human
It's come, Hackness, he cried.
gpt
It was bound to come sometime. It's all here in a late edition of the Telegraph. We must go and see it.
human
Do you remember, he said,
gpt
I shall never forget it, Eldred, he said,
human
It was perfectly still and the effect of that immense volume of dense black smoke was marvellous. Do you recollect the scene at sunset? It was like looking at half-a-dozen Alpine ranges piled one on the top of the other. The spectacle was not only grand, it was appalling, awful. Do you happen to recollect what you said at the time?
gpt
Perfectly well, he cried.
human
I pictured that awful canopy of sooty, fatty matter suddenly shut down over a great city by a fog. A fog would have beaten it down and spread it. We tried to imagine what might happen if that ship had been in the Thames, say at Greenwich.
gpt
Didn't you prophesy a big fog for to-day?
human
Certainly I did. And a recent examination of my instruments merely confirms my opinion. Why do you ask?
gpt
Because early this morning a fire broke out in the great petroleum storage tanks, down the river. Millions of gallons of oil are bound to burn themselves out--nothing short of a miracle can quench the fire, which will probably rage all through to-day and to-morrow. The fire-brigades are absolutely powerless--in the first place the heat is too awful to allow them to approach; in the second, water would only make things worse. It's one of the biggest blazes ever known. Pray Heaven, your fog doesn't settle down on the top of the smoke.