-vessel, the _Bonne Vierge_, which plied weekly between
Calais, Le Havre and Cherbourg, announced that the Channel Tunnel had
fallen in, fortunately without the loss of a single life. The other,
which the crowd read as it was being written, stated that "the keeper
of the Ailly lighthouse, near Dieppe, had at break of day seen five
columns of water and sand shooting up almost simultaneously, two
miles from the coast, and stirring up the sea between Veules and
Pourville."

These telegrams elicited cries of dismay. The destruction of the
Channel Tunnel, ten years of effort wasted, millions of pounds
swallowed up: this was evidently a calamity! But how much more
dreadful was the sinister wording of the second telegram! Veules!
Pourville! Dieppe! That was the coast which they would have to make
for! The steamboat, in two hours' time, would be entering the very
region affected by the cataclysm! On sailing, Seaford and Hastings; on
nearing port, Veules, Pourville and Dieppe!

There was a rush for the booking-office. The station-master's and
inspectors' offices were besieged. Two hundred people rushed on board
the vessel to recover their trunks and bags; and a crowd of distraught
travellers, staggering under the weight of their luggage, took the
up-train by assault, as though the sea-walls and the quays and rampart
of the cliffs were unable to protect them from the hideous
catastrophe.

Simon shuddered. He could not but be impressed by the fears displayed
by these people. And then what was the meaning of this mysterious
sequence of phenomena, which seemed incapable of any natural
explanation? What invisible tempest was making the waves boil up from
the depths of a motionless sea? Why did these sudden cyclones all
occur within so small a radius, affecting only a limited re