noon
* * * * * The above necessarily brief and imperfect digest gives only the headings of an article which filled nearly two columns of the _ Times _ , and it is needless to say that such an article in the leading columns of the most serious and respectable newspaper in the world produced an intense impression wherever it was read . Of course the telegram was instantly copied by the evening papers , which ran out special editions for the sole purpose of reproducing it , with their own comments upon it , which , after all , were not much more original than the telegram . Meanwhile the _ Berliner Tageblatt _ , the _ Newe Freie Presse _ , the _ Kölnische Zeitung _ , and the _ Journal des Débats _ had received later and somewhat similar telegrams , and had given their respective views of the catastrophe to the world . By noon all the capitals of Europe were in a fever of expectation and apprehension . The cables had carried the news to America and India ; and when the evening of the same day brought the telegraphic account of the extraordinary occurrence at Tiumen in the grey dusk of the early morning , proving almost conclusively that the rescue had been effected by the same agency that had destroyed Kronstadt , and that , worse than all , the air-vessel was at the command of Natas , the unknown Chief of the mysterious Terrorists , excitement rose almost to frenzy , and everywhere the wildest rumours were accepted as truth . In a word , the `` psychological moment '' had come all over Europe , the moment in which all men were thinking of the same thing , discussing the same event , and dreading the same results . To have found a parallel state of affairs , it would have been necessary to go back more than a hundred years , to the hour when the head of Louis XVI .