FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128  
129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   >>   >|  
enite altogether, who appears to be directing the--" The writing became a mere hasty confusion again. "They have larger brain cases--much larger, and slenderer bodies, and very short legs. They make gentle noises, and move with organized deliberation... "And though I am wounded and helpless here, their appearance still gives me hope." That was like Cavor. "They have not shot at me or attempted... injury. I intend--" Then came the sudden streak of the pencil across the paper, and on the back and edges--blood! And as I stood there stupid, and perplexed, with this dumbfounding relic in my hand, something very soft and light and chill touched my hand for a moment and ceased to be, and then a thing, a little white speck, drifted athwart a shadow. It was a tiny snowflake, the first snowflake, the herald of the night. I looked up with a start, and the sky had darkened almost to blackness, and was thick with a gathering multitude of coldly watchful stars. I looked eastward, and the light of that shrivelled world was touched with sombre bronze; westward, and the sun robbed now by a thickening white mist of half its heat and splendour, was touching the crater rim, was sinking out of sight, and all the shrubs and jagged and tumbled rocks stood out against it in a bristling disorder of black shapes. Into the great lake of darkness westward, a vast wreath of mist was sinking. A cold wind set all the crater shivering. Suddenly, for a moment, I was in a puff of falling snow, and all the world about me gray and dim. And then it was I heard, not loud and penetrating as at first, but faint and dim like a dying voice, that tolling, that same tolling that had welcomed the coming of the day: Boom!... Boom!... Boom!... It echoed about the crater, it seemed to throb with the throbbing of the greater stars, the blood-red crescent of the sun's disc sank as it tolled out: Boom!... Boom!... Boom!... What had happened to Cavor? All through that tolling I stood there stupidly, and at last the tolling ceased. And suddenly the open mouth of the tunnel down below there, shut like an eye and vanished out of sight. Then indeed was I alone. Over me, around me, closing in on me, embracing me ever nearer, was the Eternal; that which was before the beginning, and that which triumphs over the end; that enormous void in which all light and life and being is but the thin and vanishing splendour of a falling star, the cold, the stillnes
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128  
129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
tolling
 

crater

 

snowflake

 
falling
 

looked

 

touched

 

ceased

 

larger

 

splendour

 

moment


sinking

 
westward
 

penetrating

 
shapes
 
disorder
 

bristling

 

tumbled

 

darkness

 

Suddenly

 

shivering


wreath

 

embracing

 

closing

 

nearer

 

Eternal

 
vanished
 

beginning

 

vanishing

 

stillnes

 

triumphs


enormous

 

greater

 
crescent
 

throbbing

 

jagged

 

coming

 

welcomed

 

echoed

 

tolled

 

suddenly


tunnel
 
stupidly
 

happened

 

coldly

 

appearance

 
helpless
 

wounded

 
organized
 
deliberation
 

intend