for the occasion,
oh, practise them now at once, for look, even the very grass is
withering; birds are dropping from trees; fishes, horribly bloated, are
beginning to float down the steaming rills; and I, with all others,
have a nameless dread upon me."

Hotter and hotter it grew, until about sunset the red blaze upon the
sky slowly opened, and showed us for about half an hour, through the
opening a lurid, flame-coloured meteor far out in space beyond; then
the cleft closed again, and through that abominable red curtain came
the very breath of Hades.

What was really happening I am not astronomer enough to say, though on
cooler consideration I have come to the conclusion that our planet, in
going out to its summer pastures in the remoter fields of space, had
somehow come across a wandering lesser world and got pretty well singed
in passing. This is purely my own opinion, and I have not yet
submitted it to the kindly authorities of the Lick Observatory for
verification. All I can say for certain is that in an incredibly short
space of time the face of the country changed from green to sear,
flowers drooped; streams (there were not many in the neighbourhood
apparently) dried up; fishes died; a mighty thirst there was nothing to
quench settled down on man and beast, and we all felt that unless
Providence listened to the prayers and imprecations which the whole
town set to work with frantic zeal to hurl at it, or that abominable
comet in the sky sheered off on another tack with the least possible
delay, we should all be reduced to cinders in a very brief space of
time.

CHAPTER XVII

The evening of the second day had already come, when Ar-hap arrived
home after weekending amongst a tribe of rebellious subjects. But any
imposing State entry which might have been intended was rendered
impossible by the heat and the threat of that baleful world in the
western sky.

It was a lurid but disordered spectacle which I witnessed from my room
in the gate-house just after nightfall. The returning army had
apparently fallen away exhausted on its march through the town; only
some three hundred of the bodyguard straggled up the hill, limp and
sweating, behind a group of pennons, in the midst of which rode a
horseman whose commanding presence and splendid war harness impressed
me, though I could not make out his features; a wild, impressionist
scene of black outlines, tossing headgear, and spears glittering and
vanishing in