about four A.M.
Wireless messages flashed the story from Algiers to Cartagena , and it was thence disseminated throughout the civilized world by the wireless stations at Paris , Nauen , Moscow , and Georgetown . The fact that the rotation of the earth had been retarded was still a secret , and the appearance of the Ring had not as yet been connected with any of the extraordinary phenomena surrounding it ; but the newspaper editorials universally agreed that whatever nation owned and controlled this new instrument of war could dictate its own terms . It was generally supposed that the blasting of the mountain chain of Northern Africa had been an experiment to test and demonstrate the powers of this new demoniacal invention , and in view of its success it did not seem surprising that the nations had hastened to agree to an armistice , for the Power that controlled a force capable of producing such an extraordinary physical cataclysm could annihilate every capital , every army , every people upon the globe or even the globe itself . The flight of the Ring machine had been observed at several different points , beginning at Cape Race , where at about four A.M. the wireless operator reported what he supposed to be a large comet discharging earthward a diagonal shaft of orange-yellow light and moving at incredible velocity in a southeasterly direction . During the following day the lookout on the _ Vira _ , a fishguard and scout cruiser of the North Atlantic Patrol , saw a black speck soaring among the clouds which he took to be a lost monoplane fighting to regain the coast of Ireland . At sundown an amateur wireless operator at St. Michael 's in the Azores noted a small comet sweeping across the sky far to the north . This comet an hour or so later passed directly over the cities of Lisbon , Linares , Lorca , Cartagena , and Algiers , and was clearly observable from Badajoz , Almadén , Seville , Cordova , Grenada , Oran , Biskra , and Tunis , and at the latter places it was easily possible for telescopic observers to determine its size , shape , and general construction .