ted lost to them forever. In England it was hot and clear
overhead, though the ground quivered perpetually, but in the
tropics, Sirius and Capella and Aldebaran showed through a veil of
steam. And when at last the great star rose near ten hours late,
the sun rose close upon it, and in the centre of its white heart
was a disc of black.

Over Asia it was the star had begun to fall behind the
movement of the sky, and then suddenly, as it hung over India, its
light had been veiled. All the plain of India from the mouth of
the Indus to the mouths of the Ganges was a shallow waste of
shining water that night, out of which rose temples and palaces,
mounds and hills, black with people. Every minaret was a
clustering mass of people, who fell one by one into the turbid
waters, as heat and terror overcame them. The whole land seemed
a-wailing and suddenly there swept a shadow across that furnace of
despair, and a breath of cold wind, and a gathering of clouds, out
of the cooling air. Men looking up, near blinded, at the star, saw
that a black disc was creeping across the light. It was the moon,
coming between the star and the earth. And even as men cried to
God at this respite, out of the East with a strange inexplicable
swiftness sprang the sun. And then star, sun and moon rushed
together across the heavens.

So it was that presently, to the European watchers, star and
sun rose close upon each other, drove headlong for a space and then
slower, and at last came to rest, star and sun merged into one
glare of flame at the zenith of the sky. The moon no longer
eclipsed the star but was lost to sight in the brilliance of the
sky. And though those who were still alive regarded it for the
most part with that dull stupidity that hunger, fatigue, heat and
despair engender, there were still men who could perceive the
meaning of these signs. Star and earth had been at their nearest,
had swung about one another, and the star had passed. Already it
was receding, swifter and swifter, in the last stage of its
headlong journey downward into the sun.

And then the clouds gathered, blotting out the vision of the
sky, the thunder and lightning wove a garment round the world; all
over the earth was such a downpour of rain as men had never before
seen, and where the volcanoes flared red against the cloud canopy
there descended torrents of mud. Everywhere the waters were
pouring off the land, leaving mud-silted ruins, and the earth