The Project Gutenberg EBook of In the Days of the Comet, by H. G. Wells

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Title: In the Days of the Comet

Author: H. G. Wells

Release Date: October 25, 2004 [EBook #3797]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN THE DAYS OF THE COMET ***

This etext was produced by Judy Boss.

IN THE DAYS OF THE COMET

BY H. G. WELLS

"The World's Great Age begins anew,
The Golden Years return,
The Earth doth like a Snake renew
Her Winter Skin outworn:
Heaven smiles, and Faiths and Empires gleam
Like Wrecks of a Dissolving Dream."

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

PAGE

THE MAN WHO WROTE IN THE TOWER . . . 3

BOOK THE FIRST

THE COMET

CHAPTER

I. DUST IN THE SHADOWS . . . . . . 9
II. NETTIE . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
III. THE REVOLVER . . . . . . . . . 89
IV. WAR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
V. THE PURSUIT OF THE TWO LOVERS . . 184

BOOK THE SECOND

THE GREEN VAPORS

I. THE CHANGE . . . . . . . . . 221
II. THE AWAKENING . . . . . . . . . 252
III. THE CABINET COUNCIL . . . . . . . 279

BOOK THE THIRD

THE NEW WORLD

CHAPTER PAGE

I. LOVE AFTER THE CHANGE . . . . . . 303
II. MY MOTHER'S LAST DAYS . . . . . . 335
III. BELTANE AND NEW YEAR'S EVE . . . 353

EPILOGUE

THE WINDOW OF THE TOWER . . . . . . . 375

IN THE DAYS OF THE COMET

PROLOGUE

THE MAN WHO WROTE IN THE TOWER

I SAW a gray-haired man, a figure of hale age, sitting at a desk
and writing.

He seemed to be in a room in a tower, very high, so that through
the tall window on his left one perceived only distances, a remote
horizon of sea, a headland and that vague haze and glitter in the
sunset that many miles away marks a city. All the appointments of
this room were orderly and beautiful, and in some subtle quality,
in this small difference and that, new to me and strange. They were
in no fashion I could name, and the simple costume the man wore
suggested neither period nor country. It might, I thought, be the
Happy Future, or Utopia, or the Land of Simpl