The Sea Horror by Edmond Hamilton

It was on the fourth day of August, just three months after the passing of Clinton and his expedition, that the first news of the approaching terror was given to the world. That first news was in the form of a dispatch from the government oceanographic station at Portsmouth, in which it was stated that during the last three days the level of the sea had risen almost as many feet. Unnaturally high tides had been lashing the coasts of England and of the world during those days, the message stated, and a study of them had disclosed the astounding and unexplainable rise which had taken place. The dispatch added that the rise was a world-wide and not a local one, since corroborative reports of it had been received from associated oceanographic stations at New York, Yokohama, Sydney and Calcutta.

It is not wonderful that that brief first message aroused in the world of science, and even in the world of everyday, a very intense interest and curiosity. Published as it was in all the London journals on the evening of the fourth, and by them transmitted by wire and wireless to the world at large, it soon eclipsed even the latest atrocious murder as a theme of general discussion. For if there is one thing considered constant in this changing world of ours, it is the level of the sea. All our heights and depths are compared to and computed from it, so unchanging do we esteem it; since though great tides may come and go the level of the sea itself seems never to change, so delicately balanced are the combined processes of evaporation and condensation which deplete and replenish it. And for this hitherto unchanging level to rise suddenly for almost three feet, in as many days, was a phenomenon of intense interest and mystery.