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Once again men set their eyes upon the old constellations they had
counted 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
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