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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 littered like a storm-worn beach with
all that had floated, and the dead bodies of the men and brutes, its
children. For days the water streamed off the land, sweeping away soil
and trees and houses in the way, and piling huge dykes and scooping out
Titanic gullies over the country side. Those were the days of darkness
that followed the star and the heat. All through them, and for many
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