apid
flight through the air, were already beginning to singe. He came down with
a forcible, but by no means injurious, bump in what appeared to be a mound
of fresh-turned earth. A large mass of metal and masonry, extraordinarily
like the clock-tower in the middle of the market square, hit the earth
near him, ricochetted over him, and flew into stonework, bricks, and
cement, like a bursting bomb. A hurtling cow hit one of the larger blocks
and smashed like an egg. There was a crash that made all the most violent
crashes of his past life seem like the sound of falling dust, and this was
followed by a descending series of lesser crashes. A vast wind roared
throughout earth and heaven, so that he could scarcely lift his head to
look. For a while he was too breathless and astonished even to see where
he was or what had happened. And his first movement was to feel his head
and reassure himself that his streaming hair was still his own.

"Lord!" gasped Mr. Fotheringay, scarce able to speak for the gale, "I've
had a squeak! What's gone wrong? Storms and thunder. And only a minute ago
a fine night. It's Maydig set me on to this sort of thing. _What_ a
wind! If I go on fooling in this way I'm bound to have a thundering
accident!...

"Where's Maydig?

"What a confounded mess everything's in!"

He looked about him so far as his flapping jacket would permit. The
appearance of things was really extremely strange. "The sky's all right
anyhow," said Mr. Fotheringay. "And that's about all that is all right.
And even there it looks like a terrific gale coming up. But there's the
moon overhead. Just as it was just now. Bright as midday. But as for the
rest----Where's the village? Where's--where's anything? And what on earth
set this wind a-blowing? I didn't order no wind."

Mr. Fotheringay struggled to get to his feet in vain, and after one
failure, remained on all fours, holding on. He surveyed the moonlit world
to leeward, with the tails of his jacket streaming over his head. "There's
something seriously wrong," said Mr. Fotheringay. "And what it is--
goodness knows."

Far and wide nothing was visible in the white glare through the haze of
dust that drove before a screaming gale but tumbled masses of earth and
heaps of inchoate ruins, no trees, no houses, no familiar shapes, only a
wilderness of disorder, vanishing at last into the darkness beneath the
whirling columns and streamers, the lightnings and thunderings of a
swiftly ri